By Dan Hasan
UCR Class of 2016
You may have heard before that 1% of the American population is currently in prison, but this doesn’t begin to touch on the huge problem growing in the U.S. If you’re a kid in America, there’s a 3% chance that your mom, your dad, or even both are in prison. If you’re black, the chance is three times higher. In the state of Louisiana, with the highest incarceration rates in the world, you are 13 times more likely to land behind bars than in China. An overwhelming majority of inmates in the US have mental or psychological problems, drug dependencies, poor education; in short, factors which increase tendencies to offend and re-offend, factors which should prompt instigation of rehabilitation programs, instead of draconian mass incarceration. But because the prisons in the US are largely private-owned, there is a clear incentive to keep increasing the number of inmates and expanding the prison sector, since it creates jobs, keeps people “safe” and effectively rehabilitates offenders…right?
The incentives might also have something to do with the huge profits generated from the millions of inmates who are put to work manufacturing good; one possible explanation for why private corporations spend millions of dollars every year lobbying to keep the government from reducing prison sentences. Nearly every single item in the inventory of the average US marine for example, from their helmets to their steel-toe boots, have been manufactured using the millions of willing ‘volunteers’ in jail who are faced with either working in private prisons for just 25 cents an hour – or being put in solitary confinement day after day. Of course, the ’employers’ don’t need to pay sick-pay, healthcare insurance, or anything of the sort, as less than $25 per day goes towards accommodation, personnel costs, food, water and electricity. Financially, there are even darker truths behind this business. A factory in Texas fired 150 of its workers to replace them with low-wage inmates – one of many examples of sourcing labor from the cheapest, easiest place. We must ask ourselves whether the real reason for such high incarceration rates is to reduce crime, or to line the pockets of investors and businessmen.
As mentioned earlier, the vast majority of inmates (African-American or Latino) are burdened with poor education and/or psychological and drug-related problems. It seems clear that locking someone like this up for 25 years, forcing them into industrial labor and offering little or no rehab service, is not an effective – let alone humane –method of dealing with crime. Furthermore, this seems especially harsh considering that a large majority of sentences (as high as 97% in some federal prisons) are non-violent crimes such as minor drug offenses. Instead of tarring all with the same brush, it should be recognized that the human rights of countless of these inmates are being severely compromised. However, there is a solution to this problem: education.
The same money – over 45 million dollars – that is used to lobby government bodies to keep prison sentences long could be spent on basic teaching supplies and facilities. Considering that many inmates lack the education of the average 16 year old in high school, there are vast opportunities to imbue prisoners with skills and knowledge that would help to steer their lives out of crime. Social skills and literacy are important for all of us – even those who had a bad start. Surveying prisoners, you will unanimously find an incentive to start again, start afresh. If they can gain recognized qualifications and important life skills while serving time, it seems obvious that they will have a better shot at life by the time they are out. The aim is not to sympathize with every criminal behind bars – merely a realization that the majority of American inmates are NOT violent psychopaths, but victims of a monopolized and exploitative labor industry from which a select few are making billions.
Dan Hasan, class of 2016, is a pre-med major from London, England, United Kingdom.
