You are right, Nick. The State system is where the majority of our citizens are jailed. I know I have a very restricted view here, but what I see is discouraging and maddening. I volunteer in my local, very large, St. Louis County Jail, which is intended for pre-trial holding. Some folks have been there for years, charged but not convicted of anything. In the meantime, children, homes, jobs, relationships are lost. So quickly. Little or no rehabilitation happens there. The Mission Statement is aspirational, but far off. There is some good drug work, but it's hard to get into Drug Court. There are able and motivated staff, but too few. Quite a few dislike their jobs and the people they serve and it's apparent. There are wonderful volunteers who give classes and encourage. But on the whole, it's a desperately sad place where mostly poor people are jailed for lack of bail, proper drug rehab or support when they get out. We have a new, groundbreaking prosecutor, voted in after the Michael Brown, Jr. killing. But the culture in the jail is tough. They may be innocent before proven guilty, but that's not the way they are treated. As a former lawyer it makes me mad. I often cringe when I walk in and look up at the sign that say "Justice Center".
137
@Mary
Ditto Louisiana jails. If you don’t have money for a private attorney or involved connected family support, one can just get lost in the system and rot after the most petty arrest.
16
Somewhere along the way we forgot what real freedom is. We appear to have never understand the law of unintended consequences. It wouldn't surprise me if in a few hundred years the past hundred years (and perhaps some in our future) are referred to as the "second dark age."
We put a guy in jail for possession of seven shotgun shells? What is wrong with us? What happened to common sense and common decency? So many people are incarcerated because someone decided that we "don't want them doing that." Who gave us the right to decide what one can and can't do? I am not talking about violent crime. How can we have people in jail for selling or possessing marijuana when we openly sell (and advertise) alcohol? Why is there no "safety valve" for innocent people tangled up an a circumstance.
So many "crimes" would not exist if we handled things "upstream" properly. A truck driver trying to save his kid would have never happened if our health system worked right. How hard would it be to have every kid 18 or younger %100 covered by medicaid? Virtually nothing compared to the cost and suffering childhood illness causes.
Nicholas Kristof hit this on the head - "We also need to broaden the conversation about criminal justice reform." And "And if we invested more today in high-quality preschool programs for at-risk youngsters, we would have to worry less in 18 years about criminality."
69
I appreciate this column. It makes me think back, way back.
I remember that time before the mass incarceration--followed later by Governor Pete Wilson's 3 strikes you're out. It was also before some government programs were cut and others expanded--choices made by elected representatives of we the people. Back then, everything seemed to work okay. When the federal government financed and built the interstate highway system. Our neighborhood police officer greeted everyone by name and we, in turn, treated him with respect. Our schools supplied books, paper and pencils. Our teachers lived near school in our community. Graffiti was condemned as vandalism. The homeless were called hoboes. That period of time seemed okay to me, but I must have missed some clues. Because families began moving to suburbs. Businesses vacated downtown. Students started complaining and then demonstrating. Urban decay, blight, demolition, redevelopment, economic apartheid, inner city tensions, a crime wave. War in East Asia. So many problems.
Mass incarceration seemed to offer one solution--crime begets punishment. Instead, after so many years, it seems to have caused even more problems--punishment begets crime.
Thank you, Mr. Kristof, for making me think.
64
@mrarchiegoodwin
The interstate system was financed by the federal fuel excise tax. It was officially completed in 1993. The fuel tax was increased in 1994. The people who drove on the interstates paid to build the roads. After the roads were built, the drivers were charged even more and the collected taxes were diverted to other uses.
3
The number one cause of crime is...law. Crime is a malleable concept of our own choosing. No one comes down from Mt. Sinai with mandates about what conduct to criminalize and punish by incarceration. That's all on us. The highly venerated "crime rate" measure is within our power to alter whenever we choose. In large part, we defined ourselves into the current morass through our decisions about drugs and how to combat their use. And now, so many institutions depend on the current laws for their existence (what would police department budgets look like without the imperative to rid the streets of drugs by incarceration?), it is extremely difficult to alter the way the system works. Calls for change are driven by the impact of prisons on budgets, not by any principled doubts about what our incarceration rate does to society. We will see it this rationale will have the force to fundamentally alter the system.
31
A lack of common sense pervades all of this, because there is no sense in cruelty.
Prison and jail conditions are execrable. People leave prison traumatized and in shambles. No effort is made to educate, counsel, medicate, improve.
Sentencing is cruel. Almost all inmates will acknowledge their guilt but are baffled at the unreasonable charges assigned to their crimes and the resultant sentences, which are dependent upon prosecutors, and elections, not reason or justice.
Crime stems from educational failure and the inability for the impoverished to find work at even minimum wage: 75% of inmates are functionally illiterate.
America's answer?
Spending on prisons and jails has increased at 3x the funding for K-12 public education in the last 30 years, according to the Dept of Ed.
Americans would be less anxious and divided if we were not so fearful. We know that our cruelty to the impoverished and homeless, the inmate, and the sick, is the cruelty we will meet if we ourselves are in trouble.
Other wealthy nations live without this anxiety because they take care of one another.
64
How much did it cost us to take care of Dicky Joe Jackson -- including medical treatment -- for 20 years? And how much would it have cost us to provide a bone marrow transplant to save the life of his child?
How much does it cost us to incarcerate the poor schnooks who might never have been jailed if we'd spent it on them before they got into trouble?
48
Why don’t we start with the law itself? What kind of law sentences a man to life for transporting drugs? Incidentally, I could not care less that he did it for his son. The law is not about individual virtue but about proportionate punishment for specific crimes. If you sell drugs to help your family, you still have to go to prison - but not for life. Otherwise, what would be the just punishment for murder? Death under torture? So the laws have to be reformed. This said, it is important not to make the opposite mistake. In the 1990s crime rates were sky-high - and I am talking about violent crime: murder, assault, rape, robbery. Do you really want predators back out in the streets? The first duty of the government is to protect the law-abiding citizens, not to dispense cosmic justice. If a man kills because he had a difficult childhood, he is still a murderer and does not belong in society. Certain people cannot be rehabilitated. The question, of course, is how to distinguish predators from ordinary criminals. Here science and common sense should be deployed. Sob stories about sick children or hard luck are irrelevant.
17
I believe it is past time to reexamine all of the assumptions that underlie our long-held beliefs concerning criminal justice. The received, common wisdom is that ever longer, tougher sentences will deter crime because they will cause people to "think twice" before committing a crime. That notion might hold water if it were the case that would-be criminals undertake a careful cost-benefit analysis prior to committing their crimes. But most crimes are either crimes of passion or crimes of opportunity. In the case of crimes of passion, the crime occurs as the result of blind rage or fury., so there is no prior analysis that goes into it. And with most other crimes, by the time the perpetrator screws up the courage to commit it, he (or she) has already convinced himself he _won't_ get caught, so the threat of a harsher sentence is, in his mind, already a mute point.
Yet we cling to this deterrence theory despite clear evidence that it doesn't work. Why? Well, here's my theory:
There has been some neuro-scientific research in recent years that suggests that people derive a kind of endorphin rush when they see others harshly punished for something they believe is wrong. It could just be that many of us cling to the deterrence theory because, on some level, we find it deeply satisfying to see people being punished. Think about it: a rush of endorphins to the brain, and one that simultaneously confirms us in our own self-righteousness!
17
If you are going to honestly tackle this, spare the sob story about the good hearted meth dealer, not credible because there is a network of children's hospitals that would provide free care for any child for bone marrow transplantation without daddy trucking meth.
Face the hundreds of thousands of deaths from drugs and the drug trade, not because it is illegal but because it is the drug trade -- see California, where illegal trafficking of pot has increased with legalization.
Face the millions of lives imprisoned by violent street gangs and unparented children of druggie parents. I lived 20 years beind bars in John Lewis' district -- burglar bars, dashing from my front door to the car to avoid the violent social disorder.
My mostly minority neighbors demanded more incarceration of predators destroying their community. I dare you AND the people you love to live for one month the way they have been forced to live for decades while sheltered elites prattle on about so-called over-incarceration from safe neighborhoods and guarded workplaces like the Times.
It ain't overincarceration when he's crawling into your daughter's window. Or when the bullets hit your living room window and your neighbor's murder is destroying the value of the property you labored to afford.
I rarely see offenders going to prison for the first time without at least six serious priors. You do not research the full criminal history of the people you profile here.
Your narrative is built on lies.
28
How does all this begin? With the ginning up of fear of the others.
Nixon ginned up fear towards hippies smoking pot and Black Panthers being armed.
So we got an all out war on drugs.
I spent some time in those days in Denver County jail because I walked into some friends' house that was getting busted. Six of us hippies were arrested for one half ounce of pot and a half gram of hashish. Friday I went to a local store and purchased an amount equal to what sent me to jail. And it was taxed and that tax money is being used to upgrade schools, among other worthwhile projects.
When any politician seeks to gin up fear in you towards someone else; whether Muslims, African Americans, Mexicans, hippies, or pink elephants understand they do not have your best interests at heart.
29
Most of our long term incarcerated prison population consists of violent criminals (assault, robbery, and burglary) and drug trafficking (with the attendant violence against police and competitors). Non-violent criminals, who have committed white collar crimes or were convicted of possessing restricted drugs) do not comprise the bulk of our prison population, although our in-house sob sisters in bemoaning mass incarceration, appear deliberately to conflate both categories, weeping crocodile tears for the length of the sentences they are required to serve.
Regrettably, many of those now incarcerated, who have been convicted of violent crimes, are either recidivists or will, upon their release, will be in the near future. It's nice to have programs available for recently released prisoners. Some may even do some good. But staying out of jail is a project that recently released convicts are capable of accomplishing, by simply committing no further crimes. Ant-social behavior, if it results in criminal conduct, must be dealt with in a manner designed to protect the community from the depredations of wrongdoers. If it has to be mass incarceration, as the sob sister term it, so be it.
4
Here are the steps to reform:
Get rid of:
1. For-profit prisons.
2. Thug cops - dismissed and jailed for brutality.
3. Oppressive drug laws.
4. Republicans.
10
And not a single White man was locked up for the banking debacle.
15
Sorry but unless you can tell me that no one else’s child died from the “truckload” of meth, I don’t have much sympathy
10
First thing that has to change is the assumption all black men are criminals by nature of their skin colour. The mass incarceration of black people has been nothing short of apartheid.
10
My adopted, biracial son, at the ripe old age of 25, has a multi-page criminal record, thanks primarily to his use of meth & marijuana, his possession of drug paraphernalia, and his failures to “appear,” either in court or for a meeting with his PO. He has never committed a violent or even physically aggressive act in his life, and quite often his biggest transgression was being in the wrong place at the wrong time with, undeniably, the wrong people.
I don’t write here to excuse his actions, but I think the criminal justice system deals regularly with people who are quite like my son. He is not a menace to society. He is, rather, primarily a menace to himself. But the system makes it very difficult for someone like my son to dig himself out of the hole he admittedly started digging in the first place.
Once someone has a criminal record it becomes all but impossible to get a decent job, and very few reputable landlords will rent to “criminals.” So, the most fundamental needs are very difficult for people like my son to meet. And in North Carolina, people who have been imprisoned are ineligible to apply for assistance (aka: “food stamps”) for 30 days after their release. I was shocked to learn that such a senseless and mean-spirited policy even exists...and I can’t begin to explain why.
So, the ongoing and all but smothering institutional discouragement continues unabated, and meaningful encouragement and support is non-existent. Any wonder why recidivism is a problem?
13
What happened to Dicky Joe Jackson's son, Cole?
2
Control borders, put civics, discipline, experienced people as teachers in schools, and limit amounts of drugs that enter the country by decriminalizing use and you won’t have the large incarceration rate. Two major statistical drivers in the incarceration rate are blacks and illegals. Educate the former and deport the latter will also go a long way to mitigating the problem.
4
If we consider cause and effect along with circumstances and conditions, then but for luck go we all. No one chooses his parents, where they are born and under what circumstances. There are unfortunate lives and no one ultimately makes the life they got. We have certain interests and needs we didn't create. We don't get to decide what urge is the strongest. We didn't create our brains, our body or our situations. Taking away the myths around "free will" is the inroad to compassion for the less privileged. This would be the position to move from.
17
Excellent comment! Free will is the excuse for inflicting cruelty in so many areas of life. In the courtroom, a prisoner’s fate can rest on deciding how much of his behavior is the result of his free will, or if his life experiences or a medical condition subtracted from it. This, even thought we can't agree on exactly what free will is or how it could possible work.
Yet it's so fundamental to our ideas about religion, law, and fairness in ordinary life, that rejecting it is like yanking a Jenga block out of the bottom of the stack. It all starts to totter. Questioning it requires us to re-examine the workings of all our institutions and relationships. It's a concept that’s rarely challenged in public life, but advances in neuroscience keep eating away at it.
6
I'm surprised that this column doesn't also explore the connection between our huge incarceration rate and the simultaneous privatization of much of our prison system, which has turned much of what used to be a tool of the state into a for-profit enterprise within the private sector.
Until we create a financial disincentive to incarcerate so many of our people, this problem will continue, because love of money is behind practically every evil in our society.
65
Yes, mass incarceration was fueled by the war on drugs.
But it would seem that more fuel came from the power of money, BIG money, which seems is what America is really about now.
Once corporations could provide prisons, making serious money out of it, the prison population - and prison establishments have mushroomed.
12
Think of all the money spent imprisoning people.
Now think of money that could be spent on drug rehab, public education (that is getting defunded by the minute) including college education, safe affordable, housing, and healthcare.
What should our choice be?
34
Mr. Kristof has written the obituary of a failed state. A young man is sent to prison after trying to make money illegally in order to pay medical bills. This could only happen in America. The United States houses 25 percent of all the world’s prisoners and yet has only 5 percent of the world’s population. My best friend was killed in an American prison at the age of 27. I had already left America because I was unable to buy health insurance there. How long can America think that it has the right to tell other countries what they should do?
70
Our mass incarceration problem has always been about class warfare. And the wealthy have won.
30
By "wealthy", one presumes both businesses and individuals. Keeping millions of poorly educated poor alert citizens behind bars is profitable, and not only the prison industry and its suppliers. Other non related firms can and do hire (legal, one hopes) immigrants at a lower pay rate than they could or would for actual citizen employees. A sweet little win for a company's financials.
2
There aren't enough people in prison, and prison is too soft.
That's it? That's your poster boy? A meth-dealer? Putting him in prison, probably saved many from meth and prevented many more from being the victims of meth-addicts' crimes.
6
Let's remember that Hillary and Joe Biden were at the forefront in writing lock em up laws. "Tough on Crime!!" Slogan stolen from Newt Gingrich's Contract on America.
5
He didn’t do 20 years for trying to save his son’s life. He got 20 for transporting meth, lots of meth. This columnist plays so loosely with the facts that I can trust nothing that he writes.
In another article today, the Times shows cities with the highest murder rates in the world. Baltimore, St. Louis, and New Orleans are high on the list. No European cities are. Drug dealers are often violent. The violence was the reason many Black leaders were in favor of tougher laws when crack was king. Ask a Black mother living in the ghettos of Baltimore if she wants violent drug dealers locked up, for a very long time. For whatever reason, the current opioid epidemic involves considerably less violence than crack.
Homicide in Europe is so much less frequent than in the US. But homicides in rural areas, which are saturated with guns, are actually relatively low in the US. Guns are a problem, but guns are by no means the entire problem.
I don’t think we can blame the State for the fact that the murder rate amongst Blacks is seven times higher than any other group. And the vast, vast majority of Black people are not violence prone people. But the violent criminals, Black, White or Bright Green? Maybe jail is a good place for them.
6
Does Kristoff think that this was not by design?
#13thAmendment
After reading about Dicky Joe Jackson, it seems to me that William Barr should have written about the case for universal healthcare.
America needs to work very hard if it is to ever justify and actually earn the nomenclature it so proudly likes to use and call itself: The Land of the Free.
If America really is to succeed and own that trait and title without any doubt, fear or favour, then it must also be true to that other description it wants to live by and be seen as...
...the Home of the Brave.
Be Brave America and remake yourselves to be the Land of the Free.
Only you can do it ...if you make it in your hearts and minds...then it's in your hands to make it happen.
4
At 82, a long- retired Licensed Family Therapist, and Lutheran pastor, in gratitude to Mr. Kristof for his Service, I share an observing old quote of mine: “Sometimes thesanest reaction to an insane situation ...is Insanity. Here we, the People, are:
We are being under “Served” by a “President” who Lies for Convenience.....who could be diagnosed Sociopathic Personality Disorder...Having publicly displaying the full range of Symptoms.
Then, we add blatant tragic examples of tragic Life like this
Portrayal by Mr. K. We, the People, are under a devastating Shadow. With no more than a Voiceless Vote....I am a Sad
American.
Yes, and for much of our criminal justice system, corruption plays a huge roll. But, the most fearsome thing happening to me is the thousands of children and poor immigrants locked into what are really concentration camps. Some recent research shows that the cost to hold one person in one of these for profit camps is over $700 a day. Profiteering from abject misery finds its way into our economy.
I hold the amoral and ruthless GOP leadership, including Trump and his entire regime, responsible. But, millions voted for them. Trump even seems to be favoring punishing all dissidents somehow. The Fourth Reich? Gotta wonder.
4
A hundred smart men cannot undue the damage done by one foolish man/legislator/D.A/judge.
Q. is: what can be done now? Open prison gate to free all, who'll go back to society without skills or jobs, a place to call home?
"Criminal Justice" system; indeed criminal !
2
There is something completely upside down right now. I've see two recent articles about rape, kidnapping and sexual coercion and neither perpetrator got jail time...they were both white.
5
The candidate who was actually spied on was Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump, with the aid of Russian Counterintelligence, hacked into emails of the the DNC and passed that information to Julian Assange who gave it to Trump operatives. That information was used to manipulate Comey into declaring an investigation days before the election, there by shifting the outcome in favor of Trump. That is the very definition of an effective and successful spy operation. The use of clandestine state curated assets, useful idiots and operatives to achieve a political, strategic or tactical advantage in geopolitics.
Trump declaring victimhood in this debacle is the height of absurdist theater. As all playground bullies do, he accuses those he wants to bully the most of the exact crimes he’s committed as a means of shifting the focus and blame. This is classic criminal behavior, and there is no justifying it.
The FBI sending an agent or confidential informant to determine if a potential threat to the Republic is running for President is the FBI doing its job, whether it’s Goldwater or Trump. We should be grateful someone is willing to protect us from threats foreign and domestic, because it obvious Trump will not.
This column doesn’t talk about a central reason we have such an incarceration system—race. The police arrest blacks at much higher rates than whites for the same crimes. Juries convict blacks at much higher rates. Judges jail blacks at much higher rates.
Jail is basically about removing black men from society.
6
Prison was and still is the carefully carved colored exception to the 13th Amendment's abolition of slavery and involuntary servitude.
That is why American prisons are disproportionately aka 40% full of people colored like Ben Carson. Black people, who are only 13% of Americans, are persecuted for acting like white people do without any criminal justice consequences.
See " 13th" Ava DuVernay
6
For those interested in how even US states stack up against other countries if treated as stand alone ...still many multiples of the Imprisoned ...a bleak graph
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/global/2018.html
1
The Criminal Justice System is built upon two Factors : untouchable and unaccountable Police/Prosecutors and Money.
The less money you have, the mor likely you will be arrested, prosecuted and incarcerated, even while innocent. And, Money makes the world go round, and the revolving Prison doors open. Private prisons, “ special” Federal Grants, and a militarized Police Force : must keep the numbers UP. No wonder Most average people avoid the Police. Why tempt them ??? Huge numbers of Prisons are basically welfare/ Jobs programs for rural Whites.
Seriously.
3
We are insane. Everything about us is insane. 'The System' damages everyone except those at the top of the pile and they get treated as royalty who are above the Law.
As a child, I believed in the fairness of America. We are 'fair' to everyone, regardless of whether they are rich or poor. It was, was it not, the 'American Way'?
At 67, I know there never was an 'American Way' of fairness, justice for all, equal opportunity. That is a myth and I am tired of hearing the rah rah of patriotism. We fund our military at the expense of our children, we turn black people into criminals so the Private Prison System gets rich and the people all suffer - those in jail and those being taxed to keep them in jail.
Instead of funding prisons, why don't we fund pre-K for all? Give it a chance! What we're doing now is not working. And morally criminal.
5
If we had a proper health care system, Mr. Jackson would never have resorted to transporting meth.
17
The CJ system is rotten, top to bottom. What I didn't see in the article was a discussion of the potential ramifications of releasing hundreds of thousands of probably uneducated/unskilled people who have been in (violent) prisons in dehumanizing conditions for years into the community with minimal resources set aside to give them a chance at successful reentry. But of course that requires tax $, another NO NO.
6
This is simple to fix:
1) Give discretion back to Judges. Good Lord, these are some of our best people, give them our trust and quit treating them like children.
2) Legalize marijuana
3) Decriminalize possession of hard drugs and get the addicts into treatment.
4) Ban debtor’s prison.
12
What is it about Americans and our drugs? 5% of the worlds population using 60% of its drugs. By some estimates, 80% of the worlds opioids. Locking people up hasn't worked. Publishing statistics on how many people they kill and how they ruin lives hasn't worked. Rehab mostly fails. Information is ignored. Maybe it's like obesity. You can show people the statistics and if they still want to eat a "happy meal" you need to just get out of their way. perhaps the only solution is to let people destroy themselves and try to protect the larger society from the effects as much as possible. At some point you cannot protect people from themselves. You can call it a "disease", a character flaw, or anything else you want, but people are apprently going to do what they are going to do regardless of the consequences.
1
I’m always fascinated my government myopia. Those who lack the where with all to pay fines, and are imprisoned, cost the state money for each day of incarceration. If allowed to work off their fines, the state would save money, and those people would retain their jobs.
Inability to pay, followed by incarceration, is one of the most stupid programs employed by the states.
8
A guy back In my hometown - ironically called “Lucky” - was nabbed for selling weed, his third rather petty offense, and was sentenced to nine years in prison. Lucky was an upbeat and impulsive character, childlike, totally non-violent. Incarceration broke him. It was said he was repeatedly raped. He ended up homeless, a drunk no one would hire. He survived a hit-and-run accident. Then he just vanished, literally.
10
The 'War on Drugs' and its generals like Barr did more than imprison people: it disqualified these victims from voting, continuing our nation's generational tradition of voter disenfranchisement. How evil!
6
We are punitive, unforgiving people when it comes to punishing "criminals."
We allow folks like Donald Trump to skate free. I know, I know; he hasn't been charged with a crime. But I'm saying that, in America, if you're wealthy, you don't do time.
Edward Young and Dicky Joe Jackson are white men. They went to jail (Jackson's a free man today) but what about Young? Prosecutors need to investigate, not rush to judgment. And where are the judges who sentence these poor folks up the river?
Our judicial system is medieval in every way. Many in prison are being persecuted--as they were prosecuted--for being either black or poor. And the Attorney General, William Barr, pushes for even more draconian sentences.
The news media need to be out in front of stories like Mr. Young's. He has a wife and children and his punishment for being a good neighbor is to be smeared for the rest of his life as a criminal. Where are all the evangelical "Christians" who loudly proclaim their following in the Savior's footsteps without an ounce of compassion?
Richard Nixon's crime was far greater than most felons'. He conspired to defraud the United States after taking his sworn oath "to preserve protect and defend the Constitution. So help me, God." Gerald Ford pardoned him, but still, where is the justice that parallels the crime?
Most of the guys in prison are Jean Valjeans: stealing a loaf of bread to feed their families in time of famine. They're hunted down like killers.
This has to stop.
6
I first went to Family Court accompanying my daughter. What I saw while in the waiting room, were families resignedly waiting for legal help for hours and hours, or waiting for their names to be called for a court hearing. In the course of the following ten years, the judicial process turned out to be onerous and grinding, and shockingly capricious. And this was Family Court, not Criminal Court. When someone is criminally charged and becomes part of the legal justice system, they have entered a labyrinthine and frequently arbitrary system. It is a system in need of every manner of reform.
10
"Edward Young of Tennessee helped a widow sell her husband’s belongings; among them were seven shotgun shells, and Young put them aside so that children wouldn’t find them. Because Young had committed burglaries many years earlier, as a young man, it was illegal for him to possess any ammunition, even though he had no gun to go with it. So he was arrested and sentenced to 15 years in prison."
My God, what is wrong with us?
20
Kristof makes much of his roots in small town America. He is from a very small town, a few hours drive in Western Oregon from where I served for a quarter century as the elected prosecutor.
Kristof, who alternately embraces despot Kim Is Jung and Texas prison inmates, would have us believe both are just misunderstood.
Maybe he should really go back to his small town roots in Oregon.
Where woke social justice warriors are lining up (as is Kristoff) with the right wing opponents of meaningful law enforcement, the Koch Brothers-funded Group “Right on Crime.” The themes are the same; my friend/uncle/brother got a raw deal.
In Oregon, the place Kristoff says matters much to him, voter based reforms that dramatically cut violent crime are being reversed.
What Kristoff pushes is not reform. It is returning to childish and delusional thinking that ran amok in the 60s and 70s. Their claim is that a state like Oregon, who sends fewer inmates than any other save one to prison for drugs, a state that only imprisons a quarter of all felons, is engaging in “mass incarceration.”
Kristoff is not in touch with his roots.
He’s lost all connection.
5
For every Jean Valjean, a hundred Inspector Javerts seem to be relentlessly pursuing their madness.
7
For profit prisons are a national disgrace. The correlation between incarcerations, living conditions, programs that would assist inmates in gaining viable employment after their sentences are compromised. Out sourcing jobs to prisoners while failing to pay fair wages is immoral. Finally many states out source probation and many former inmates can not secure employment while obligated to pay fines and fees. All this contributes to recidivism while contrubuting profit for board members, shareholders, private equity firms. All of it is stunningly warped, immoral, unethical and generates a great deal of dirty money, pure insanity
13
People are saying "we need a centrist Democrat to beat Trump."
The move to lock up (mostly black and brown young male) people for drugs was certainly provoked and stoked by dog-whistling Republicans. But it only turned into harmful legislation when the Democrats embraced Republicans from across the aisle.
I'd say, well, if we go centrist, we'd better keep that dog on a tight leash. Its bark is nothing compared with its bite.
1
If the average voter knew enough about the quality of life in civilized countries, they would never vote for Republicans. It's plain ignorance, and the inhumane use it every chance they get.
11
No, I disagree.
Criminals belong in jail. We just have a disproportionate group of them here in the states so we have a higher prison population, it’s that simple.
5
@There
"Criminals" is a nice catch-all for you. But it comes down to who defines what a crime is and how it is defined. What if you define speeding as a crime requiring incarceration?
Your point about the US having a disproportionate group of "criminals" is a circular argument. Uncomfortable question: why does the US have more "criminals"?
5
No. it's not "that simple"! The system is very flawed, and is representative of our society in general. Poverty and people
of color are disproportionately represented in jails and prisons. White offenders are let off much more frequently and given lighter sentences. Money buys expensive lawyers who can more easily create ways to have their clients found not guilty. I was a social worker in a maximum security jail and I saw first hand how this works. I always remember a white young man who went to trial for murder and afterwards told me that he had just gotten away with murder. Meanwhile the black and brown young men were unable to afford lawyers, had to plead guilty regardless of their innocence ,and went to prison to serve a long sentence.
Of course this is not always the case but it is never just "that simple".
2
The rich get away with murder, but a minor mistake can put a poor person in prison for years. This is another consequence of income inequality.
17
Clearly we learned nothing from prohibition. When was the last time you heard of someone being incarcerated for selling alcohol?
6
@David C. Clarke.statistics. ~90,000 American dies every year from alcohol related causes.
1
Not only are too many people incarcerated, and for too long, but some legislatures have written laws in such a way as to encase sentences in prohibitions against parole, clemency, or pardon.
An example is the case of a man in Arizona who was convicted of possessing child pornography in 2003. The minimum allowable sentence was 10 years per count, and each image made a separate count, which meant sentences would be served consecutively. Since the prosecution presented 20 images, the man was sentenced irrevocably to 200 years in prison. The Supreme Court declined to review the case.
Child pornography is abhorrent. Every right-thinking person wants it stopped. Going after consumers and sharers is one way of striking at the business -- assuming that deterrence is possible with people driven by an uncontrollable impulse.
But even assured deterrent effect would not justify the modern equivalent of locking someone in a dungeon and throwing away the key. After all, the deterrence of every crime is implicitly desirable; and the logic of deterrence leads ultimately to the conclusion that every offender should be put to death outright. No, drawn and quartered.
In a civilized society, punishment fits the crime committed, not simply the dynamic of crime prevention. If we sentence a possessor of child pornography to death in prison, what is to be the punishment for torturing children or murdering them? Merely the same?
And how do we unravel history in a case like the one above?
15
All societies that class stratification as a defining feature develop a pattern of over incarceration. Autocracies are extreme examples, but oligarchies and plutocratic societies exhibit the same tendencies. When one segment of society shamelessly amasses the majority of wealth and resources at the expense of the under classes then their need for protection against crime born of dislocation and envy from below becomes a priority. Victorian England during the industrial revolution, the time of the Tzars, the French revolution, were all born out of extreme social stratification and repression. It is telling that the American golden age of the fifties was defined by social mobility and a widening middle class while the last fifty years has been characterized by the obscene widening of the wealth and income gap and all the defects that is associated with it.
We are now hamstrung by a complicit court system that doubles down on "law and order" zealotry become institutionalized and largely driven by the paranoid self interest of the insulated gated communities living in fear of the serfs. All the ills of our society can be traced to this existential dichotomy. Racism, social darwinism, nationalism, bloated military budgets, excessive use of the death penalty and relentless greed driving increasingly unregulated capitalism. We have normalized greed because it means more security and more distance from the scary under classes. An unfair justice system is merely a symptom.
15
Our criminal "justice" system is indeed broken - from the number of people incarcerated in the first place to the way they're treated while inside to the barriers to rejoining society they must face once they've ostensibly "completed" their sentence.
At some point, we are going to have to give up our thirst for punishment and revenge and revamp our system to one based on actually solving the problem, which is how best to assure that people pay some price for true wrongs committed but at the same time allows for healing the underlying issues that contributed to the crime being committed in the first place. People who commit crimes are still human beings, and most still have much they could contribute to society if only they are given a chance.
The first part - making sure a price is paid - is the easy part. Separating people from society at large is in and of itself a severe punishment. We have this down. But what we're quite bad at is restricting the length of this separation to something that is in actual proportion to the wrong committed, and providing conditions during the separation that positively impact the offender, rather than negatively.
Restricting access to fresh air and sunshine, taking away all privacy, and forcing inmates to consume a low quality diet that negatively impacts brain health (i.e., cognition, impulse control, and emotional regulation) runs completely contrary to what we should be hoping to achieve with incarceration in the first place.
12
I agree that the US incarceration rate seems like it is high, but of course that begs the question of exactly what should the rate be? I assume the incarceration rate affects the crime rate but I would question whether the relationship between the two is the same in the US as it is for other countries. The US has some unique attributes such as availability of firearms and a sky-high rate of hard drug usage (much higher than the EU) that would seem to have a big impact on crime rates.
Criminal justice is an emotional topic and is prone to politicians trying to out-do each other being tough on crime. It really should be amenable to a very rational, results oriented methodology. It is unfortunate that we make policy by the former rather than the latter.
4
More fundamental: The War on Drugs, we have discovered, is part of the Republican voter-suppression system and the Southern strategy, both aimed at the black minority as tending Democratic. We are now seeing the benefit of the right-wing's long game using this strategy, for at least the second time (since Gore would have won Florida easily if a million poor felons had not been denied the vote).
12
@Thomas Zaslavsky So allowing felons to direct the course of our elections is a good idea? I kind of don't think so.
2
Given the enormous racial disparity seen in our prison system, it must be acknowledged that there is a huge societal issue with blatant racism in our criminal justice system. We must return to the central reason for the preponderance of crime among the poor and disenfranchised. It is easy to sit on the outside and blame the victims who often are left with little choice. No one chooses to be poor, hungry, sick or poorly educated.
It is also the case that the rise in private for profit prisons has occurred during this mass incarceration epidemic. Causal or associated, not known, but which do you think? Is there money from owners of private prisons going to lawyers, judges, legislators?
3
I don’t think anyone is blaming the victims of crime, whether they are poor or rich, black or white.
1
@Wallace F Berman
Disparate outcomes, in and of themselves, do not prove racism.
A most excellent view of the American i justice system.
3
I wonder if the bien pensant ever think about the tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of lives saved from death or serious/painful disability because evildoers were incarcerated? Maybe that's why we have much lower crime rates than before we started getting tough on criminals?
2
@james The discussion here is not about violent criminals. No one in their right mind thinks that violent criminals should not been taken off the streets. It is about people being arrested and jailed for minor non-violent crimes.
2
@Tony Mendoza. It's not that simple. If your house is burglarized by someone looking to get drugs the "harmless" street corner drug dealer has to bear some of the responsibility. The crime associated with drug use and the other efforts on society : ruined families, jobs lost, health ruined have to be taken into account.
1
James,
The number is in the millions. Violent crimes (homicide, rape, robbery, and assault) numbered almost 2 million crimes per year in the early ‘90s and have declined to roughly 1.2 million violent crimes per year now, on a much larger population base (although such crimes are increasing the past few years).
So yes, spare them a thought. And for all the talk about class and racial disparities, note that the victims spared are disproportionately poor and black.
2
I recommend to Times readers Rex Murphy s opinion piece in Saturday s National Post of Canada regarding student attacks on Camille Paglia. My takeaway is per Ms Paglia s credo that life can be tough but as John McCain personified, ' worth the fighting for.' America s failure to recognize health care as a human right is a blight on your nation, and produces outcomes as described in this piece. America s constitution and way of life is otherwise flawed but also superior in some respects relative to other advanced nations. At the end of the day, it seems to me that living within the law is eminently possible in all advanced countries across all socio-economic circumstances if individual citizens make basic good life decisions and avoid falling prey to victimhood status as promoted in this piece.
Ah Fraser: Sitting here, reading the NYT from my safe and secure privileged perch, I couldn’t agree more. If only human beings weren’t so damn complicated and exercised some self- control!
1
As long as there are for profit prisons there will be mass incarceration period.
Our government is so corrupt that if a corporation can buy are vote to benefit themselves things will never change .
10
It is rather telling that the motivation of the governor of Mississippi to reduce the number of those incarcerated is to save money.
We live in a country where we want to reduce healthcare benefits, dumb down eduction, prevent access to both birth control and abortion, send jobs overseas, and give huge tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations.
In the meantime, millions of kids go to bed hungry, churches are expected to take care of the migrants, the homeless, and offer food banks.
The number of children with learning disabilities or mental health issues has increased over the years, likely due in part to environmental factors. Our current administration is doing its best to undermine the EPA and its oversight which guarantees more exposure to lead and other toxins.
So, I ask you, why are we surprised that we have so many people overflowing our prisons?
If only the concept of all life being precious extended beyond the birth canal! Then, our focus would be on ensuring that we feed the hungry, educate the children, heal the sick, and love one another. That would be redemptive and we might not need all these prisons.
9
I followed the link on Dicky Joe Jackson. Way before his son was born, he was committing drug crimes: transporting and selling. He was in jail for this when his son was born, before the cancer was discovered. He was a repeat offender. He claims "he never hurt anyone", but transporting and selling large quantities of meth is not victimless. Putting Dicky Joe Jackson in the can for life might not be a good policy for society, but let's not get all teary-eyed for someone all too willing to destroy other people's lives.
2
@David A. Liquor store clerks and bartenders and tobacco distributers destroy other people's lives repeatedly. Over and over. We don't lock them up for life.
2
"The best thing Trump has done so far..." Apparently the incredibly low unemployment rate across race/ gender isn't significant enough for Mr. Kristof?
3
Yup. The war on drugs has been ineffectual and a mistake. It's one of the many areas that Joe Biden has shown the poor judgement over the years that should disqualify him for President.
4
Those Clinton-era laws did save a lot of lives in cities and towns even as they filled jails.
It was too much done with too broad a brush, but the situation those laws were designed to solve was worse.
Minimal sentencing was the first solution to judges like the two cases in the news THIS WEEK where a teen was raped by a bus driver and another creep made a sex-slave of a teen for a year: NEITHER criminal will do any (more) time.
Make judges respect the law, and minimal sentencing can go away.
4
The private, for profit prison business is going gangbusters. New facilities are even being built. The only thing changing is that they are now being filled with immigrants. So trump is lauded for the First Step Act while at the same time lauded for his immigration policies. What a joke.
4
Mr. Kristof makes an emotional and seemingly compelling case, but the facts are not so clear. Yes, the US has an incarceration rate that is a multiple of other western nations. But we have a violent crime rate (homicide, rape, robbery, assault) that is a comparable multiple of other western nations.
Further, while many decry the effects of “mass incarceration”, broken windows policing, compstat and all the other crime fighting policies introduced in the mid 1990s, compare the change in crime rates that followed.
If violent crime had stayed at early 1990s rates, the aggregate number of ADDITIONAL homicides over the ensuing 25 years would be several hundreds of thousands higher. Rapes? Do the math. Perhaps a million avoided. You could populate a large city with people who would otherwise have been murdered or raped or violently robbed.
It sounds easy to reduce the prison population by releasing nonviolent offenders, but that low hanging fruit has been mostly picked. Consider that federal prisons, which house most drug offenders, comprise only 1/7th of the total jailed population. State prisons, with much larger populations, hold mostly violent offenders.
A few years ago, the NYT Upshot produced an article and interactive calculator to showed how hard it is to reduce the prison without releasing violent criminals.
Here it is:
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/12/upshot/how-to-cut-the-prison-population-see-for-yourself.html
3
The anecdotes about the abuses of poor, mostly male prisoners, by morally corrupt politicians, prosecutors, police and judges in our country are shocking and heart-breaking.
The criminal justice system in the United States is a disgrace, and our children and grandchildren will go to their graves thinking that their parents and grandparents – you and me -- were cruel and dishonest monsters.
Unless comprehensive prison reform at the federal, state and local levels is enacted and implemented quickly, our children and grandchildren will be right in their assessment of us.
4
Re Dicky Joe Jackson: One additional remedy for a tragic case like Mr. Jackson is some version of Medicare for All that would have covered his child. Canada's universal health care system at a minimum covers every citizen for the basics. Yes, there are wait times & lists. And it is costly. E.g. we pay a % on every litre of gas we buy and have a 13% Harmonized Sales Tax on just about everything we buy. But we don't have to worry about how we will pay for health care, especially re terminal or catastrophic illnesses (except the rare ones!).
5
The root of all evil is greed, the massive profits built into legal-penal industrial complex. Cops have productivity targets & commissions, the courts, legal business, private prisons (aka 21st century slave labor plantations) are grossly incentivized to keep alive the school to prison pipeline.
Policing for profits, planted evidence, sting ops just to steal people's money, cars in the name of 'asset forfeiture', hiring people to commit crimes, enticing innocents to make mistakes, entrapment are all common place now, esp in the poor areas. Such ops in wealthy suburbs will result in quick calls to the congressman or mayor's office, from the people who 'helped elect' them. When history is written, it will be noted that the downfall came not from lack of prayer, minorities, Hispanics, immigrants, terrorists etc but because of the way we treated our own people.
4
Mr Kristof,
I usually appreciate all your columns advocating for the marginalized, as this one...
Only editorial improvement: ending the private prison system is the quickest route to reversing this travesty and global embarrassment.
Last year, the FBI reports 1.5 M small pot possession arrests ...3x that of violent crimes.
See today’s companion piece on the step backwards in prosecuting Domestic Violence...
Priorities?
MLK was correct...we need a revolution of moral values.
5
Thank you for this article. The horrors of "civilized" western justice are just now coming out and are strong testamony for the urgent need for reform and application of wise and true justice. In terms of blame, I think we can confidently place that on the past 40 years descent into a more hate and racism based, ignorant, emotive conservative culture and government. We need a fair justice system, justice system reform that works and is fair to both criminals and society. It's possible, needed and should be a part of any just societies mandate.
3
Hats off to you, for exposing the cruelty and injustice of this system where the violence of poverty in committing 'crimes' is rewarded by years od incarceration, a radical departure of human chances for redemption... lost redemption of those politicians and judges that, being so full of themselves, dared to destroy the lives of so many folks, and their families, with no chance for recovery nor rehabilitation to rejoin their communities, and become participants in this adventure called democracy. Thus far, we have failed miserably. And the First Step Act, signed by sheer luck by a runaway narcissist, remains pitiful when you can count successes with the fingers of one hand (so to speak). We need a paradigm to do justice to our lack of conscience (that knows right from wrong); but for that to occur, we need a new breed of people aware of and dependent on solidarity as the binding chain to free our spirit. And no chain, however golden, can be stronger than it's weakest link, our indifference.
5
Every one of these prisoners chose to commit a crime. Every one either pled guilty or was convicted after trial. They victimized members of their own minority community. They did so through fear, violence, and by supplying drugs that devastated the lives of the families in their own neighborhoods.
If you looked out the window of your own home and saw someone committing a crime, would you call the cops and expect and hope that the criminal would be incarcerated, so that they wouldn’t be able to continue to commit crimes on your street, or other streets? Of course you would.
These convicts chose to commit a crime. They are imprisoned because of their own choice to victimize others.
5
@Stephen
And you're also outraged that America's investment bankers, oil executives and internet titans aren't currently serving 30 year sentences for repeatedly breaking the law, lying to Congress and violating prior agreements?
To broaden your perspective, you might forgo your unearned advantages, change your skin color and get yourself born into poverty. Then see how well you do avoiding arrest in one of America's more over-policed communities.
6
There are all in almost 2 million people incarcerated in the US, maybe it's too many, maybe it's too few, maybe it's just right. But the way to know is hard comprehensive research about recidivism, and comparing the success rates of alternative means of dealing with criminal behavior to imprisonment, etc. It isn't cherry picking the most absurd cases which would offend the conscience of the Marquis de Sade. Of course there are horribles examples in a system this big and there would be if there were a tenth as many people imprisoned. The plural of anecdote isn't data. And while we are at it let's stop trying to convince everything who lived through the 70's, 80, and 90's that there was no connection between increased imprisonment and decreased crime. You aren't convincing anyone. It doesn't need to be the complete story but people insisting there is no connection are the same ones who insisted back in the bad old days there was no way to reduce crime other than new massive social justice programs.
7
A litany of horror. I'd appreciate more information of how this came to be. I suspect that the greatest mistake of the past 50 years would be the growth of the Republican Party and the decline of progressive New Deal policies. Mass incarceration is one of the many catastrophes imposed on us by conservative ideologues. Failure to act on global warming is a pretty big mistake. Electing politicians who nominate conservative judges is another. Allowing Rupert Murdoch, et al, to wage a propaganda war against an honest, sane and humanitarian government. Mass incarceration is the result of even bigger mistakes. It did not happen in a vacuum. Maybe the biggest mistake of all is in the hands of the voter who did not vote.
12
i think one of the major factors leading to your country's unique and exceptional incarceration rates compared to that of all other western industrialized democracies is your pursuit quite frankly of economic success no matter the costs i.e.money. Come on people, America actually has a justice system that includes privately owned prisons where having more prisoners means making more money. But then this pursuit of monetary success enshrined in "The American Dream" is also responsible for your country's lack of universal health care, or any other progressive social change. What your country fears the most is any change that might endanger that pursuit.
15
The entire PD system needs a reset. In the Jean Val Jean case Kristof highlights here that would not have avoided conviction, but the truth is our system now is much like the old Aztec combat between a warrior with an obsidian sword facing a poor schmoo holding a feather. The outcome is preordained.
The current system allows the police/DAs spend as much (time & money) as they wish. Defendants go bankrupt, or take what the public dealmaker offers. There are no real combats, which is a reinforcing loop in favor of Prosecution.
How can a system where the "defender" has ten minutes before a hearing to try to read through a file, say for "attempting to murder" a cop (3,4, 0r 5 year felony, with a "strike"), and misses the fact that the "murder weapon" was a "wine glass" picked up by an officer set back to scene FIVE HOURS LATER. From a sink drying rack. (Misses, or with an eye to career, ignores. Also ignores that a door was busted through on a mysterious "phone call", leading to the target being pepper gassed in the face, arms pinned, until the canister sputtered empty. )
An equal contest requires equal resources. ALL PD's should be re-established to administer the hiring of PRIVATE DEFENSE ATTORNEYS, with PUBLIC FUNDS (yes, justice is not a rigged fight).
As to jail/prison. establish Single cell occupancy, cells lockable from inside (against fellow inmates). That should help push reducing populations inside, and the Supremes could order such on the basis of humanity today.
8
I oppose any solution that just opens the prison doors and lets people walk because we have to have incarceration rates equal to or less than those of Europe.
European countries send some of the most heinous criminals to minimum security prisons to spend a couple years on vacation- in some cases after having committed murder.
We need to reform our criminal justice system. It should be simple- commit a violent crime and you receive a very harsh sentence. Commit a non-violent crime and you can probably get a second chance. But this idea that there is some magical, acceptable, rate of incarceration is ludicrous- we should incarcerate those that have committed crimes. That is the only criteria by which to judge 'fairness'.
Or are we just a country based on the rule of law when it means we can attack Trump? It certainly doesn't seem to be anything people care about when poor people or illegal immigrants break the law- then it becomes a 'fairness ' issue. And 'fairness' issues are just another change for virtue signalling and moral posturing.
7
What is justice, and what actions are just, assuming careful consideration of circumstances, guidelines, and expectations?
Twenty years ago, I helped my mother move out of two farmhouses, two barns, two garages, and outbuildings. I absentmindedly pocketed ammunition that I came across in the odd place for much the same reason that Mr. Young set aside those shotgun shells. I'd know where they were, and could discard them properly.
This was in the morning. Later that day, I went to the County Courthouse with my mother, and it was when I emptied my pockets at the security gate that those rounds came to light along with my spare change. No harm intended, no harm done. No negative consequences. What Edward Young did was as good deed. What he got in return was not justice served, and no benefit to him or to society. It seems that society was a greater danger to him than he to it.
17
During the last presidential campaign, NPR carried an audio segment that had Bill Clinton (yes, Bill was speaking) answering hecklers in a crowd who were complaining about so called mass incarceration.
He answered back stating there were predators terrorizing residents in many neighborhoods. As someone who had escaped such an environment several years prior, I can say Bill Clinton was spot on.
Yeah, folks love their drugs but that's no justification for dealers, at all levels, to turn a modest neighborhood into a combat zone.
And Kristof, this isn't the same situation your faced back in rural Oregon.
11
@Jp Dealers turn modest neighborhoods into combat zones because drugs are illegal. Legalize and regulate them. No more combat zones.
4
We had the mind power to send a man to the moon several decades ago, but failed to understand how incarceration fails on so many counts. It is baffling and painful to see sacrificial acts as unlawful. Has our justice system lost its soul? Yes, Dickey had done a terrible thing. I guess the price of trying to save his son was 20 years of his life. Do we call that justice?
8
@NM: Mr. Kristoff's column didn't even speak of another abomination in our Private Prison System: solitary confinement which is torture and we use it all the time for all sorts of reasons and it is a sin to do so but yet we do. In our name, people are isolated from social contact for years, which is a spiritual death as we are social creatures. And we do it on purpose.
Sickening.
4
@NM And I might add, Dickey committed a crime because we made some drugs illegal and allow alcohol to be sold at gas stations.
2
I tried to be of assistance some years ago to a community group in Texas trying to get a shot...a least something...at justice for a man who was basically railroaded into life in prison without the possibility of parole or appeal. This guy was no angel. That's not the point. To fully understand "prison reform" we have to first accept that it is often not a matter of freeing the innocent but having balance between the offense committed and the punishment imposed. Furthermore, it becomes a question of whether, because of something someone did that was obviously wrong, we want to ruin that persons life.
In the Texas case, a man high on drugs was being arrested by police. He had a needle in his hand, taking a swing at two officers and hitting at least one. This was serious, but did he need to go to prison for life? He was charged and tired separately for each case. With a barely prepared lawyer, he was offered "a deal": plead guilty but give up any chance of appeal. No decent lawyer would have allowed him to take such a plea. The judge was a former prosecutor, obviously someone with his alliances bent against the accused.
I blame local television news, where I once worked, for some of the effort to "lock them up and throw away the key". The late newscasts across the country filled up with crime stories, many of them horribly violent and extreme. This was something local news could cover and the result was an excessive fear of what was happening in their communities.
5
@Doug Terry: I stopped watching local news because it was all about crime. Even now, every day, in my small city area, crime, crime, crime. And these aren't all serious crimes. They are petty crimes, a bank robbed of $500, a break-in where nobody was hurt, etc. And yet the perpetrators of these crimes will get longer sentences than the bankers (who got none) for destroying our economy because of their greed. Steal a trillion dollars and keep on living the good life. Steal $500 and go to prison for ten years.
10
@sophia
Excellent points. The weak and the poor get slammed the hardest again and again. I might suggest, also, that you call one or more of your local television news departments (speak to the News Director) and tell them you are fed up with constant crime news.
3
I do agree that the sentence of Dickey Joe Jackson was too long. What is being glossed over by Mr. Kristof is the possibility that people died or had their lives ruined as the result of Mr. Jackson’s Meth dealings.
Mass incarceration is a travesty of justice in this country, and was and is a myopic approach to managing crime.
Using Dickey Joe Jackson as the poster boy is not helpful.
8
@Paul
I am now a retired 74 year old Vietnam Veteran who worked in three of Ohio's prisons to get a retirement. While I met inmates who got a harsh sentence, many are guilty of never accepting responsibility for where they put themselves in life by making bad decisions that harm not only others but themselves as well.
A lot of inmates still don't ask themselves and probably never will: "Is where you are now worth where you put yourself?"
6
@Paul Then maybe we should make him a poster boy for our deplorable health care system instead. That he would have to commit a crime in order to obtain health care for his 2 year old son is beyond disgusting. And the cruelty of our unjustice system will be perpetuated now that he is out of prison: he will be ineligible for any social welfare because he's a felon. And we wonder why the door revolves.
2
@Paul to put someone in prison for life for drug dealing is monstrous. If you tell this story to an European, he would think you’re joking. Only an American would come up with this idea.
Thank you for keeping this issue in the public eye, though I suppose it's the public that has in many ways contributed to mass incarceration. No politician gets elected based on how thoughtful he is about criminals. And yet, if we were serious about public safety, being thoughtful about criminals is precisely what's required. Prison is a symptom of deeper problems and the longer someone stays in prison, the more entrenched the problems become. When people hear the 30 second soundbite on the news--22 year old is sentenced to ten years for illegal possession of a gun and a kilo of cocaine--they rarely think of what will happen when he gets out. And virtually everyone eventually does come home, to a neighborhood near you. Trying to get a life that was off the rails at 22, back on track after being indelibly damaged by a decade of incarceration, is nigh onto impossible, yet some manage to do it when they have sufficient supports. The answer is that those supports need to happen before prison looms larger and larger in someone's future. We need to be fearlessly innovative about alternatives to a punitive system that mainly benefits people in rural areas depending on good paying prison jobs. We need to separate true sociopaths from the vast majority of people sentenced to prison. We need to get past the idea that punishment will change behavior, much as the idea of "getting what they deserve" seems to be at the heart of criminal justice policy.
13
Mr. Kristof, Governor Bryant's efforts have saved Mississippians 46 Million dollars only if none of the prisoners released has committed another crime. As long as none of the released prisoners committed a murder, or a manslaughter, or rape, or an assault, or a burglary, then yes his work has been successful. But if even one of those things has happened, then you have to start diminishing the amount saved. For instance, if one of them murders someone, then the amount saved is actually -46 Billion.
2
The drug war began circa 1970, but the incarceration rate didn’t really start increasing until the 1980’s, with the new sentencing laws supported by Strom Thurmond and Joe Biden.
The incarceration rate really skyrocketed with the 1994 Clinton Crime Bill, co-sponsored by Joe Biden, as it became the gold standard for states to emulate.
The Republicans were delighted to let the Democrats initiate war against the American people, but no one should be confused: the Democrats have more responsibility for this war than the Republicans.
And it is the Republicans who are out front trying to begin unwinding this catastrophe, not out of concern for the people, but because they don’t want to pay for it.
The Democrats count on union votes, and millions of people are making a good living as guards, court personnel, probation and parole, etc...
Most significant of all, the trial lawyers association has undue influence over the Democratic Party, and they depend on that feeding trough, which means they can’t sit by and let the parade of defendants diminish too much.
America has devolved into a predator versus prey nation.
If you don’t have a seat at the table, you’re on the menu.
This is playing a significant role in fraying the bonds that make a successful society possible.
Neoliberalism has done irreparable damage to our country.
21
@Annie Gramson Hill
Republicans voted for the laws you blame en masse. Both parties share blame for this situation.
Republicans are doing little to nothing to fix this. The latest federal law was a bipartisan affair and affects few people
There's been an astounding drop in the number of serious crimes committed per 1,000 Americans since the early- and mid-1970s...the period during which this incarceration trend has been occurring. Wonder if there's a connection between the two? Check the data, recall what life was like some 50 years ago and ask yourself whether perhaps, just perhaps, there has been an unmentioned positive payoff for this policy.
4
@JPE -- Actually, violent crime peaked in 1991 in this country, and was already on the decline when the infamous 1994 crime bill was passed.
There has been research conducted on the question of whether, and to what extent, mass incarceration has been responsible for the reduction in crime rates. That research has concluded that other factors -- e.g., the aging of the population, increased wages, increased employment, increased graduation rates, increased consumer confidence, increased law enforcement personnel, and changes in policing strategies -- taken together are a far more likely explanation.
https://www.vera.org/publications/for-the-record-prison-paradox-incarceration-not-safer
16
Actually, that seems not quite true. Violent crime peaked in 1992, and 1993 was higher than 1991. The difference between all those years is small, and 1991-1993 could all be taken together as a comparable base.
The decline really began in 1994 and of course continued more or less steadily until just recently.
Interestingly, during this period, we saw two significant recessions—including the worst economic downturn since the Depression, increasing inequality, a declining labor force participation rate, and a significant increase in firearms in aggregate and per capital. All this suggests that crime should rise. While the median age has increased over this period, a mitigating trend, the absolute number of people in the high crime 15-24 age group has increased.
Advocacy groups have an agenda, and spin their analysis accordingly.
Some data is here:
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
1
I couldn't help but wonder if the boy who needed a costly bone marrow transplant survived after his father, in desperation did wrong for love and concern for his son.
Incarcerating wrongdoers for whatever reason is meant to be a deterrent but far too many are denied their freedom, as a matter of course, for seemingly minor infractions, which is egregious in itself. A good model for all prisons to adopt is what Norway has achieved for the rehabilitation of prisoners, a system which they said has reduced recidivism. The inmates are shown respect and "housed" in what most would think luxury accomodation but most importantly treating them as normal people albeit minus temporary freedom. That in itself is bound to also benefit them psychologically in the long run. Quite a contrast to Sheriff Arpaio's cruel inhumane treatment he meted out to prisoners for which tRump pardoned him!!
20
Again Kristof shows how humane he is. He cares, where politicians too often do not , issues which other writers avoid. Barr's 1992 report asking for more incarceration is revealing about the troubling nature of Barr's approach to governing. In the past, Republicans , I believe, have been in the forefront of making conditions harsh and life hard for the poor who do not toe the line.Theirs is not justice tempered with mercy--but rather with justice that takes only mercenary factors into account--putting away the most at lowest cost. Get them out of the way; dehumanize them; take away their vote. Don't prepare them to lead more productive lives---just keep them locked up for as long as possible. It's a hopeful sign that even Republicans are beginning to see the light--as Kristof shows, even Trump--that we are all better off if these unfortunates , who have been dealt a bad hand by fate or God--are treated better and set on a straighter path.
8
Why has America's crime rate declined dramatic during the past three decades?
The primary answer: we've been locking up the criminals.
7
@Truth without Hypocrisy Don't forget that the end of the baby boom had something to do with it.
3
@Truth without Hypocrisy Crime peaked in 1991, prior to the 1994 crime bill being passed.
@Truth without Hypocrisy
The authors of Freakonomics make a compelling case that the reduction in crime has to do with increased abortions.
1
The question Kristof might analyze in a column --- what do European countries do differently so that their incarceration rates are so much lower than US? Explain their policies and attitudes on criminal justice. Explain why we have more police shooting of unarmed people.
And are there any lawyers or organizations trying to reduce the abusive 15 year sentence of the man imprisoned for possessing shotgun shells, due to his prior record? How did anyone find out he had them?
And instead of the '70s, wasn't it the '90s crime bill that increased prisons, and prisoners, pushed by agreement of the GOP and Dem Pres Clinton?
An informative overview of this is:
"Clinton crime bill: Why is it so controversial?"
BBC News Magazine, 18 April 2016.
It affected Hillary's 2016 campaign. She admitted the 1994 bill went too far, and aimed to reduce mass incarceration.
Should be a big issue for 2020.
11
None violent criminals should not be jailed awaiting trial. I can think of few non-violent crimes that should result in prison time.
5
Unquestionably the American system of justice is unjust. As a courtroom lawyer, I've blogged about that problem for years. It's well past time to fix the system.
36
Long prison sentences for drug were enthusiastically championed by African-American leaders during the crack epidemic. It was an attempt to solve a serious problem that mostly affected black communities, not some malicious conspiracy to imprison minorities for no good reason.
More young men of color ended up behind bars and the crime rate went down. It is disingenuous to claim there is no relation between the two phenomena when every crime statistic implies otherwise.
6
@Z97 coincidence or causality? It matters. The majority of social science research and data demonstrate that mass incarceration doesn't lower crime.
4
@C. Hammer Is that because incarcerated criminals commit just as many crimes as criminals out on the street?
Or is it because we only incarcerate non-criminals? Or is it because if we incarcerate a criminal, his/her Mom or other family members do the burglaries, rapes, murders, staying open for business so to speak? What is the theory?
Social science research is highly suspect because of the professors' need to get published and therefore present findings that confirm the existing establishment biases. Note that 75% of findings in social psychology could not be replicated and the remaining 25% had effects about half of what was reported. So don't be too trustful of what tenure seeking profs are reporting to you. Throw in a bit of common sense too and, if I may say so, some skepticism.
Meanwhile, I hope that bipartisan efforts to fix our out of control justice system will continue.
6
Mass release from prisons will surely be good for the prisoners. But you can’t intelligently debate the issue without considering whether it wii be good for the rest of us. Will it reunite families? Will it release budget money for better causes? Will it increase the crime rate? And, if so, will it break neighborhoods that are already high crime?
The War on Drugs was not well thought out. The call for an armistice is not well thought out either.
5
In states that have made recreational marijuana legal, why not release those who have been incarcerated for possession/use of marijuana? That would be one step in the right direction.
20
In America you get the best justice money can buy. In America we don't believe in rehabilitation for criminals. We don't believe that they can be rehabilitated, learn to be productive citizens, or deserve to be forgiven. If they are rich it's a different story. If they are white and rich it's a different story. But if you are poor, African American, or just plain "weird" you can look forward to being suspected of being guilty even when you didn't do a thing. Look at the line Trump pushed about all immigrants even before he became president.
21
@hen3ry
Most prosecutors don’t get many trials against wealthy white defendants. And when they do, they tend to try harder. Criminal lawyers are extremely competitive. And they really want to win those high dollar cases.
Been there, done that.
2
It is interesting how a democracy such as the US, who shouts the loudest about human rights and freedom, locks away more of its citizens than almost any other country. One can argue that crime is many-fold more prevalent in the US than other developed nations, but this too is a result of its political system. The legal, education and healthcare systems are rigged against the poor and the minorities. So what is the difference between this and the so called autocracies ? A powerful group of elites protecting their own interests by robbing the poor and minorities of their opportunities. The means to do that might be different, but the result is the same.
24
More than 20 years; I was a broke college who worked 40 hrs a week in the evening while attending classes during the day. I drove an absolute clunker of a car - a rusted 20 year old Honda Civic that i bought for 900 bucks.
Once night after finishing work at a restaurant; I was driving home when i got pulled over for doing 65 on a 50 mph road. The cops had set up a speed trap and team of 5 officers were pulling over cars. I waved by an officer to pull over and a red corvette that just passed me doing about 80 mph was also pulled over. The lady in the red corvette was a young attractive blond. After the routine checking ; i was given a speeding ticket that cost about $200 - my entire paycheck for the week.
I take my ticket and proceed on my way. About a mile down the road, i stop at a dunkin donuts for a coffee and who do i see there - the young blond in the red corvette.
We commiserated about our mutual speed trap experience. She bragged about how she was so scared she was going to get a DUI because she had been drinking all night, but was able to talk her way out of it. I on the other hand was wondering how i was going to pay the fine.
She offered me her sympathies on her way out.
My point is that we have either intentionally or unintentionally created a system that preys on the weakest most vulnerable people in our society. Entire small towns and communities use traffic tickets, parking tickets, etc to fund their municipal budget.
90
@Matt Phil Preying on the poorest, who in American society equal the weakest, is absolutely intentional. The weak do not have the means to fight back. Even the IRS is in this game. It's far easier to go after a poor person of color in a rural area for abusing the Earned Income Credit, than to go after a hedge fund manager for more sophisticated abuses when the high income person is represented by legions of tax lawyers, for instance. And it is far easier for the elected local prosecutor to get convictions when the accused lacks means and education for defense.
11
@Matt Phil
I've been driving in the U.S. and Europe for more than 60 years and have never had a moving violation. Never been preyed on by the IRS, either.
No matter how weak or vulnerable people in our society are, they are just as responsible for their actions as the strong and mighty. No?
2
Violent crime decreased drastically after the 1990's increased incarceration rate.
Americans cannot decide whether the criminal justice system should punish or rehabilitate. It therefore does neither very well.
Most prisoners are in state rather than federal custody. It's a puzzlement that federal aid in the form of Pell grants should be diverted from students who are from low income households to state prisoners. Why wouldn't the states fund community colleges to offer remedial education to those their public education had failed, and set up cooperative programs with labor shortages to train prisoners for jobs post release, rather than have the federal government from afar make grants to enable colleges to raise tuition. [For every dollar in federal aid to colleges, tuition increases $0.60.]
9
When you want to know why a problem exists, look to who benefits from that problem.
Those who benefit from the problem of mass incarceration are those who have invested in private prisons.
54
You are right that people who invested in private prisons benefit from mass incarceration. But it does not necessarily follow that they are the ones who created the problem. This is the "cui bono?" ("who benefits?") logical fallacy. It can lead people to believe in conspiracy theories as primary causes of far more complex issues.
6
@A Stor mo Chroi
False. Private prisons as an industry is small compared to public prisons, and private prisons are non-existent in many states. The rise of incarceration predates private privates, which are a relatively recent development as a cost-saving measure. Public prison guard unions spend far more on lobbying than private prison companies.
The real beneficiaries of prison are law-abiding citizens, minorities in particular, who enjoy fewer drugs, safer streets and less violence.
3
I suspect that there is a simple fact at the bottom of this nonsensical "system": If each of us were thoroughly investigated in all aspects of our lives, the vast majority could be charged and sentenced for something. The extent and complexity of modern law is too vast, and humans in general are too ignorant, too incautious and, yes, too lawless, for most of us not to have committed some legal peccadillo somewhere along the way.
The upshot of this is that being caught, charged, prosecuted and sentenced for crime is largely a factor of whether in one's daily life one comes "in the way of" law enforcement agents. Those who tend to be suspected and investigated will make the majority of those charged and convicted. The fact that most of us get away with most of our trivial infractions is what we call "the benefit of the doubt" or, in modern parlance, "privilege".
As with career success, our assumed innocence before the law is more a matter of the determining structure of our social environment and sheer good luck rather than actual innocence or virtue.
4
With a smaller labor pool and a government committed to reducing immigration of any sort, the need for cheap labor will smooth the path for decreasing incarceration rates.
7
The responsibility for personal morality has been removed from the individual and given to the spirit world. Making normal human behavior subject to inhuman laws only destroys humanity.
If Mr Barr has more than a limited view of his fellow citizenry he must know he is wrong in even considering the role he is now playing, but my sense is he like so many who seek and obtain high office have a very severe case of political myopia.
it is difficult to think I was raised in a large city and attended parochial school with others who perceive the same world so differently.
This column is always open and honest, a breath of clean unfiltered air
10
Continual feeding of the prison-industrial complex is big business and it is a hungry beast. The focus needs to be shifted from locking people up to studying why so many end up incarcerated. I am sure that leniency and social programs to help those on a trajectory toward incarceration would be far less costly and save lives. I just read about a group of people in Ajo, Arizona, who go out into the desert leaving water and supplies for those migrating north. These humanitarians have actually been jailed for the crime of caring about their fellow human beings. We must move beyond this as we become a rapacious monster killing the souls of our fellow citizens. It just makes me cry.
50
A contributing factor to the number of people who are incarcerated is the reliance on for profit prisons. Think about it, corporations profit according to the number of people they are servicing. This might be a factor in people being denied parole, and also in the reduction in rehabilitation services being offered to those who are incarcerated. The corporations may be more concerned with the bottom line than with rehabilitation.
37
@Gloria
Not only companies but also sheriffs profit from incarceration in some states.
8
We need an objective analysis of why we have such a large, permanent, often violent, criminal population and why so many areas of so many cities are dangerous places. The study should include the recidivist rate and what produces it.
7
Happy Birthday, Nick! I agree with all you say about our justice system. The sad part is it may get better, but, not for justice, but simply to save money. It is too bad that this country is so focused on the Almighty $, we don't think enough about what is morally right or wrong. I like in Kansas, and the fight over expanding Medicaid is all about the money. There is enough money to give huge taxbreaks to the wealthy, but not enough to help the poor get some form of health care. Sad.
35
@Council
Obamacare funneled at least $1.3 trillion in extra profits to big medicine, and Americans are not getting better or more medical care. But CEOs of charity hospitals have gotten big pay raises.
Those big charity hospitals, now even more wealthy, have managed to get those newly insured by Medicaid into managed care plans that are out-of-network for their lovely hospitals. They reduced the need for cost shifting but increased prices anyway.
The push for expanding Medicaid in Kansas is all about the money. The prosperous hospitals want the uninsured to get Medicaid so they can ship them to the politically unconnected hospitals that serve a high proportion of the uninsured and Medicaid patients.
Healthcare has become more bifurcated since the federal government took over, with waiting lines at the profitable hospitals getting shorter and the wealthy and well insured don't have to rub shoulders with poor people. The poor people, with their free Medicaid are jammed in poor hospitals.
Under Democrat control, the rich get richer.
2
@ebmem "Under Democrat control, the rich get richer"...........non sequitur
1
My son, an assistant manager at a discount store, sat in his car after his shift was over, eating an ice cream bar. A sheriff's deputy told him drug dealers were using that parking lot and asked if he could search the car. My son, a college graduate familiar with the law, did not give the deputy permission. When he was asked his name, the deputy misspelled it and could not find him as owner of his car. He was then charged with resisting arrest for mispronouncing his name. The car was searched while my son sat in the rear of the deputy's vehicle in handcuffs. The deputy found one marijuana cigarette and two pills. The pills were a prescription antacid, but he was charged with possession of Ecstacy. That charge was later amended to possession of a prescription drug without a written prescription. The prosecutor offered him a deal: a year of community service, a fine, probation for a year, and two misdemeanor charges. If he refused, he would be charged with a felony for the antacid. My son spent two days in jail, lost his job, has a criminal record and is in the process of losing his house.
269
This is a heartbreaking situation. We live in a police state that encourages brutality, physical and otherwise. Police forces around the country are not staffed with the best and brightest. Prosecutors are rewarded for convictions rather than for seeking just solutions that comport with common sense.
27
@Jay
Jay, this is a horror story. I'm so sorry for your son and for you. I hope there is some remedy that will become available to right such a terrible wrong. At the very least, our legislature in Florida should take heed of New York's program that -- with provisions and requirements -- allows people convicted of non-capital crimes to wipe the slate clean. Your son deserves no less.
16
@Jay
The "war on drugs" has enabled, even encouraged, an untold amount of unethical and unnecessary policing and fueled the incarceration binge.
10
I'm very skeptical of the extent to which mass incarceration, as opposed to crime, is a serious problem in the US. I'll briefly explain why.
Mr. Kristof's article links to the following source: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/global/2018.html. So I'm going to assume that it is a legitimate source, definitely acceptable to someone who views mass incarceration as a serious problem.
According to this source, the US incarcerates 698 people per 100,000, whereas the UK--a similarly developed and democratic nation--incarcerates only 138. So, doing the math, the rate of incarceration in the US is just over five times that of the UK. Naturally, this looks like runaway incarceration in the US.
However, the violent crime rate in the US is undoubtedly many times higher than that in the UK. For instance, the rate of intentional homicide in the US is 5.0 people per 100,000, whereas it is only 1.1 in England & Wales, where over 85% of UK residents live. So, in short, the murder rate in the US is roughly four and a half times greater than in England.
Bearing this in mind, a US incarceration rate five times higher than that of the UK doesn't seem terribly excessive. It's the rate of violent crime in the US that does.
So what am I missing here? If the violent crime rate in the US is four or five times higher than in other developed nations, shouldn't its incarceration rate be four or five times higher?
20
@Dave -
It's a fair question, but are you making an apples-to-apples comparison? The statistics you cite are with regards to violent crime, but how does our proportion of drug criminals compare to that of other countries?
I don't claim to know the numbers, but the general thrust of a lot of reporting in this area is that we have many people put away for a very long time for minor drug possession and use compared to other advanced countries. I think the question is whether or not our incarceration rates for that category of crimes is inline with what we see in other countries, especially when treatment and rehabilitation are probably cheaper and more effective ways to deal with those criminals.
22
@Cristobal
After sentences for crimes were increased in the 1990's, by the federal and state governments, the rate of violent crime diminished drastically.
[BTW, I'm in favor of modifying the criminal justice system.]
Something else happened when the penalties increased, which was an expansion of plea bargaining. It seems likely to me that there were people charged with violent crimes who were allowed to plead to lesser charges because of the threat of a longer sentence. The prosecutors settled for a 5-15 year sentence because it was a sure thing rather than a possibility of acquittal. There were also plea bargains in exchange for testifying against someone higher in the food chain.
We likely have innocent/minor offenders unjustifiably over-sentenced and bad guys under-sentenced. The examples cited are anecdotal. The statistics are unreliable.
There isn't a simple solution, but in my opinion, solutions are much more likely to be effective if they are local solutions rather than having the federal government throw money that will be ineffectively utilized.
2
@Dave perhaps the gun control laws have something to do with the discrepancy?
3
Another piece of blowback from this mass incarceration is what we'll have to do with all the people who are employed in this system. I recently visited with a friend's relatives in a medium sized town in a rural area here in California, and a huge percentage of the town is employed at the nearby prison. If and when we're able to cut down on the number of folks we throw behind bars, there will be an equal number of others who will no longer have a job.
5
Maybe we can put people to work rebuilding our infrastructure. It is a more positive contribution for both former guards and former prisoners.
15
William F Buckley, Jr. in the National Review in 1996:
"I have not spoken of the cost to our society of the astonishing legal weapons available now to our policemen and prosecutors; of the penalty of forfeiture of one's home and property for violation of laws which, though designed to advance the war against drugs, could legally be used -- I am told by learned counsel -- as penalties for the neglect of one's pets. I leave it at this, that it is outrageous to live in a society whose laws tolerate sending young people to life in prison because they grew, or distributed, a dozen ounces of marijuana. I would hope that the good offices your vital profession would mobilize at least to protest such excesses of wartime zeal, the legal equivalent of a My Lai massacre. And perhaps proceed to recommend the legalization of the sale of most drugs, except to minors."
49
It's not just the number of people we lock up, it's the way they're treated behind bars. Joe Arpaio's claim to fame was putting prisoners in tents in hundred degree weather and making them wear pink underwear. Conservatives around the country danced for joy - "If you don't like it, don't commit the crime!" became the punch line of any discussion about human rights abuses.
The other problem is of course the reflection of our enormous wealth disparity in our "injustice" system - if you're extremely wealthy, you can just about get away with murder. If you're poor, as you've pointed out, you face serious consequences just for not being able to pay a fine - much less commit a non-violent offense.
As the saying goes, that's messed up.
I still say that components of our culture - schools, jails, politics - these are all reflections of who we are. Sadly, our jails probably are an accurate reflection of what we believe, and how we view others who have made poor decisions.
So, maybe if we want to change our criminal justice system, the place to start is in the mirror.
80
@TL Mischler
Robert Durst has, a couple of times. He is on trial again for another murder - hopefully he won't get away with it again.
2
The case you mention with the trucker who was trafficking meth to earn money to save his son presents tough moral questions.
I also believe some consideration is in order. Regarding his motivations, he's in a far different category than most drug traffickers. Life in prison feels far too extreme, and it's a shame if judges don't have discretion in these matters.
That being said, this was meth he was moving - one of the most addictive substances on the market. Is saving his son worth addicting (and likely killing) several other people that were ultimately going to receive his payload? There are family members of the users to consider: If my child were in trouble with meth, I would want justice and would not be satisfied if the traffickers involved did not receive significant sentences. Life in prison might not seem too severe.
As a private citizen whose family is not involved in drug trade or use, my passions might not lead me to demand life in prison. However, I would definitely say that many, many years are in order.
The real dilemmas that I see regarding the intersection of prison and drugs involve people receiving many years simply for possession of small amounts of marijuana, or less harmful drugs. I wish that you had focused on one of those examples, instead.
15
@Cristobal If my son was using drugs, I would be looking for available treatment as the war on drugs has not made a dent on the availability of drugs. No users no drug traffickers. Why does the US has such an appetite for addictive legal and illegal drugs?
13
@Cristobal
NEarly everyone jailed for weed was a full-time trafficker dealing in large amounts. We are not talking, by and large, about street-corner kids paying the rent.
5
@Cristobal
When I treated substance abusers, I never once heard of a single person quit using because of lack of availability or a price spike created by even large record setting interdiction. Not once. No matter how big the bust. No matter how long the sentence. The only real “bust” is that the war on drugs is a bust.
Meth is highly addictive, but only if it is used. No one makes us or our children use drugs. The user creates addiction by choosing to use while not yet addicted. I am my children are not addicted because we never used. The user creates the market.
13
I was so sorry to see you were not included in Time's 100 most influential people. You continue to do such good courageous work. First, we should legalize drugs. It has worked in other countries. We should try something different. Thanks for the work you do.
16
I wonder about the economics of mass incarceration versus job training programs. We certainly know that early education reduces the chances of later incarceration and therefore saves multiple times the amount invested. Shorter sentences would cost less, and the money saved could be used for real and substantial training and prevention activities.
One could only hope that an economic argument would win over the puritanical one that has lead us to the morass of mass incarceration.
13
@HN
We know that the 40 plus federal job training programs are ineffective at getting the trainees hired to jobs. They keep state training bureaucrats employed, but typically train workers for the jobs that were available ten years ago.
Make the rehabilitation and training of the 90% of prisoners in state custody a state responsibility. Block grant 50% of what the federal government is currently granting to the states for specific training programs and let the states figure it out. Reduce the federal programs down to a few monitors that can identify the effective state and local programs and communicate best practices to the states.
I agree that our drug laws are a ridiculous system of Puritan, "if it feels good it must be wrong" nanny statism. However, they are what they are, and until they are changed they must be obeyed.
However, regarding mass incarceration in general, look at NYC before the era of it. In 1976, 2,383 arrests were made for prostitution citywide. Of these, 1,165 were girls between the ages of 15 and 20. By 1990, the annual homicides in New York peaked at 2,245.
The streets of New York have become so much safer with more of the bad actors in prison. Are those suggesting reversing these trends fine with a return to those numbers?
Ending Pell grants for those in prison is another case of not seeing the whole picture. If there was an unlimited fund for them, allowing prisoners access would be a wonderful idea. As it stands, however, a Pell grant given to someone who decided to break the law is one not given to someone who fought the temptation and stayed on the right side of it. If your son or daughter was unable to get a grant because a rapist got one, would you be fine with that?
Where I totally agree is that more needs to be done to remove the stigmata of a prison sentence. I would fully support a provision that any first time prison sentence is sealed and accessible only to law enforcement if the ex-prisoner has avoided police contact for 5 years after release. Some people learn their lesson, and those who do should be able to start over once they have proved themselves.
13
The fundamental problem is a lack of understanding of and compassion for people who have committed crimes. We would not let this happen if society cared about them.
Nick, Thank you for repeatedly raising this subject, especially when you were lone voice. I hope you feel some satisfaction that we are finally beginning to go in the right direction (mostly) even while recognizing that we have a long way to go.
24
An extraordinary theme on the failures of law in the USA. A very important campaign topic for the 2020 elections to consider. Education is the key to prevent misdeed behaviours among adolescents. If the government realises that tax money is best invested in education, the society will benefit and there will be less crime. There are several issues affecting the nation. Children should learn the danger of illegal drugs, a topic seldom discussed in schools.
8
Isn't there an old shoe that sort of goes, "No one ever said life is fair?" Our jails are full of people who have no business being there and it is encouraging to see this practice diminishing.
Unfortunately, jailing is a very convenient escape in our society which is filled with so many problems even though many are at best, petty.
17
Kudos again, Mr. Kristof, for saying what needs to be said. From my vantage point of 88 years I can't help but wonder what sort of a world we are leaving to our children. While there are crimes deserving of extreme punishment I believe we need to expend more thought and resources to provide positive training and education and more effort to train our lawgivers to understand the difference between degrees of crime. I'm reminded of Jean Valjean in Les Miserables - an excellent object lesson.
Keep speaking up, Mr. Kristof, your voice needs to be heard.
120
I believe with my whole heart that the intent of mass incarceration was to destroy, or at least weaken severely, the black American population and other minorities. Now that white collar crime, the manufacture and distribution of opioids for "medical" purposes, has redefined the American drug problem, and is decimating families without regard to melanin content, folks are anxious to do something about this epidemic.
162
@Andrea Hoxie Incarcerations and tough on crimes makes for good campaign ads. All along white collar crime has essentially been legalized. It is unimaginable that Wells Fargo Bank could profit from some of its behavior and walk away with no jail time(s) and fines amounting to a fraction of its profits. Banks' behavior from the financial meltdown happened without any consequences. The special interests of Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Pharmaceuticals, Health Care, Oil Industries, etc. have gutted our society and future prosperity by eroding our federal and state institutions. Minority communities are mostly impacted, but 90% of Americans have been robbed and victimized. We are now being warned that any and all resolutions to address our problems are socialism. This will become the new campaign mantra of fear.
9
@Andrea Hoxie
The enabling legislation at the federal level was supported in the Congressional Black Caucus. I too find that the beliefs held with my “whole heart” are the one least supported by evidence.
1
I applaud your article for bringing attention to this problem. Your examples happen to be men. Let's also consider the situation for incarcerated women in this conversation. While fewer women than men are behind bars, their rate of incarceration has increased disproportionately. Compared with men, women who come to prison are more likely to have a history of abuse and more likely to have a diagnosis of mental illness. More than half are mothers, often the primary caregiver before incarceration. Poverty is related to higher rates of incarceration - and women are more likely to live in economic poverty than men.
63
It makes no sense that correcting a mistake takes so long in both Congress and State Legislatures - or even in the justice system itself when someone is wrongfully convicted. We need reasonable ways for change when things go wrong. One "important" man seems able to block an army of reasonable, and well informed ones.
13
@Nancy
The best practice seems to sunset all laws unless there is a positive vote to renew.
Mass incarceration, especially when it is unfairly targets people of color is wrong.
However, it is also wrong to transport meth. I don't think that Mr. Jackson should have received a life sentence, but surely he could have tried some other, more legal way to earn money.
It's misleading to say he was incarcerated because he wanted to help his son. He took a terrible chance for a terrible reason and got caught.
All that said, America has one of the highest rates of incarceration in the world. We don't need to build more prisons. Not every person convicted of a crime, or worse yet, waiting for a trial for a non-violent offense, needs to sit in prison.
People who are incarcerated essentially because they cannot pay cash bail, or who have outstanding fines for non-criminal offenses should not be incarcerated. There are other, cheaper and more humane ways to ensure that they show up for trial.
We need to provide more for those in need, like a child who requires a life-saving bone marrow transplant. Perhaps that would keep more people out of jail in the first place.
6
@Barbara
You wrote, ‘I don't think that Mr. Jackson should have received a life sentence, but surely he could have tried some other, more legal way to earn money.’ Do you really think if he tried more legal ways to earn money in places like Walmart and McDonalds type jobs that it would ever cover the exorbitant cost of medicine needed?
68
Trnsporting meth should not be a crime, but a civil infraction.
The US drug laws are the problem.
Legalize, regulate, and tax drugs, and the prison population will be cut in half.
37
@Barbara
The very central point in the case of Mr Jackson, is the failing USA system of health care. I will never understand why the USA do not look at other countries where health care is being regulated in a completely different way, to the full satisfaction of the inhabitants of these countries.
As far as I can see, only rich and wealthy people in the USA can afford proper health care, there is an enormous number of poor to very poor people who are left out and who have to rely on charity.
4
The most obscene crime is that so many people can’t secure medical treatment or make ends meet.
160
@NM Mr Jackson has two prior convictions, including a year's imprisonment related to transporting meth and marijuana in his truck. So prison time was probably appropriate (2-5ys?), but life seems excessive (and hence his eventual clemency).
3
@NM
The gap between rich and poor is getting wider and wider. And we see that happening not only in the USA, but worldwide. One day, the poor will rise (cf the French Revolution of 1789) and chaos will reign once again in the world.
8
The US has different norms than other countries about what is a fair sentence. A Norwegian who killed 77 people was sentenced to only 21 years. People in the US would agree that life without parole would be a more reasonable punishment. Recently, a school bus driver was sentenced to probation, not prison, for raping a 14 year old girl because he raped only one person that they know of. Rather than less incarceration, the public needs to be protected from violent criminals which should mean longer sentences for violent crimes. Drug dealing is a violent crime. It certainly destroys people's lives. I am tired of the bleeding hearts who think we should be emptying our prisons. If it was your loved one who was the victim or your child who bought drugs from the "innocent" convict, you would not be so anxious to have them out and about committing other crimes.
9
Drug dealing is not a violent crime.
When you blur the distinction between violence and non-violence, you lose appreciation for the horror of real violence.
Drugs should be legalized, regulated, and taxed.
46
@Jerry Engelbach- It is not as immediate as a gun, but it eventually kills. The buyers commit violent crimes to pay for their purchases. The drug dealer is not an innocent player in the destruction that his dealing causes. There is no reason to feel sorry for anyone involved in the drug trade. They deserve long sentences.
7
I’m not sure why a drug dealer or drug runner is so much worse than a liquor store owner or liquor distributor. Surely drunk driving, alcohol-fueled suicide, drunken fights, and cirrhosis have altogether killed tens of thousands of people. Or how about arms traders? Bomb makers? Opioid manufacturers and distributors? The logic of ‘Lock ‘em up’ makes less and less sense.
If we only had a mental health system to help people overcome childhood trauma, if we found the means to address the deep loneliness and alienation that are so increasingly prevalent amongst youth, and if detox/drug treatment were both affordable and widely available, then we could start to heal this country and deal with the real reasons why drug addiction is a greater problem here than in most other countries on earth.
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Most of our most pressing problems stem from treating a public health problem--drug misuse--as a crime. Prohibiting people from something that makes them feel good has never worked. We acknowledged that in the case of alcohol. Criminalizing commercial sex and drug trafficking has not eliminated either. Several states have now legalized marijuana, providing laboratories as to how to avoid negative consequences while allowing people access to the drug. We should expand the public health approach we used to reduce tobacco use to all drugs, including opioids. That would undercut the drug gangs forcing people out of Central America, reduce pressure to incarcerate, and shift funds for drug problems from the criminal justice system into the medical and social services systems where they belong.
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And this is why we need Medicare for All. The man’s son needed a life saving medical procedure but couldn’t afford the $50,000 price tag. In other countries where health care is a public good, then necessary health care is a public good too.
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@Ellen Oxfeld
You misread. The family raised $50,000 but it wasn't enough. Health insurance, one way or another, for all. They were poor, so too bad.
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