A New Model

What is wrong with America’s prison model? Why is the rate of incarceration here higher than anywhere else in the world? Why do one out of three released offenders re-offend within one year of release? What is America really getting for the $80 billion spent this year on criminal justice? Is there a better way?

            The Bible says, “We reap what we sow.” I think of those words often in my current situation. Those words are applicable corporately to this nation’s love fest with “tough on crime” political demagoguery. America created a myth, perpetuated by politicians, that our way of life was unraveling at the hands of lawbreakers, who were almost always poor and minority. It was fed with anecdotal stories of roving gangs of robbers, rapists, and murderers. What it left America with is a two-tiered system of justice that grinds the offender down, damages poor families and their communities, and leaves the victim feeling unfulfilled. Prison – locking men and women up for long periods of time and treating drug use and embezzlement cases the same as predatory murder cases – does not make America safer, nor does it promote obeyance of the law, nor is it cost effective. 

 

            “There is no punishment so effective as punishment that nowhere announces the intention to punish.” America need only look to Scandinavia to see an effective prison model. The rate of incarceration in Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland) is ten times less than in the U.S. And these nations employed in many cases open-style prisons where offenders move freely between a controlled dormitory-style housing unit and the neighboring towns where they work and shop. It is a modified house-arrest model and it works (with recidivism rates one-half to one-third of those reported here). Why?

            It is a difference in philosophy and operation. Criminal justice policy is not regularly subject to political debate in Scandinavia. Instead of being directed by politicians and career-corrections staff, practices and policies are left to trained professionals, criminologists with expertise in the field.

            And crime is not sensationalized in the media. News broadcasts don’t use crimes or their trials to boost ratings.

            Decades of research verify that there is no fixed relationship between incarceration rates and crime rates. Prison populations are not determined by crime rates but by how states treat crimes – if the public demands “serious time” then an $80 billion industry arises to satisfy that demand.

            While Scandinavian prisons operate with the goal or re-integrating the offender back into society, American prisons can’t do the same because of the segregated nature of the system. Few middle-class white Americans can name anyone they know personally who has been to prison; few blacks in poor neighborhood know anyone who hasn’t. Because so many of the incarcerated in the U.S. come from poor homes, poor neighborhoods with failing schools and lacking employment opportunities, they view prison as just another series of punishments inflicted on them because of the color of their skin or their economic level. And middle-class Americans lack empathy for that visceral feeling. You can’t understand it because you never lived it.

            We send those men and women to prison and they grow bitter. And their bitterness returns with them to the street.

            People “outside” the system fail to grasp the shame associated with conviction. Shame is a powerful tool in corrections. But shame in the American system leads to self-pity, anger, and resentment. Why? Because prison for most offenders – with its dirt, and violence, and poorly-trained staff, and bullshit rules, and sentences that don’t bear any relationship to the crime committed or to the rehabilitation of the offender – is not an effective tool to correct law-breaking.

            As a writer on the American prison system noted: “Inside U.S. Prisons, decades can be filled with labor of simple survival. Reflection upon the decisions that brought anyone to confinement must overcome the bitterness evoked by a system that sustains such an environment.” (Doran Larson, Prof of English, Hamilton College).

            That is the sad fact behind the American prison model. I live it every day. And, I see far too many men for whom this becomes a way of life. That is a tragedy. America has created a system that frequently fails to allow a released offender to return home whole, rehabilitated and restored. It is a system doomed to failure.

            Contrast that to Norway’s prison model which states: “The punishment is the restriction of liberty, no other rights have been removed … During the serving of a sentence, life inside will resemble life outside as much as possible. You need a reason to deny a sentenced offender his rights, not to grant them … the more closed a system is, the harder it will be to return to freedom.”

            That distinction, that fundamental difference in philosophy explains why America wastes $80 billion on its failed criminal justice system. Perhaps it’s time to look to our Scandinavian neighbors.