perfidy

Ralph Luker at History News Network has posted a notice about the most recent data on incarceration rates in the US.

Currently, .686% of our adult population is in prison. It doesn't get higher than that in any other country in the world: not Russia, not Cuba, not Burma, not Saudi Arabia. It gets higher than that only in some states within the United States. Louisiana and Texas lead the pack with 1.013% and .966% of their adult populations in prison.

If harsh sentencing for nonviolent, drug-related offenses is a major cause of the high rates of incarceration, the rippling effects are substantial. They exaggerate father-absenteeism. They disfranchise citizens in many states. Our prisons become colleges in the culture of crime.

"Colleges for the culture of crime." Well put. In short, harsh sentencing for minor offenses leads to the creation of a permanent ostensibly criminal underclass.

Luker is careful to note that this data "is not self-interpreting", which is nice, but he raises a very important point which the data nevertheless suggest. It's long been known that US prisons have a culture and social organization all their own, and said culture is even romanticized, though sometimes at arms' length (see Johnny Cash's prison recordings, the HBO series OZ, about a million films). But despite the cuteness and redemptive power of films like "Out of Sight" and "Shawshank Redemption," I'm willing to bet that most prison terms don't come with a helping of folksy wisdom or Jennifer Lopez' ass. Imprisoning people for long periods for minor drug offenses does far more harm than good to the fabric of American society by facilitating the growth of the aforementioned permanent, disenfranchised, officially/ostensibly criminal underclass. As that group's numbers swell, so do the negative effects to the "felons" themselves, their families, communities, and the nation as a whole.

Two points ensue: One-- Is it better to have a small-time pot dealer in jail for two weeks and fined $5000, or to have that small-time pot dealer in prison for five years during which time he cannot raise his kids or provide for his family, and where he makes new contacts within the world of professional and recidivist crime?

Second, how does it help that, once he gets out, he is now a "convicted felon" and less able to get a decent job, is ineligible for federal financial aid to go to college, and may not vote in many places? For all the crying about how families in America are broken (usually "inner city families," which is of course an ostensibly polite word for "black"), and about how society is going to hell in a handbasket because strong community and family leaders are absent, isn't it possible that the "breakdown of the family" is partially due to the fact that, for example, a third of "inner city" men will spend some time in prison, and therefore will find the obstacles to college, a career, and prosperity (y'know, old style American by-the-bootstraps self-improvement) that much more insurmountable?

And this certainly isn't just an "inner city" problem-- I know of small-town briar-hoppers where I'm from who periodically attend "going away" parties for friends and family because the Feds found their stash. Good people, smart people, people deeply in debt, done for good. The economic disadvantages already arrayed against them merely become more acute while they spend time in prison, resulting in the possibility of more future drug dealing, and ensuring that they remain marginal economic, social, and political players.

There's plenty of counterarguments to this. You might argue that "you do the crime, you do the time," which begs the question of fairness in sentencing. Why does possession of a recreational plant extract have sentencing parity with murder in some places? You also might argue that the War on Drugs, which puts so many in prison, is more important than individuals who may be inconvenienced in the process. Really? So keeping me from eating a pot brownie is more important than heading off the formation of a permanent poor officially-designated criminal underclass?

Which brings me to a corollary. The definition of "felony" is far too loose today. For all the carping about the misuse of the word "treason," the extension of "felony" to cover an array of nonviolent, noncapital offenses is far more troubling. Many states don't allow felons to vote ever again, such laws being passed back when a contract killing, rather than possession of a pot plant, was a felony. Disenfranchising pot dealers is not what the framers of such laws had in mind, and it certainly offends me, the final arbiter of taste and decency. (The disenfranchisement of felons was already a problem in Florida in 2000, and I expect it will be the Next Big Thing in election-year controversies.)

Not that I think this kind of thing will change any time soon, but I wish it would. Not that I know a damn thing about the law or sentencing. But some things just seem so wrenchingly paradoxical, so against common sense, that the perfidous mind just boggles.