Prison statistics call U.S.’s priorities into question

by Matt Petryni

PUBLISHED ON 3/4/08
As of last Thursday, the United States, land of the free, is on record as the world’s leader in imprisonment. A report released by the Pew Center last week calculated that 2.3 million Americans are behind bars, about one percent of our adult population. Russia and the former Soviet Union countries follow, while the northern Europeans – Sweden, Finland and Denmark – imprison only around ten percent of our number. We’re also a major player in executions, killing more of our citizens per capita than such tasteful governments as those of Syria and Sudan.

All of these shocking statistics, though, must come with some qualifications (as do all shocking statistics, I find). Ranking us below regimes like China’s is difficult, due to the trouble in getting accurate information on how many people they incarcerate. And while we might “officially” execute more people than Sudan does – something we should probably stop doing, no doubt – it must be acknowledged that many of the tragic deaths in Darfur could probably be added to Sudan’s number.

Further, the sheer number isn’t enough to evaluate the “oppressiveness” of a country’s prison policies. While we might lock up the most people, it could be argued that we do so with more respect for some kind of substantive due process and civil rights than more repressive regimes do. And while we’re undoubtedly efficient at killing people who have been convicted of murder, many countries use execution as an explicit means to eliminate political enemies and minority ethnic groups.

Nonetheless, it is important that we look at our incarceration numbers with concern. It does appear, by some accounts, that our increased incarceration rate has corresponded nationally with a drop in crime rates. Yet this has more trouble translating to the state level, as many states that have thrown more of their residents in jail have had trouble keeping control over their crime rate. Some states have even experienced significant drops in crime despite having released more of their prison population than other states. This is not to suggest that we could reduce crime by freeing criminals. But it does point out that it may not be as simple as “increasing incarceration means decreasing crime.”

As primitively “fun” as it may be to lock up the sinners and whatnot, it is also incredibly expensive. Oregon spends more of its general fund on corrections than does any other state – a number that has increased 4.6 percent in the last 10 years. These numbers are rising fast across the country. Statistics suggest that, inflation adjusted, nationwide spending on prisons has more than doubled from roughly $19.4 billion (today’s dollars) in 1997 to $44.1 billion last year. Each prisoner, it is estimated, costs taxpayers about $24,000 per year (compared to $8,700 invested per student on schools).

Why so much imprisonment? In the United States, we tend to use incarceration as an indirect answer to many social problems: drug addiction, mental illness, poverty. This is not to say that the crimes of criminals are by any means “excusable” due to their circumstances. Criminals are still responsible for their personal actions and should be held accountable. But for those of us who aren’t just interested in the satisfaction of casting the first stone, and would actually like to see fewer homes broken, fewer women raped, and fewer people killed, the policies that result in widespread incarceration and their relation to crime rates must be critically examined.

Drug addicts, for example, cycle through prisons at an alarming rate. As recently as 2004, state prisons incarcerated 249,400 criminals for drug offenses, roughly 20 percent of all state prisoners. This doesn’t even include federal prison numbers, where more than half are incarcerated for drug offenses. It is estimated that every dollar invested in the treatment of drug addiction returns $4 to $7 to taxpayers in the reduction of drug-related crime. I’m not a financial expert, but if I could get a 400 to 700 percent return on my investment, I’d take it.

And putting the practicality of a Puritanical drug policy aside, a better question might be the ethicality. Drug addicts are not simply criminals in the classic sense. It doesn’t work, statistically or ethically, to “punish” them for a serious disease. Even some of the staunchest advocates of drug addiction “punishment” have ended up being users and abusers themselves, making clear that recognizing the fear of punishment for the “crime” of drug addiction seems no deterrent to “committing” drug addiction.

With so much money being spent treating the ills of society by locking them up in our prisons, and with our incarceration rate so high, it’s well past time to consider more effective, more productive and more ethical means of driving our crime rate down. It isn’t about letting criminals off easy: It’s about keeping them from hurting others in the first place.

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Imprisoned vets tell their war stories for history

By DAVID DISHNEAU

October 17 2008

As U.S. forces withdrew from Vietnam in early 1974, Seaman Apprentice Frederic D. Jones was fighting his own battles.

The cocky Baltimore teenager spent nearly three months AWOL in the Philippines. There, he said, he played cat-and-mouse with shore patrol while fending off a murderous drug dealer, romancing the sister of a militia leader and robbing other servicemen to feed his heroin habit.

Eventually caught, Jones negotiated an honorable discharge but couldn’t stay clean. An armed robbery spree in 1995 got him a 45-year sentence in the Maryland Correctional Institution near Hagerstown.

While Jones, now 52, is locked away from society, his war story has been preserved for posterity. He is among the first incarcerated veterans to tell his military service tale to the Library of Congress Veterans History Project.

Video recordings of more than 30 inmates at the medium-security prison are archived at the library’s American Folklife Center, along with those of nearly 60,000 other veterans. Just one other prison, the Fairton Federal Correctional Institution in Fairton, N.J., has collected veterans’ stories, said Bob Patrick, director of the Veterans History Project.

Congress created the oral history program in 2000 to document the personal wartime experiences of American service members. The library doesn’t try to verify their stories, but The Associated Press confirmed the service records of the inmates mentioned in this report.

Patrick said that by recognizing their roles in history, the project dignifies the service of veterans who take part. Jones was so proud of his videotape that he had a copy sent to his elderly mother.

“She was so overjoyed and surprised,” he said.

Since any veteran, no matter how decorated or disgraced, can contribute to the archive, Jones’ story was as welcome as that of any admiral. And it’s hard to imagine one more colorful.

On his nearly 90-minute recording, Jones recounts his adventures as a “young, wild, impulsive,” 18-year-old in and around the Subic Bay Naval Base. There, he said, a female gang called the Black Stockings helped him steal cash and watches from drunken sailors and aided him in avoiding a drug dealer he had wronged.

“I ended up getting a contract on my life,” Jones says. “I felt like I had never left home.”

Jones, who is black, said he enlisted in the Navy seeking structure and style — he liked the bell-bottomed uniforms — but he quickly grew disenchanted by the racism and drug use he found.

“I’d had my own preconceived ideas what the military was — I mean straight-up, strict discipline,” Jones says on the video, made a year ago. “The drugs, the gang mentality — it was all right there in the military. It was a big letdown.”

In a June interview with the AP, Jones said he doesn’t blame the military for his mistakes but has found in prison the sort of discipline he had expected from the Navy. Behind bars, he and 58-year-old John E. Barba, who is serving a life sentence for robbing and murdering a methamphetamine maker, have become co-chairmen of the prison’s veterans history committee.

Guided by materials from the Library of Congress, they have become such skilled interviewers since last fall that they and prison librarian Mary Stevanus, who spearheaded the history project, hope to produce a how-to booklet or video for other veterans groups, in or out of prison.

“What you’re looking for is the meat of the stuff,” said Barba, who served domestically in the Navy from 1970 to 1974. Working together, he and Jones conduct informal “pre-interviews” with their subjects, making notes of compelling material “so when they’re giving their interview, we can dive in,” Barba said.

They extracted a harrowing account from Ronald L. McClary, 62, of his experience under fire as a fresh-faced Marine in Vietnam. On his video, the burly inmate, seated before a large U.S. flag, recalls his daily “search-and-destroy” missions.

“Every day, you would look at one of your buddies and wonder who wasn’t going home today or who was going to get killed today. Everybody knew it was going to be somebody,” said McClary, who is serving 12 years for the second-degree murder of his wife in Baltimore 2005.

He recounted a firefight in which two buddies were killed.

“Three rounds went off. The first round hit Amos in the head. Amos fell. When Amos fell, Cope looked around and looked down at Amos. The second round hit Cope in the head. And I seen it. I told you, three rounds went off. Cope was to my left. Amos was to my left, and then there was me. You cannot tell me today the third round wasn’t meant for me. But I was down. I was eating dirt.”

Ordered by his lieutenant to get up and charge the enemy, McClary fired two shots before his gun jammed. “I had to get back down,” he says on the video. “I’ve never been so scared in all my life.”

Jones said he feels privileged hearing such stories.

“These guys have kept this stuff to themselves for 40 years,” he said. “You’ll see one guy that actually breaks down and cries. I mean, these are hardened criminals and he breaks down and cries on his video.”

About 226,000 of the national’s 25.1 million veterans were in prison or jail in 1998, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics’ most recent report on the subject.

Matt Davison, chairman of an incarcerated veterans project for New York-based VietNow National, a veterans advocacy group, said most inmate vets he’s met are proud of having served — and many feel remorse for having done something dishonorable.

Barba said most of the inmates he has interviewed for the history project express gratitude that they were able to serve.

In one video, white-haired World War II vet Lee D. Gerhold, doing 50 years for arranging an ex-wife’s murder, grips his cane and says, “I’m thankful to the country for accepting me.”

On the Net:

• Veterans History Project: http://www.loc.gov/vets
• VietNow National: http://www.vietnow.com

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