DOES AMERICA LOCK UP TOO MANY PEOPLE?

REVIEW
By Juan Montoya
An editorial in the June 22 issue of The Economist raises some interesting – if not disturbing – points about our national bent to incarcerate people, even for seemingly ludicrous reasons for it.
Whether it's inebriation, marijuana possession, trespass, failure to appear, etc., we seem bent on punishing any or all offenses by locking people up.
Consider, for example, the lead example of the article.
"In 2000 four Americans were charged with importing lobster tails in plastic bags rather than cardboard boxes, in violation of a Honduran regulation that Honduras no longer enforces. They had fallen foul of the Lacey Act, which bars Americans from breaking foreign rules when hunting or fishing. The original intent was to prevent Americans from, say, poaching elephants in Kenya. But it has been interpreted to mean that they must abide by every footling wildlife regulation on Earth. The lobstermen had no idea they were breaking the law. Yet three of them got eight years apiece. Two are still in jail."
I had long known from reading various sources that the United States, among industrial nations, led the world in putting people behind bars. But in the article several examples were revealed that show the results of our yen for incarceration.
In America (The Land of the Free, the United States);
* One American adult in 100 festers behind bars (with the rate rising to one in nine for young black men).
* Its imprisoned population, at 2.3 million, exceeds that of 15 of its states.
*The rate of incarceration is a fifth of America’s level in Britain, a ninth in Germany and a twelfth in Japan.
The article traces our willingness to imprison our fellow countrymen (and women) from a tendency that sharpened around four decades ago as rising crime became an emotive political issue and voters took to backing politicians who promised to stamp on it.
This created, the writer says, a "ratchet effect": "lawmakers who wish to sound tough must propose laws tougher than the ones that the last chap who wanted to sound tough proposed. When the crime rate falls, tough sentences are hailed as the cause, even when demography or other factors may matter more; when the rate rises tough sentences are demanded to solve the problem."
As a result, America’s incarceration rate has quadrupled since 1970.
Similar patterns are evident elsewhere, such as in Britain wher the incarceration rate has more than doubled, and in Japan wher it has increased by half over the same period. Still, the author point out, the results of this policy are not encouraging: America’s violent-crime rate is higher than it was 40 years ago.
One cause, the writer states, is mandatory minimum sentences, which remove judges’ discretion to show mercy, even when the circumstances of a case cry out for it. “Three strikes” laws, which were at first used to put away persistently violent criminals for life, have in several states been applied to lesser offenders. Drug law violations have led to harsh sentences not just for dealing illegal drugs, but also for selling prescription drugs illegally.
The vagueness of the laws also play a role, the article argues.
"America imprisons people for technical violations of immigration laws, environmental standards and arcane business rules. So many federal rules carry criminal penalties that experts struggle to count them. Many are incomprehensible. Few are ever repealed, though the Supreme Court recently pared back a law against depriving the public of 'the intangible right of honest services', which prosecutors loved because they could use it against almost anyone. Still, they have plenty of other weapons. (For example), by counting each e-mail sent by a white-collar wrongdoer as a separate case of wire fraud, prosecutors can threaten him with a gargantuan sentence unless he confesses, or informs on his boss."
As a result, the article states, "American prisons are now packed not only with thugs and rapists but also with petty thieves, small-time drug dealers and criminals who, though scary when they were young and strong, are now too grey and arthritic to pose a threat. Some 200,000 inmates are over 50—roughly as many as there were prisoners of all ages in 1970. Prison is an excellent way to keep dangerous criminals off the streets, but the more people you lock up, the less dangerous each extra prisoner is likely to be. And since prison is expensive—$50,000 per inmate per year in California—the cost of imprisoning criminals often far exceeds the benefits, in terms of crimes averted."
As usual, the states are laboratories where new methods to lower incarceration rates can be shown to work. New York, for example, bucked the national trend when it cut its incarceration rate by 15% between 1997 and 2007, while reducing violent crime by 40%.
The article argues for fewer and clearer laws, so that citizens do not need a law degree to stay out of jail.
"Acts that can be regulated should not be criminalised. Prosecutors’ powers should be clipped: most white-collar suspects are not Al Capone, and should not be treated as if they were. Mandatory minimum sentencing laws should be repealed, or replaced with guidelines. The most dangerous criminals must be locked up, but states could try harder to reintegrate the softer cases into society, by encouraging them to study or work and by ending the pointlessly vindictive gesture of not letting them vote."
In the end, the article suggests that bad economic times may play a deciding role in reversing the incarceration trend.
"It seems odd that a country that rejoices in limiting the power of the state should give so many draconian powers to its government, yet for the past 40 years American lawmakers have generally regarded selling to voters the idea of locking up fewer people as political suicide. An era of budgetary constraint, however, is as good a time as any to try. Sooner or later American voters will realise that their incarceration policies are unjust and inefficient; politicians who point that out to them now may, in the end, get some credit."