Subject: "Pulling the Plug"
From: Barbara Sims (bas4@psu.edu)
Date: Thu Feb 17 2000 - 07:45:07 CST
Folks,
I am reviewing Joel Dyer's book "The Perpetual Prisoner Machine: How
America Profits From Crime" in which he outlines an argument for a
prison-industrial complex, not unlike the military-industrial complex,
whose goal it is to profit from "turning prisoners into chattel property."
He goes beyond the usual arguments that fault politicians and the media for
perpetuating a distorted picture of crime, and beyond an argument that
indicts corporate America for gaining huge profits from locking up more and
more people (including Microsoft, Spalding, IBM, Compaq, Texas Instruments,
AT&T, Victoria's Secret, Eddie Bauer, Chevron and TWA, just to name a few -
hiring prisoners and paying them an average of 80 cents an hour). He makes
the point that: "Virtually all people who own stock in any of the more than
2,000 mutual funds now in operation are deriving at least a small portion
of their profits from crime."
In the final chapter, Dyer says that we could wait for the prisoner machine
to "consume itself out of existence," or for taxpayers to revolt over the
ever-increasing costs to them, but look at the costs of waiting. Dyer says
that the next plateau will be 4 million mostly low-income minority males,
and to wait any longer to destroy this machine would mean to condone a
"humanitarian and cultural disaster of massive proportion." We have to,
argues Dyer, find out who is at the controls of the prisoner machine, and
it could be as simple as looking in the mirror. After all, heads of
corporations have to answer to their shareholders.
At the risk of increasing the length of this post, consider the following
newspaper editorial. My question is this, could it be that the pendulum
has started to swing back to some sense of rationality? Could it be that
the plug is beginning to be pulled? Do you think that what is argued in
the following editorial just might catch hold? Or, am I being overly
optimistic?
Thanks for listening,
Barb Sims
NEAL PEIRCE COLUMN
> For Release Sunday, February 13, 2000
>
> Copyright 2000 Washington Post Writers Group
>
>
> AS NIXON WAS TO CHINA--
> TOMMY THOMPSON TO PRISONS?
>
> By Neal R. Peirce
>
> It took Nixon to open the door to China. And it may take a
Republican governor to tamp down, perhaps reverse the American
incarceration craze that's pushing our prisoner total past 2 million this
week.
>
> Tommy G. Thompson of Wisconsin, now in his fourth term, may be that
Republican governor.
>
> A decade ago, Thompson forsook typical anti-welfare rhetoric. He
began to ask welfare mothers about their real-life problems. Result:
Wisconsin Works, the path-breaking program to get recipients working in
exchange for critical transition aid.
>
> Wisconsin's measure set the terms for the federal welfare reform
bill and the nationwide welfare-to-work reform.
>
> Now Thompson has a new cause -- prison reform.
>
> "I'm not getting weak on crime. We've locked up a lot of bad guys,"
says this Wisconsin governor, who has presided over more than a tripling of
imprisonment in Wisconsin -- from 6,097 inmates in 1987 to roughly 20,000
today (including 4,000 parked in out-of-state prisons).
>
> "But," says Thompson -- and here's his vital new twist -- "we need
to turn these bad guys back into good guys. Because we need them to fill
jobs and support their families."
>
> The goal increasing Wisconsin's supply of 21st-century workers fits
a national pattern. Throughout the 80s and 90s, state and local
governments were engaged in a frenetic hunt for any kind of new jobs they
could land. In today's high-demand economy, that's outdated. The new
thrust is to find the people (and skills) the new economy demands.
>
> "Meeting our workforce demands will force us to look at the
sensitive issue of crime and punishment in a different light," says
Thompson. "We need to take advantage of the talent and skills of each and
every person in Wisconsin."
>
> So Thompson is telling his corrections department to target funds
"so that no inmate will leave prison without being able to read and fill
out a job application."
>
> Wisconsin is also setting up work houses for prisoners with less
than 12 months left to serve, working at real private sector jobs. "We
hope employers will then be able to vouch these people are good workers,
that they have skills," Thompson told me. "It's a way to rehabilitate, to
reassimilate them back slowly into society."
>
> What's this? Rehabilitate? Reassimilate? Aren't those detested
"R" words to the law-and-order politicians who've dominated public debate
for 30 years? Prisons, they've told us, exist to punish; convicts are
basically incorrigible; mandatory sentences and "three strikes" laws
(Wisconsin has one) are the way to go.
>
> Thompson believes violent criminals need to be incarcerated; he
credits imprisonment with driving Wisconsin's crime to a 30-year low.
>
> But is prison right for all offenders? No, Thompson argues: "I see
20,000 human beings locked up, at a public cost of $22,000 a year each.
And I say, this is not working. Too many people are locked up who should
be working and caring for their families."
>
> But how to get offenders into jobs, when they're drug- or
alcohol-addicted? Thompson's willing to support drug rehab programs for
first-time felony drug offenders -- youths 17 to 25 convicted of delivering
or possessing cocaine, crack or marijuana. Under the Milwaukee-based
program he backs, they get treatment, schooling, classes, job training, as
long as they weren't convicted of violence or gun use.
>
> "Then they get into a job with intensive probation to watch over
them and make sure they're working," Thompson adds. "If we can get that
dependency cured, it will be a huge gain for the state."
>
> All this is as rational and sensible as it's rare among the states.
Nationally, close to two-thirds of inmates are doing time for non-violent
offenses-- mostly drug-related.
>
> And we keep throwing up prisons. More than a third of a $370
million budget expansion just proposed by Michigan's Gov. John Engler, for
example, will go toward prisons, with 5,453 new beds in two years.
Colorado, which has spent $645 million on new prisons, quintupling capacity
since the late 80s, is now being told by officials it needs 1,000 more
high security beds for another $75 million.
>
> From Hawaii to Florida to New England and points intermediate, the
story's the same. And increasingly, women are getting equal treatment.
Their imprisonment rolls doubled in the 90s, even though most are put away
for nonviolent crimes, have children at home, and suffer higher levels of
HIV infection and mental illness than male prisoners.
>
> A fresh study from California shows young blacks and Latinos are
much more likely to be sentenced to prison than whites who commit similar
crimes -- another reminder of the deep racism infecting U.S. corrections
practices today.
>
> Just like welfare before it, excessive incarceration is an ugly
score on our body politic. Reform is right because jobs need filling,
because prisons are expensive, inefficient.
>
> But Thompson adds the ultimate reason: "It's the right thing to do."
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