In Response...

           So I’m reading the USA Today Op-ed the other night and I come across a guest op-ed piece by Colorado State Judge Morris Hoffman titled “Emptying Prisons Is No Panacea.” I read his piece with more than just passing intellectual interest. After all, I’m one of the 2.3 million men and women currently behind bars in the United States. I’m a member of the new leper colony – prisoners – who most “decent, law abiding” citizens don’t give much thought too, that is until they come inside for even one day and see the embarrassment, and horror, and waste that America’s love affair with incarceration has created.

            I read Judge Hoffman’s piece, his reliance on “evolutionary” reasons for our love affair with punishment, his reciting of the tired, disrespected, and proven false, theory of deterrence, and thought to myself, how does this guy get a platform to espouse such nonsense? Perhaps, I thought, I could use the honorable jurist’s words to educate people about the reality of prisons and sentencing and America’s criminal justice system in general. College freshman throughout the country learn early on in English composition to distinguish between reasonable and fallacious argument tactics. “Overgeneralizing, false analogies, non sequitor” arguments should be carefully dissected. It seems Judge Hoffman’s piece could be used for a class exercise in false logic 101.

            Hoffman writes:

            “The claim is that incarceration costs much more than its deterrent benefits. Judges should think twice before throwing away the key … it ignores the most important reason we punish wrongdoers … (deterrence) …”

            He then goes into a quick explanation of deterrence: “Specific deterrence” (send a wrong doer to prison deters him from committing another crime), and “general deterrence” (deterring others from committing a crime). He then concludes with this “fairy tale” statement –

            “General deterrence is what makes us a civilized society. It is the glue that holds us together under the rule of law.”

            Judge Hoffman couldn’t be more wrong in his judgments.

            First, specific deterrence does not work. Nationally, almost 40% of those released from prison will recommit an offense leading them back to prison within one year of release. Over two-thirds will recommit within three years. Once, you sentence a person to prison the likelihood is they will return and re-offend over and over. Contrary to what the Judge writes, prison has the exact opposite specific effect on the wrongdoer.

            Think about it for a second. A majority of those behind bars are nonviolent, low custody offenders. A sizeable majority (over 60%) lack even a basic, marketable education level (high school diploma or equivalency degree). They come from lower socio-economic strata; a sizeable number have generational connections to the criminal justice system; they were raised in single-parent homes. The vast majority of those behind bars come from the ranks of America’s untouchable caste – the poor, the undereducated and underemployed, black and brown. For these families, the “American dream” is a cruel hoax.

            You send that man – or woman – to prison and expose them to the violence and degradation that exists behind bars, and then release them to find work, all the while denying them equal access to government programs and benefits or private employment because the scarlet “P” of “prisoner” goes with them; and then you wonder how they can be so stupid to re-offend … No Judge Hoffman, specific deterrence doesn’t exist.

            Then there’s “general deterrence.” People, he argues, don’t break the law because they see what happens to others who get caught. Excuse me while I chuckle. Anticdotally, I never thought I’d get caught or, if I did, that I would face prison time. That is a universal attitude amongst the incarcerated. General deterrence doesn’t exist. No one has ever not killed, not stolen, not driven drunk, because “Hey, that guy got arrested and he’s going to prison.” Crimes occur for a whole host of reasons: impulse, opportunity, psychosis, and the whole gamut of sins of those of us who accept Judeo-Christian tenets understand as the fallen nature of humans.

            If general deterrence really worked, then crime rates would continually decrease to a point of going away completely (but for the psychotic criminal). If general deterrence in the face of harsh sentencing was fact, then the United States would have one of the world’s lowest crime rates. Judge Hoffman throws words around like “civilized” to justify our punitive sentencing system. Meanwhile, look at the “civilized” Scandinavian nations who disavow capital punishment and use community-based probation and short-term sentencing when prison is needed. Their crime rates are drastically lower than here.

            Deterrence is a disrepute theory thrown around by people for whom full prisons mean steady work (like a state judge, for example). Crime, to a large extent, is a reflection of socio-economic problems in the nation. And, those problems aren’t helped by sending tens of thousands to the purgatory that is prison. The billions this country wastes on tired notions like “tough sentencing deters crime” could be better used in education, and infrastructure rebuilding, and job development. But, we don’t do it because we fall for the easy lie, the lie perpetuated by Judge Hoffman and men like him.

            USA Today gives men like Hoffman a forum; always remember, just because you read it doesn’t make it true. Prisons do more harm – to society and the wrongdoer – than good. As a nation, we are made “civilized” not by our punishment code, but by mercy. It’s not “tough sentencing” that makes us a “shining city on a hill.” No, it’s our attempt, even with the lepers of the land, to do as Jesus outlined in His Beatitudes and His parable of the division of sheep and goats: “for I was hungry and you fed Me, thirsty and you gave Me drink, in prison and you visited Me …”