Addicted to Incarceration: Part 2

As jails and prisons continue to reach and often exceed capacity, society will be required to reconsider one of our most troubling problems, our addiction to incarceration. In Part 1 of this series, we looked at some of the general reasons we incarcerate. Now lets look at specifically who we incarcerate and what has led to the dramatic increase in incarceration over the past 30 years.

There can be no doubt that the single most important contributor to the rising rate has been the so-called war on drugs. Starting in 1970, America fundamentally changed the way it viewed and responded to substance related problems. In the 1980’s, Congress passed a variety of legislation including the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984. The graph shows the moderate increase from 1920 until the mid 1970’s followed by an explosion from the 1980’s on.

“There is no war on drugs because you cannot have a war against inanimate objects. There is only war on drug addicts” – Dr. Gabor Maté

The reasons for the increase are clear, with nearly half of all federal prisoners charged with drug related offenses. According to The Sentencing Project, the reasons in Oklahoma are not much different, with 50% of inmates charged with nonviolent drug or property crimes.

 

Oklahoma has the 3rd highest incarceration rate in the nation. We also have the special distinction of the highest female incarceration rate. According to one report, the rate of female incarceration in Oklahoma is more than double the national rate. The rapid increase in female incarceration can be almost completely attributed to an increase in drug related arrests.

The cost of incarceration varies around the country with annual costs in the neighborhood of $20,000 per inmate. The cost likely exceeds the average pre-incarceration annual income of those incarcerated. Which leads to another category of who we incarcerate, the poor and uneducated. Arguably, people in this category commit more crimes than the population at large but the effect is the same; the less money and education you have, the more likely you are to end up in jail.

Since ancient times, incarceration was used as a punishment for those who were unable to pay their debts. The introduction of bankruptcy laws virtually eliminated the use what were once known as debtors’ prisons. However, a cursory scan of local jail rosters will show many inmates booked for failure to pay their fines and other court related costs. Some may even be incarcerated on a “body attachment”, which are increasingly used for those not addressing a privately held debt as ordered by a court.

“It is vain to continue an institution which experience shows to be ineffectual. We have now imprisoned one generation of debtors after another, but we do not find that their numbers lessen” – Samuel Johnson

Some courts and municipalities have developed partnerships with private collection agencies that often request warrants for non-payment. Many offenders in Northeastern Oklahoma have suffered the wrath of not being current on their fines and costs with the collection agency called Aberdeen.

One of the most disturbing aspects of our criminal justice system is the disparate treatment of racial minorities. According to current trends, black men born in 2001 will have a 1 in 3 chance of being incarcerated at some point in their lifetime. Shockingly, the United States incarcerates a larger percentage of our black population than South Africa did during apartheid.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

According to The Sentencing Project, “blacks and whites use drugs at similar rates, yet more than one third of all drug arrests are of African Americans and they are serving state prison sentences on drug charges at a rate ten times higher than whites”. Hispanics are also incarcerated at much higher rates than whites.

And as bad as it is for black men, the outlook for black women is even worse. In Oklahoma, black women are more likely to be incarcerated (as opposed to placed on probation) than their white female counterparts and are more likely to be incarcerated than black men. If justice is blind, it certainly isn’t  color blind.

I recently heard a former Oklahoma representative (Kris Steele) report that an estimated 30% of inmates in Oklahoma jails and prisons have been diagnosed with a serious mental illness (SMI). In Oklahoma, the definition of SMI does not include substance related disorders. If we would actually treat substance use disorders as the mental health problem we claim it is, that 30% number would skyrocket.

 

Finally, and I can’t find any research  to directly support it, but there are almost certainly large numbers of inmates with a significant history of adverse childhood experiences (ACE). The correlation between elevated ACE scores and substance/behavioral problems virtually guarantees higher than average rates of childhood abuse and trauma in those we incarcerate.

To summarize, around half of those incarcerated in the United States are there because of drug or other non-violent offenses. A disproportionate number are people of color and in Oklahoma, women of color. Most come from lower socioeconomic groups. Many have been classified as seriously mentally ill and an even larger number have a substance use disorder. Based on what we know about the mentally ill and substance abusers, we can assume a large number of those incarcerated were once victims of childhood abuse and trauma.

Are these trends consistent with our values as a society? Is this really who we are? How has the country known as the first and best champion of human freedom strayed so far? Hopefully reform is on the way. Hopefully it’s not too late to change course. Unfortunately I still hear calls for tough sentences and promises from “tough on crime” politicians.

“To deprive a man of his natural liberty and to deny to him the ordinary amenities of life is worse than starving the body; it is starvation of the soul, the dweller in the body.” – Mahatma Gandhi

Stay tuned for future posts when we’ll look at the effects of incarceration and see what we’re getting in return for the billions we’re spending. We’ll also take a closer look at some of the alternatives to incarceration and what we can do to reverse the trends and break our addiction to incarceration.