Aside from failing in humanity, prison does not even perform well at the specific functions of a criminal justice system - namely, deterrence, retribution, security and rehabilitation. We need to reconsider our over-reliance on prison, and reconsider whether other types of punishment, including capital and corporal punishment, may sometimes be more effective and more humane. The fundamental problem with prison time, as Mill notes, is that its severity is hard to imagine.
After all, many of us frequently find that, what with one thing and another, we have spent the whole day indoors, and we don't find that we have really suffered for it. It is hard to imagine quite how it must be to be confined to a small space and narrow routine for periods of years, or even until death. There is no great drama to focus on. No particularly terrible things happen. Just more of nothing. And attempting to multiply our feelings about spending one day indoors does not really get us there.
A punishment that is hard to imagine will not work very well. People contemplating breaking the law will not be especially deterred by dread of the punishment. In particular, though the concept of prison as an institution may be somewhat dismaying, it is hard to contemplate the difference in severity of spending different lengths of time in one.
Duration is a rather abstract dimension, and the difference between five years and ten years, especially the cumulative difference, is hard to imagine. Thus, contrary to the influential "law and economics" perspective, people are not able respond "rationally" to the schedule of prison time sentences for different crimes by making cost-benefit calculations for their actions that incorporate the "price" of punishment.
Nor do increases in sentences have the deterrent effect one might expect - so, sending armed robbers to prison for forty years instead of ten doesn't much reduce the incidence of armed robbery.
A punishment that is hard to imagine will also not satisfy the moral outrage of those who have been wronged. If a child is run down by a drunk driver, not only the parents but the society as a whole demands a severe punishment. Though a criminal justice system cannot be run on populist grounds in particular cases that would just be mob rule , in order for justice to be seen to be done it does need to respond to those demands, at least to some extent.
Thus, even though the professionals staffing the justice system may understand the severity of prison time as a punishment, their judgement may be superseded by the pressures of popular opinion. This is most evident where populist politics are integrated into the justice system, such as in America where judges and prosecutors are often directly elected.
Where prison is the only severe punishment available, and length of time the only measure of severity, one will naturally find that very long sentences will be handed out in such cases.
On an impartial view of the matter, the severity of the punishment often seems quite disproportionate. And yet the people will often remain dissatisfied - after all, aren't some prisons like hotels, with televisions and private bathrooms no less!
To many people, even ten years confinement to such a place hardly seems a just punishment for driving over an innocent child. This dissatisfaction lies behind the dismaying popularity of inhumane prison conditions, seen most clearly in the pervasiveness of sly jokes and official winking about prison violence and rape. One can understand this phenomenon as a reaction to the imaginative shortcomings of simple prison time as a punishment. If prisons are understood as places of physical and sexual violence, then a prison sentence takes on a much more dramatic character that is easier to imagine for both potential criminals deterrence and victims of crime retribution.
The harsh prison environment could exacerbate mental health problems, make people more prone to aggression, or make them cynical and distrustful of the legal system. Prisons could isolate prisoners from friends and family who might help them find jobs eventually.
Or prisoners may learn from other prisoners how to be better criminals. To examine how prison affects violent crime, our study compared people sentenced to prison to those sentenced to probation supervision in the community, using data on all individuals sentenced for a felony in Michigan between and They were followed through to track convictions for violent crimes.
The study focused on people who had committed a violent crime and were eligible for both prison or probation sentences. Such people were typically convicted of crimes like robbery or assault individuals convicted of more serious violent crimes like rape or murder are generally not eligible for probation. Determining whether differences in future violent offending are a result of prison itself is challenging, however.
Those who are sentenced to prison are probably more likely than those sentenced to probation to commit a violent crime in the future, even if they had not been sentenced to prison. To overcome this challenge, the study used the random assignment of criminal defendants to judges to mimic a randomized experiment. Different judges are more harsh or lenient in their sentencing, even within the same county courthouse.
Crime statistics demonstrate that since the s, rates of violence have fallen in the U. And although some people are dangerous and need to be in prison, in other cases, locking people up is a waste of taxpayer dollars that may do more harm than good.
Rather than getting tough on crime, justice agencies need to get smart on crime. For instance, rather than indiscriminately cramming everyone into prison, justice agencies should use scientifically supported methods to identify which defendants truly pose a danger to others. We are researchers who work with American and Canadian justice agencies to help them develop effective methods to identify and manage people who may be violent towards others.
We explain why jailing everyone is not the answer to preventing violence, and how many researchers have developed risk assessment tools to help justice agencies make better decisions about who to imprison and what services to provide. The U. However, many politicians have recently concluded that warehousing people in prison is costly and unsustainable.
As such, politicians have been trying to bring down prison rates. An example of this is the new First Step Act in the U. American politicians are shifting their thinking for many reasons. Here are a few:. Prisons are expensive to operate. In the U. Research shows that putting people behind bars does not reduce reoffending , and some studies show it can make matters worse.
Ultimately, a shift in thinking away from imprisonment as a default solution for criminals can free up the public purse for more effective preventive measures. Justice reinvestment is a data-driven approach to improving the criminal justice system and reducing the expenditure incurred on it. It focuses on harnessing the cost savings of lower rates of imprisonment by reinvesting the funds into areas at risk of crime.
The approach is evidence-based, following decades of research from public health, that a focus on prevention is often more cost-effective than focusing solely on a cure. While prison may seem like the obvious solution to anti-social behaviour, it is the least effective approach to making the community safer.
This article is more than 2 years old. Jarryd Bartle. The school-to-prison pipeline: how the criminal justice system fails at-risk kids Sarah Hopkins.
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