Kudos to Obama. He will be the first US president to visit a federal prison, according to this Yahoo article.
It is quite surprising to me that never in our history as a nation have any of our presidents visited prisons. I’m sure the same is true for the majority of our senators and legislators, yet there are so many legal issues facing our prison system. There is so much room for reform.
Obama will visit El Reno prison in Oklahoma. He is pushing for fairer sentencing – something that is absolutely necessary. He also wants changes made for the duration of prison sentences.
High Incarceration Rates
According to the article, “2.2 million prisoners are housed in the United States, which is more men and women behind bars than the top 35 European countries combined. ‘Our incarceration rate is four times higher than China’s’ Obama said Tuesday, adding that prisons were four times less crowded in 1980 and two times less crowded just 20 years ago. Nearly a quarter of the world’s prison population is concentrated in American jails, while the United States accounts for less than five percent of the world’s population.”
Long Prison Sentences
We send so many non-violent offenders to prisons. Yes, they committed crimes and they need to be punished, but is that 10-year prison sentence really in the best interests of our country? Is it really worth all of those taxpayer dollars?
There are many people in prison for white collar crimes like tax evasion, money laundering, and other sorts of fraud. Are these acts illegal? Absolutely. Are these people dangerous menaces to society? No. Put them on probation. Put them on house arrest. Fine them. There are many viable alternatives that should be considered. I believe that putting them in prison is exacerbating the problem because now some of these formerly non-violent criminals come out with worse problems.
Living in prison is tough. Depending on the location, you need to fight to survive. In many prisons, drugs are common. So these tax evading criminals may be coming home with bigger issues.
Prisons were originally intended for rehabilitation, but from what I have heard about most prisons in America, that does not really seem to be the case.
According to Michele Deitch, a law professor at the University of Texas, prison sentences in America “are much much longer by order of magnitude than in other countries.”
Obama said “In far too many cases, the punishment simply does not fit the crime.” This is true in many small drug arrests. People will end up in prison for 10 to 20 years for small-level drug dealing. Is that necessary or effective? I believe that it is not.
Are there too many drugs in our country? Yes. Is it going away as we lock up some of these smaller drug dealers for 20 years? No. There are even drugs within the prison system.
Just like the previous example, I obviously believe drug dealers should be punished, but a long prison stay is not necessarily the answer. There are other more viable options that will ultimately cost less in taxpayer dollars.
“‘If you’re a low-level drug dealer, or you violate your parole, you owe some debt to society. You have to be held accountable and make amends,’ Obama said in a speech at the NAACP’s annual convention this week. ‘But you don’t owe 20 years. You don’t owe a life sentence. That’s disproportionate to the price that should be paid’ (Another Yahoo Article).
Incarceration of Minors
We also incarcerate many minors, whether it is in juvenile detention facilities, or in real prisons when we charge older teens as adults. If we believe in rehabilitation, then obviously the best group to try to rehabilitate is the youth. We need better programs to help these teens to overcome their rough home lives and backgrounds and end the cycle of violence. Throwing a 15-year-old into juvie or even jail is not always the best solution.
Racism Within our Judicial System
In addition, as I have mentioned in previous posts like my most recent one about the death penalty (Legalizing Specific Lethal Injection Drugs Instead of Abolishing Capital Punishment), our judicial system is racist. 60% of the inmates in our prisons are black or Latino. 30% are white. 1 in 9 children of black parents have a parent in jail. According to the Yahoo article, “one African-American in 35 and one Latino in 88 are in prison, for white people the ratio is one person imprisoned for every 214 individuals.”
In terms of capital punishment, people are much more likely to receive that sentence if they killed a white person rather than a black or Hispanic person.
Solitary Confinement is Inhumane
Obama also wants to change laws regarding solitary confinement.
Some prisons use solitary confinement quite often and for long durations. This beats a person down psychologically. This is probably the exact opposite of rehabilitation attempts. While it may be necessary in some cases, solitary confinement should not last for weeks at a time.
Obama said that some prisons are putting prisoners in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day sometimes for months or years at a time. Obama asked, “If those individuals are ultimately released, how are they ever going to adapt?”
Cost of our Prison System
I wrote a previous blog entitled Education or Incarceration: Where is our Money Going?. The money we spend on our prison system far surpasses the money spent on education. Obviously, there’s a problem when we spend more money on punishing criminals than we do educating the future of America.
It costs $80 billion annually to run our prisons. $80 billion.
According to the National Dropout Prevention Center, it costs $55,000 to house the average inmate for one year. In comparison, it costs about $10,500 to educate the average student for one school year. We are spending billions of dollars more per year on our prison system than we are on our education system since it is so costly to lock up criminals.
I really hope that before Obama finishes his second term as President, he can start making changes regarding prison reform. It is something that is so desperately needed in our country.
Peppermintfrost 