Executive Summary
This policy brief examines the rapidly increasing incarceration rate, its negative effects on African Americans, and offers three potential policy options to address the problem.
Background/Purpose:
Since 1975, the proportion of Americans in prison has nearly tripled (Hattery & Smith, 2010). The increase is not due to more crimes being committed but an increase in conviction rates and sentence lengths (Mauer, 2001, p. 34). 13.4 percent of the U.S. population identifies as African American, yet African Americans account for 50 percent of the U.S. prison population (Pettit and Western 2004). African Americans are disproportionately affected by the increasing incarceration rate. The current need for prison reform comes at a time when America’s incarceration rate, 655 inmates per 100,000 people, is greater than that of any other country in the world (Gramlich, 2018).
Causes of Mass Incarceration:
Policy Options:
Policy Option #1: Release Non-Violent Offenders
Small experiment in one town/county. Release non-violent, non-sexual offenders on parole. Supply them with support in the form of money and other necessities in first 6 months. Fund infrastructure project to give jobs and experience to released inmates.
Policy Option #2: Change Private Prison Model
Restructure existing and future private prison contracts to change incentives of private prison industry from housing as many prisoners as possible to rehabilitating as many prisoners as possible. Add in provisions that reward lower inmate return rates and higher post-prison success rates.
Policy Option #3: Abolish Mandatory Minimums and Decriminalize Drugs
Adapt Portugal’s successful Harm Reduction Model. Repeal Rockefeller Drug Laws. Abolish Mandatory minimums for all non-violent, non-sexual offenses. Decriminalize drug usage. Set up needle-exchange sites and fund free rehab centers offering methadone treatment.
Recommendation:
I recommend policy option #3, completely reworking U.S. drug policy, because it is the most impactful and meaningful option. While policy option one, releasing non-violent and non-sexual offenders on parole, is a short-term solution and policy option two, adapting private prison contracts, is more rooted in gradual long-term changes, policy option three does both. The option addresses multiple causes of mass incarceration and has both an immediate and a long-term impact. It reduces the amount of people arrested, reduces the amount of time people are incarcerated for, and reduces the amount of people that return to prison. The policy will require quite a lot of political willpower, but it will pay off-quite literally with a decrease in government spending and metaphorically, as well with profound positive impacts on society.
Introduction
Prison is often viewed as a taboo subject in American society and people who are sent to prison are looked down upon for their actions. Some view prison as a tool to rehabilitate troublesome members of society, others see it is a punishment for those who fall out of line. Regardless of what purpose it is meant to serve, the contemporary American prison system is doing more harm than good. In recent years the incarceration rate has rapidly increased threefold and the share of Americans in prison is incredibly high (Hattery & Smith, 2010). The U.S. spends more than 182 billion dollars on the prison system and the number is still rising (Rabuy & Wagner, 2017). Prisons do not educate develop inmates’ skills and often exploit them for cheap labor. These problems have disproportionately affected African Americans more so than any other community in the U.S. This policy brief examines the rapidly increasing incarceration rate, its negative effects on African Americans, and offers three potential policy options to address the problem.
Identification of Policy Problem
Since 1975, the proportion of Americans in jails and prisons has more than tripled, going from _1975 rate_ to _2018 rate_ (Hattery & Smith, 2010). Many factors have catalyzed the issue but the main three causes are the proliferation of the war on drugs, the prosperity of the Prison Industrial Complex, and systemic racial profiling. Together, they have created a new “Jim Crow” justice system that is six times more likely to incarcerate African American men than white men (Alexander, 2011). Consequently, the current need for prison reform comes at a time when America’s incarceration rate, 655 inmates per 100,000 people, is greater than that of any other country in the world (Gramlich, 2018). While some may argue the increase in incarceration is completely due to an increase in crime, they are false. Allen Beck, a statistician with the US Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, approximates that roughly “one-ninth of the increase in prison population can be explained by higher offence rates, yet fully half of this increase came because of a greater likelihood of a prison sentence upon arrest and another third to the increase in the length of sentences” (Mauer, 2001, p. 34). These facts are made even more insidious when coupled with the fact that 13.4 percent of the U.S. population identifies as African American, yet African Americans account for 50 percent of the U.S. prison population (Pettit and Western 2004).
In the mid-twentieth century, White men made up more than 70 percent of the total prison population in America (Hattery & Smith, 2010). That statistic flipped in the early 1980’s with the introduction of the Rockefeller Drug Laws, which instituted mandatory minimums of 15 years, which is the same as the penalty for second-degree murder, for the possession of 2 ounces of heroin, cocaine, or marijuana (Hattery & Smith, 2010). The laws also discriminated between the types of substances, for example, possession of 5 grams of crack cocaine was considered a felony, while more than 500 grams of powder cocaine was required for the equivalent penalty. These laws directly targeted the African American community because the overwhelming majority of defendants charged with crack cocaine possession were black, whereas mostly white Americans were charged with possession of powder cocaine (McCurdy & Vagins, 2006). In 1986, before the enactment of federal mandatory minimum sentencing for crack cocaine offenses, the average federal drug sentence for African Americans was 11% higher than for whites. Four years later, the average federal drug sentence for African Americans was 49% higher (McCurdy & Vagins, 2006). As a result of this “War on Drugs”, an increasing number of black Americans are filtered into the justice system and end up in jails and prisons compared to their white counterparts.
With the rising number of Americans in the justice system, the prison system had to expand. More prisons were needed in order to handle the influx of prisoners, and many private interests took up the demand and created private prison companies. These companies and the system continued to grow until many companies such as Corrections Corporations of America report revenues of over $2 billion in 2008 and rely on incarcerating more than 2 million citizens (Schlosser, 1998). Eventually the system grew so big and profitable that instead of handling the influx of prisoners it began to work to increase the number of incarcerations nationwide to make as much profit as possible off the prisons. This led to the birth of Prison Industrial Complex, which is a set of bureaucratic, political, and economic interests that encourage increased spending on imprisonment, regardless of the actual need (Hattery & Smith, 2010). The booming industry needs bodies to fill beds and do labor, so they put lobby lawmakers to ensure incarceration rates do not drop and encourage the proliferation of the “War on Drugs.” The private prison industry has lobbied for many laws such as the California’s Three Strikes Law and Arizona’s anti-illegal immigration bill in order to increase the number of prisoners available. Moreover, private prisons gave a record $1.6 million to candidates, parties, and outside spending groups in the 2016 election cycle (Center for Responsive Politics, 2018).
The War on Drugs and the power of the Prison Industrial Complex are made even more potent when considered alongside the racial profiling and discrimination that takes place nationwide. African Americans are much more likely to be arrested for drug possession, even though their drug use rates are similar to Caucasians (Hattery & Smith, 2010). Furthermore, when they are taken to court they are nearly 20 percent more likely to receive a conviction than a white person (Duróse and Langan, 2001). These differences are not just due to income inequalities. A study conducted by Harvard and Stanford researchers found that black men raised in the top 1 percent — by millionaires — were as likely to be incarcerated as white men raised in households earning about $36,000 (Chetty, Hendren, Jones, & Porter, 2018). African Americans are more likely to prosecuted for even small violations of the law and are closely monitored by the justice system, which leads to them being disproportionately represented in the prison population.
These are just some of the largest factors contributing to this complex issue and there are many more nuances to this issue, but it is very important that the problem is addressed quickly because African Americans are disproportionately affected by the rapid increase in the incarceration rate and are suffering as a result. The justice system displaces large amounts of black men and affects the growth and success of the entire African American community.
Incarceration perpetuates a cycle of poverty in the African American community by barring inmates from federal programs and making it difficult for inmates to find employment. Once African American men are incarcerated their lives are changed irrevocably. Even after they are released they face great difficulty finding housing and are barred from many federal relief programs. As a result, black Americans have a significantly lower homeownership compared to every other demographic group- at a measly 41.9 percent (U.S. Census Bureau, 2018). To give some perspective, this was roughly the same homeownership rate that African Americans had before the passage of the federal Fair Housing Act in the Civil Rights Era (Turner, 2018). Homeownership is considered the pinnacle of wealth building for most middle-class Americans. By making it more difficult for African Americans to own homes, incarceration harms future generations and makes them more likely to be impoverished, thereby reinforcing the poverty cycle.
Another aspect of this problem is that former inmates have a very difficult time finding employment after being incarcerated. Most prisons do not educate and teach their inmates marketable skills and thus many inmates, upon release, face long periods of unemployment. One study conducted using probation officer reports on federal offenders to understand the effects of incarceration on wages and employment even found that there were significant negative effects of incarceration on both employment and income (Waldfogel, 1994). Facing unemployment, many of these men return to crime in order to make money. This reinforces the “revolving door” effect and explains why even though more than 95 percent of people U.S. prisons return home after completing their sentence, more than 55 percent still end up back behind bars within five years. (Patrick, n.d.).
The lack of employment does not just negatively affect the former inmates and their families, but their entire communities as well. Because African American released from prison are often lacking the skills needed by most competitive jobs in the labor market, they create a labor shortage in their communities. Companies and factories respond to this labor shortage by avoiding African American communities which creates “job deserts” that feeds the cycle of incarceration and encourage poverty. This leads to fewer jobs overall and ensures that the effects of incarceration are felt by the entire African American community, not just those that are incarcerated.
Key Policy Options
Policy #1: RELEASE NON-VIOLENT OFFENDERS
One option to deal with the increasing prison population in America is to order the release and parole of all non-violent and non-sexual offenders. If they break the terms of their parole then they are sent back to prison. Nearly half of inmates under federal authority in 2014 were incarcerated for drug-related reasons according to Bureau of Justice Statistics (Glaze, Kaeble, Minton, & Tsoutis, 2016). If they were to be released then the prison population would be drastically reduced immediately. Obviously, some support in the form of money and housing would have to be given to the newly released inmates to ensure that their transition is a smooth as possible. This policy option should first be tested out on a smaller scale, where the non-violent and non-sexual offenders of county are released on parole. A new infrastructure investment could be made to improve the state of the county and provide jobs to the released prisoners who could not find work. If successful, the results of this experiment could be adapted to other parts of the country.
Some advantages of this policy are that it has an immediate impact and is much easier to implement as it would probably garner the support of the public. Only non-violent, non-sexual offenders are to be released and the public will much more likely to support this than the release of other inmates. Additionally, the infrastructure investment would provide a beneficial improvement to the community whilst also benefiting the inmates by providing them work. Additionally, the small-scale nature of the policy means that if the initial experiment is unsuccessful then the policy can be adapted or dismissed easily, compared to other policy options that might be much more expansive in nature.
There are many disadvantages to this option. It does not treat the actual causes of incarceration, just the symptoms. As a result, it will not do much to decrease incarceration in the long run and will simply act like a band-aid for the problem. The policy does not mention anything about racial profiling nor the rise of the private prison industry. Both of these causes would still drive up the incarceration rate, albeit at a potentially slower rate.
Policy Option #2: Change Private Prison Model
In the last 20 years, federal and state governments have increasingly relied on private prisons to handle the drastic increase in inmates and have signed lucrative contracts with the industry. The problem that many of these contracts create an incentive for the private prisons to desire to imprison more people, rather than to rehabilitate current prisoners. Nearly two-thirds of private prison contracts mandate that state and local governments maintain a certain occupancy rate – usually 90 percent – or require taxpayers to pay for empty beds (Cohen, 2015). In order for lawmakers to deal with this inconsistency, federal and state government need to revise private prison contracts to change the incentive for private prisons from wanting to house as many prisoners as possible to wanting to rehabilitate as many prisoners as possible. Changing the wording of the contracts will make the private prison industry work towards the same goals as lawmakers. There are many different changes that could be made but some examples are changing contracts so prisons (public & private) are incentivized to hold less inmates, have a lower inmate return rate, higher post-prison success rate, etc.
There are many advantages to implementing this policy. The contract changes could provide a more economics-based solution to the problem by changing the incentives for the private prison industry and encouraging them to rehabilitate prisoners to get more funding. The If successful, the policy would work to dismantle the Prison Industrial Complex and reduce the return rate of inmates. Private prisons would research and implement more programs aimed toward rehabilitation. Rehabilitation programs have been proven to reduce recidivism rates or the return rate of inmates by 5 to 18 percent (Day & Howells, 2002).
Conversely, there are some disadvantages with implementing the policy as well. The policy leaves much up to the interpretation of individual lawmakers. It does not mandate a set requirement for every state or every contract and so the policy could very easily be corrupted by the lobbying efforts of the industry. If even a few key lawmakers get influenced by the private prison industry then the contract changes could become useless. They could add in loopholes that let prisons continue their current behavior. Additionally, the policy does nothing to address the other causes of mass incarceration such as unfair drug laws and racial profiling.
Policy Option #3: Eliminating Mandatory Minimums and Decriminalizing Drugs
The introduction of Rockefeller Drug Laws marked a sharp turning point in American drug policy. Instead of addressing each case on an individual basis and treating addiction as a disease, the laws mandated abstinence-only policies and treated addicts like criminals. As a result, the incarceration rate drastically increased.
In order to deal with this issue, we must look abroad to see what has worked in other countries. One country, Portugal, implemented radically new drug policies in the face of a catastrophic public health crisis. In the 1980’s, 1 in 10 people in Portugal were addicted to heroin. Instead of mandating prison sentences for the addicts, Portuguese lawmakers implemented a Harm Reduction Model and radically changed its drug policies. The possession and consumption of illicit substances were decriminalized (Ferreira, 2017). Rather than being arrested, those caught with a personal supply are given a warning, a small fine, or told to appear before a local commission – a doctor, a lawyer and a social worker – about treatment, harm reduction, and the support services available to them. Needle-exchange programs were funded and government-funded treatment centers that offered methadone treatment were opened offered across the nation (Ferreira, 2017). U.S. lawmakers should not follow Portugal’s model exactly but rather adapt it to America.
It is crucial for American lawmakers to repeal the Rockefeller Drug laws, abolish mandatory minimums for non-violent and non-sexual offenses, decriminalize drug usage, and treat drug addiction as a disease. Mandatory minimums do not give judges the ability to give judgements on a case by case basis, and rather force them to abide by a stringent, stubborn limit, which keeps people in the prison system much longer. In many cases, mandatory minimums disproportionately affect people of color because they are much more likely to be arrested for a crime than a white person due to racial profiling. Decriminalizing drug usage has been proven to decrease incarceration rates and drug addiction as Portugal and many other countries have already had success with the policy.
One advantage to this policy is that low-level drug offenders will not have to face long prison sentences and will be more easily rehabilitated. Rehabilitation is key to ensuring that incarceration rates stay low. The policy reinforces its emphasis on rehabilitation by providing support for those addicted to drugs in the form of free rehab centers and needle exchange sites. Another advantage to this policy option is that it would save federal and state governments a lot of money. Without this policy in place, incarceration rates will likely continue to climb. It costs the government an average of $31,000 a year per prisoner (Mai & Subramanian, 2017). In contrast, probation is 10 times cheaper (U.S. Courts, 2013). Between reducing the amount of time people spend in prison and not jailing drug misuse offenders this policy will save considerable amounts of money. In fact, in the 13 states where prison population has declined since 2010, total prison costs declined by $1.6 billion (Mai & Subramanian, 2017). The savings will most likely exceed the additional costs of funding needle exchange and rehab centers.
One key disadvantage of this policy option is that it requires a great deal of bipartisan sponsorship and political willpower. The policy is a giant behemoth of differing components between abolishing mandatory minimums to changing. The success of the policy rests firmly on the assumption that policymakers will be able to get all or most parts passed. Otherwise, the policy will be incomplete and hollow. This is precisely why this policy could be difficult to pass. Many law-and-order Republicans could rebuke the idea because they see it as “going easy” on crime. Another key hole in this policy is that the effect mandatory minimums might be very exaggerated and thus, the implementation of the policy could be inefficient. John Pfaff, a law professor at Fordham University, argues that despite the existence of laws calling for lengthy sentences, many inmates actually spend far less time in prison than the maximum amount possible (Glaze, Kaeble, Minton, & Tsoutis, 2016). If true, then the policy option wastes valuable time and political capital on dealing with a non-issue.
Recommendation
Although I believe a mix of the policy options would be the best strategy overall, policy option 3, a comprehensive reworking of U.S. drug policy, is the best singular option as it is the most powerful. While policy option one, releasing non-violent and non-sexual offenders on parole, is a short-term solution and policy option two, adapting private prison contracts, is more rooted in gradual long-term changes, policy option three does both. The option addresses multiple causes of mass incarceration and has both an immediate and a long-term impact. It reduces the amount of people arrested, reduces the amount of time people are incarcerated for, and reduces the amount of people that return. The policy will require quite a lot of political willpower, but it will pay off quite literally with a decrease in government spending and metaphorically as well with profound impacts on all of society. America has made its fair share of mistakes but it is on an upward trend. Several states have acted and we are now in a new criminal justice era. By implementing these solutions and tackling the problem, mass incarceration can and will be stopped.