There’s more to justice than prison (continued)

FOR THE LAST 30 years, prisons across the country have been filled almost as quickly as they have been built, spawning a massive prison industrial complex. The idea of "corrections" was at the heart of the American prison system when it was created in the 19th-century, but rehabilitation was largely abandoned in response to the perceived excesses of the 1960s. Locking the door and throwing away the key became part and parcel of laws and sentencing guidelines that stigmatized prisoners as individuals deserving little more than incarceration and punishment. Reagan’s "Just say no" campaign, which reduced the myriad social and economic factors surrounding drug use to a simple issue of ethics, signaled one culmination of the politics of simplistic morality.

Though the value of these policies as a deterrent is widely disputed, crime rates have fallen dramatically in New York, Boston, and many other major American cities since the end of the guns-and-crack epidemic in the early 1990s. Yet approximately 2.2 million people are currently incarcerated, a 49 percent increase since national crime rates began to fall in 1991. The current incarceration rate of 714 per 100,000 residents is the highest in the world, surpassing that of Russia and South Africa, which place second and third, respectively. With 75 percent of ex-offenders returning to prison within five years, it has become increasingly evident that our correctional facilities are more capable of recycling the products of entrenched social ills than preparing prisoners for a productive life on the outside.

"We’ve put so many people in jail over the last 30 years," observes Rodriguez, who moved to Rhode Island from Boston nine years ago and previously worked in low-income housing development and with the Rhode Island Community Food Bank. "It’s become an epidemic. I think it’s a public health crisis, and we have to start paying attention to it."

The outcry over recidivism’s social and economic cost has intensified, and Washington has heard it. Though a national bill allocating federal money to anti-recidivism programs died in committee during the last session of Congress, Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) is sponsoring a similar bill, called the Second Chance Act, which enjoys bipartisan support. "The federal government has made a commitment to reentry as a cornerstone to criminal justice," says A.T. Wall, director of the Rhode Island Department of Corrections (DOC), "and I’m optimistic that additional federal funds will . . . keep these efforts alive."

Like most states, Rhode Island’s prison population has grown enormously since the 1970s, as state and federal sentencing guidelines have landed more and more low-level offenders in jail for longer periods of time. In the last 30 years, Rhode Island’s incarceration rate jumped 500 percent — the state’s prison population numbers 3400, according to the DOC — and seven new jails have opened to accommodate the ballooning population. Forty percent of those inmates are serving time for nonviolent drug offenses.

The drive to incarcerate has also depleted resources and support for programs that keep prisoners from returning. "Tough on crime" has come to stand for "tough on criminals," who are denied various programs and educational opportunities while in jail. As of 2003, California, which once claimed an impressive state college system, now spends more on prisons than it does on colleges and universities, according to the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. While there is no critical mass of politicians reversing their stances on these issues, Steve Brown, director of the Rhode Island chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, suggests that many are beginning to recognize how, "There’s no such thing as a free crime bill."

This recognition is not unique to Rhode Island. The state is one of seven receiving federal technical assistance grants to develop ways of reducing recidivism, with a focus on improving services offered to prisoners before and after they are released. Nationwide, the opportunity to replenish exhausted state budgets is beginning to counterbalance the political benefits of appearing tough on crime. In Massachusetts, Republican Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey proposed a bill in February that would require ex-offenders to undergo a post-release supervision period with access to services aimed at easing their reentry, including help with housing assistance, drug treatment programs, and job training. With almost half of the 20,000 ex-offenders who annually leave Massachusetts’ prisons returning to jail within the year, and 40 percent of those arriving back in their communities without state supervision, Healey cites the need for a system that "not only punishes crime, but also stops crime from happening in the future."

In Rhode Island, the situation is no better. With more than 50 percent of inmates finding themselves under Department of Corrections’ supervision within three years of being released — and taxpayers loath to foot the $35,500 cost of imprisoning someone for a year — ex-offenders have, in Wall’s words, "gone from America’s most wanted to America’s least wanted."

Though Providence represents only 17 percent of the Rhode Island’s population, 38 percent of the state’s prison population comes from, or returns to, the capital city. The success of reintegrating ex-offenders into society, especially in poor neighborhoods like South Providence, the West End, and Olneyville, could mark a difference between revitalization and disintegration. Political Punishment, a report released by the Family Life Center in December, found that 40 percent of the male population of South Providence is behind bars at any given time.

A decade ago, progressive organizations advocating on behalf of prisoners and ex-offenders had to fight the state. These same organizations now find themselves in the awkward position of seeking state support to provide services to a population adversely affected by certain state policies. The FLC is emblematic of this dichotomy. It operates a resource center that provides counseling to ex-offenders, helps them develop job skills and compose resumes, while also working to overturn legislation that was, in many cases, instituted at the behest of the FLC’s potential benefactors at the State House.