Criminal justice reform has become an issue where Conservatives and Liberals can find agreement. The broken system makes communities more dangerous, is costly and inefficient, and does not rehabilitate or correct criminal behavior in a meaningful capacity. Conversations about the war on drugs have spawned from the criminal justice debate, and in order to truly take on a system with a 50% recidivism rate. Other issues overlap with the criminal justice question and can pave a path to preventing crime every step of the way before it happens cost effectively.
Maternity and Paternity Leave, Parents behind bars
Maternity and paternity leave isn’t often considered to be an issue related to criminal justice. Typically, it is an issue surrounding labor laws and availability of the parent for childcare. According to multiple studies the effects of maternal deprivation is linked to antisocial behavior in offspring, the onset of mental illness, aggression, and unhealthy development through adolescence. Paternal deprivation is not as well studied, however similar antisocial behaviors are exhibited in children and young adults who have not been afforded regular contact with their fathers. The first years of a child’s life are critical to its growth and functioning throughout life and enabling both parents to attend to their child is the first and perhaps the strongest line of defense from criminal behavior in children and young adults. Having the opportunity to care for one’s child: feeding them, reading to them, and just being there for them gives children a head start on the right path.
Furthermore, the implementation of paid maternity and paternity leave has the obvious benefits of reduced financial stress serving as a win-win as children respond to parental stresses and would also feel the benefits. When fathers and mothers eventually return to work, they will be much more effective workers with the peace of mind that they are economically secure to take care of their children. This starts a positive feedback loop in regards to child rearing as the economic security of parents performing well in their jobs is observed by children and can have an impact on gang morale as gangs become less of an option for protection.
Economic Freedom
An essential component to recidivism is the slave like working conditions inmates are compelled to endure. Working for pennies on the dollar, one has to imagine just how negative of an attitude towards work the prison system is bestowing on inmates. The ability to negotiate wages is important to a free people, however the subject becomes murky when discussing categorically non-free people. The simple fact of incarceration is enough to surrender certain rights so it’s easy to say inmates do not deserve any sort of compensation for their work despite their labor being mandatory if they are able bodied. Also, there is the notion of paying inmates less keeps the costs of manufacturing lower and offsets the need to outsource jobs to other nations. On the other hand, this outsourcing is already occurring. It also goes without saying that workers making minimum wage are pricier than captive workers working for peanuts. Instead, proper economic incentives will produce better results rather than relying on patch work rehabilitation under the guise of “work will set you free.” It would merely take the allowance of wage negotiations to occur for the person to have a zero cost system enabling people to not leave prison broke with nothing more than the clothes on their back. The alternative, perhaps with a right to an accountant to help with investment in a release fund to accumulate interest for the duration of the person’s sentence, makes sense given the rates of incarceration among the poorest members of society.
Rethinking Sentence Lengths
Recidivism has to be examined from every angle. If one is expected to return to prison, it is most likely fair to say they should remain in prison until that is no longer the case to avoid further crime. Leaving this decision to the community from a jury of one’s peers is the most sensible option. If a jury can deem one guilty to be removed from society, then they can deem one is fit to return. This concept not only incentivizes good behavior, but it also keeps the community informed of who is coming and going. Currently, the last anyone hears from a person is when they’re convicted and this allows people to forget about them and completely ignore everything that follows until once again said person has reoffended. The idea of “lock them up and throw away the key” does not do any more of a service than an immediate sense of relief.
Norway has done away with life sentencing all together. In Norway, the maximum sentence you can receive is 21 years. There are cultural differences that need to be set aside in order for any chance of emulation of the Norwegian prison systems in the United States, however the results of corrective institutions can be pointed to as goals that can be achieved when looking for what best fits for reform in the United States. Despite Norway’s summer camp style prisons, Norway enjoys a far lower recidivism rate (20%) than the United States (50%).
Correction and Redemption
Prisons could be called criminal incubation facilities. Even with the strictest of maximum security prisons, violent crime still occurs; it’s a wasteful system that not only doesn’t prevent violence and criminal behavior but can in fact cause it. If you were to ask which comes first, the person learns their lesson or their sentence expires, most of the time the latter is the case. What is magic about the number of years someone serves? Where does it come from? What difference is there between a 20-year sentence and a 19 or 21-year term? There does not seem to be a scientific, psychological, or any sort of explanation. Maybe it is just because 20 is a round number, and the magnitude of that length of time is long enough to appease popular opinion of what should be done with someone?
What occurs inside prison walls is by far more important than the duration of how long time is spent within them. Submitting one to an environment of constant fear, anger, and isolation for an arbitrary length of time is a non-policy. The inverse of this, however would be the most rehabilitative service that could be provided. Confronting one’s demons instead of indulging in them takes a person a lot further than letting them rot. Love is setting a person on the right path, hate is the opposite. Introducing love and compassion is essential to human well-being and deterring cruel and unusual punishment. The goal is to minimize human suffering and maximize potential. In doing so, victims and their families will be ensured neither they nor anyone else will be victimized in the same way even after an inmate is released.
Humanizing
Of the most severe problems with the prison system is solitary confinement. Originally seen as a humane alternative to the death penalty, solitary confinement use has expanded rapidly for even minor misconduct. Once placed in confinement, all contact is cut off and one can only leave their cell for one hour of recreation per day. The practice does not make prisons safer, and evidence suggests that solitary confinement can increase the likelihood of suicide within prison populations. Suicides in prison occur usually within the first 72 hours of arriving, during holidays at the end of the year, and after being informed of the loss of a loved one. Analyzing the suicide issue from an identity perspective provides insights that can inform change. Identity in many ways shapes our behavior and if you do not see yourself as having agency in the world around you moving on, if you are closed off from the world and play no role in a community, and overall feel disposable then suicide is an expected outcome. Losing an identity as a father, a mother, a husband, a wife, a free citizen, and assuming the identity of a convict is devastating. It is overwhelming for the first time and can take weeks or even months to ease into.
Instead of fracturing families, and isolating prisoners the alternative of keeping families in regular contact without punishments that inhibit socialization identity issues are addressed. The suicide toll will be dramatically lower among many other antisocial behaviors. Programs such as One Day with God, host father-daughter dances inside prison walls. When watching this, ask if any of these fathers would reoffend or lose motivation to leave the criminal mindset.
War on Drugs
To cut the head off of the problem with prison over-crowding would be to abolish mandatory minimum sentencing. The practice of mandatory minimums overrides the ability of judges to make their own decisions regarding a case that ignore individual matters that differ in each case. Due to the war on drugs, many people are now behind bars for low level non-violent drug offences. It costs money to fund the DEA, for law enforcement to perform drug stings and raids, and at the end of it drug use remains constant with hundreds of thousands of people’s lives ruined by state sanctions instead of the actual drugs. Allowing judges to exercise their own discretion over criminal cases, and decriminalizing all drugs and treating the subject as a public health issue will reverse this downward path to a more optimal and humane system. Instead of starting from the point of making the statement “drug use is bad for the public thus drugs should be prohibited,” effective policies would start with the question of “why do people do drugs?” When answering that question you may come to your own conclusions when trying to form answers and will certainly come to better solutions that deter drug demand. Dissolving the monopoly that cartels hold over drugs will thus dissolve the cartels and put a large halt to gang violence. Piggybacking this halt to gang violence with the disruption of gang morale by holding families together would produce fantastic results in tearing down STGs in prison, and street gangs that account for 80% of the intentional gun homicide deaths each year.
With the right mindset of maximizing human potential, observing the merits of redemption with punishment, and examining the costs and benefits of systems every step of the way many advancements can be made the save money and preserve order. Perhaps one day the United States can go from having 2.2 million people incarcerated to the low thousands. Criminal behavior will always exist and those responsible must be held accountable. It is when these people are held accountable that everything should be done to divert them onto a path of responsibility instead. You may have your own ideas and when thinking them through, anything can be achieved.