Among the many social issues debated around water coolers, across Internet forums, and in the presidential race, whether or not the United States government has an obligation to educate its masses isn’t much of a priority, but government spending (and what it does or does not accomplish) is a hot topic.
A report issued by The Pew Center On The States details the prison population count for all 50 states and the cost of that population’s upkeep. Of the more than 300 million residents of the United States, over 2.3 million of its adults are in prison or jail. That’s one out of every 100 of us.
This is a greater number of people than the combined populations of Washington, D.C., Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Denver, Colorado, and Seattle, Washington. The United States’ prison population exceeds that of any other country in the world – including China, a country with over 1.3 billion residents.
In 2007, the states spent over $44 billion on the incarcerated. After adjusting for 2007 dollars, that’s a tin cup-rattling 127 percent increase since 1987. Currently, this works out to almost $19,000 per prisoner per year.
For the same period, the adjusted spending on higher education climbed 21 percent. Due to recent overhauls in financial aid, the United States could send their entire criminal population to Harvard for a four-year degree and still spend less money per prisoner per year. For those currently making less than $180,000 a year, the cost of a Harvard education is $18,000 per person per year.
With this in mind, one wonders how the states justify cuts in education that would benefit the free citizen: those who have yet to (or would never) embark on a career of crime. For less money, we could be graduating rocket scientists instead of paroling rocks.
Sure, there are your serial killers, sex-offenders, and other assorted repeat offenders who should, by all means, stay in prison forever, but are there 2.3 million of them? More than one million of those currently behind bars are non-violent offenders. What, then, could possibly be the justification for there being that many people in prison in the first place when it costs less to educate them before they so much as pick a pocket? Vocational training and state universities, after all, cost a fraction of a Harvard education.
Alas, education is not a constitutional right – at least not on the free side of the wall. Part of the cost of prisoner upkeep includes their healthcare, vocational training, and higher education. We could say those who aren’t smart enough to avoid a life of crime will only take advantage of educational opportunities when its readily available and free – and we’d be right. The same could easily be said for the rest of us. Why, then, aren’t we providing education and healthcare as a preventative (for crime, poverty, and unemployment) instead of using it as a treatment?
That’s not how the United States taxpayer prefers to do business. Numbers and votes don’t lie: the United States taxpayer prefers to provide its criminal population with the very amenities it refuses to provide its law-abiding population. Also, the lawful have to do their own cooking.
Between the number of Americans without access to education and healthcare, and the number of people in prison, one could say American taxpayers are now too sick, too ignorant, and too tied up to take care of themselves.
No wonder the government wants to maintain the status quo.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Doug Hunter
Excellent article on a very valid issue. Prison sentences are getting completely out of hand. We've got teens in prison for decades for having sex with other teens, drug addicts in prison, a local teen even got 15 years for an drunk driving accident where someone was killed.
The nation for some reason has become very authoritarian in all aspects. This isn't a right-left issue, as both sides have failed miserably in recent years, this is an issue of individual rights in relation to the public as represented by the government.
Sadly, I don't see any end to this trend in sight. Perhaps it is a growing population which requires stricter controls as more and more of us are crammed into our allotted space. Maybe, the majority just feels 'safer' with big brother continually looking over the shoulder. Whatever the cause, it is a solution we should be seeking. Up to this point, anyone that chooses liberty over this new tyranny has been laughed into obscurity. Perhaps the future holds a change but I'm not holding my breath.
Freedom to do only the 'right' thing isnt really freedom at all.
2 - bliffle
There's a segment of the general public that believes that the answer to every problem is to punish someone, and they are numerous and powerful.
3 - Dr Dreadful
There's also a significant segment that isn't interested so much in the punishment aspect as in locking people up just so they can forget about them.
Three-strikes laws, such as we have in California, are just a way of getting around the constitutional safeguards against cruel and unusual punishments.
Punishment per se isn't a factor here as even the most eye-for-an-eye conservative knows that simply punishing a criminal doesn't work as a future preventive.
4 - JustOneMan
Rehabilitation doesnt work its a waste of money and energy and doesn't work as a future preventive either....
JOM "I aint seen the sunshine since I dont know when!"
5 - Matthew T. Sussman
"Also, the lawful have to do their own cooking."
Hey! I don't cook.
Then again, I'm not too lawful.
6 - Dr Dreadful
JOM "I aint seen the sunshine since I dont know when!"
Good taste would normally prevent me from making the obvious response to this, but in your case, JOM, I'll make an exception.
It's because your head is stuck so far up your [personal attack deleted by self].
7 - JustOneMan
Gee....what was that about....someone has an anger problem...speaking of sticking things up your [personal attack deleted by self)....how is your gerbil, 5 lbs of potatoes and crow bar feeling today?
Thank you editor...
8 - Dr Dreadful
JOM, I'm pretty sure your counselor has to see a counselor after dealing with you, if that's a representative sample of what's dancing around inside your head.
Back on topic, exactly what is the basis for your assertion that rehabilitation doesn't work? Any studies, statistics?
9 - JustOneMan
Sixty-seven percent of former inmates released from U.S. state prisons in 1994 were back in jail within three years, according to a study conducted by the Justice Department
10 - Dr Dreadful
JOM, all that study shows is that inmates are likely to reoffend. If anything, it demonstrates that incarceration doesn't work. It says nothing about the effectiveness, or not, of rehabilitation.
11 - Anon
They arent incarcerated to rehabilitate or get an education or learn life lessons. They are imprisoned as punishment. To contemplate what they did and to suffer for it.
I argue that the prison system is too liberal in the US. 3 meals a day, cable tv, climate control are not amenities prisoners should have. They should be treated like animals so they never want to go back. Most times today, gang members operate better from within the prison than outside.
I say let guards beat the prisoners now and then like they do in asia and arab countries. Thats where I want my tax dollars to go - I dont want my taxes giving some child rapist 3 square meals a day.
12 - bliffle
Anon sez: "#11 " February 29, 2008 @ 19:32PM " Anon
They arent incarcerated to rehabilitate or get an education or learn life lessons. They are imprisoned as punishment. To contemplate what they did and to suffer for it."
And actually what they contemplate is how better to commit crimes to get more money and evade punishment.
How sad.
Apparently 'anon' cannot conceive a way to break this pattern.
How sad.
13 - STM
Maybe the US would be better not sending so many people to prison for crimes other societies think could be better and more constructively dealt with through schemes like community service.
It's really out of hand.
However, there are plenty of people in US prisons who should never get out.
But by all means educate them, then at least they'll know where to put the apostrophe when they're ordering the next jail house hit.
14 - Baronius
This article treats Harvard and jail as if they're interchangable. Society doesn't randomly assign some people to prison, others to Ivy League schools. It takes individual effort to end up in either location.
Do you believe that the people who go to prison would have ended up in college, if that opportunity had been given to them? Well, guess what: it was. It may have been expensive and taken a lot of hard work, but a college education is available to anyone who has the persistence and the intellectual capacity.
As for the relative costs, that's a straw man. It would be even cheaper to push people off of bridges, but no sane person would suggest it. The cost of prison is high because of our compassion. We do provide care for our prisoners, and it would be wrong to cut back on it. We also, in the name of justice, put criminals in prisons, and there's nothing wrong with that.
15 - Marlon
Di,
Harvard instead of prison?
Methinks you stretch my credulity here. $19,000 vs. $18,000, you forgot some important things. Does that 18k include housing, food, transportation, clothing etc.? If it does then I need to go to Harvard.
In response to some of the other posts, what ever happened to personal responsibility? Life is nothing more complicated than choices and consequences. Choose well and the consequences include a good job with a decent wage, a comfortable home, and pleasant people to enrich your life. Choose poorly and the consequences can include a poor job with a lousy wage, a home in a depressing area, homelessness or prison. Don’t try to tell me that some people have no choice in life; there are always choices even if the choices are between horrible and terrible.
16 - Kevin
It is so funny how scientists of all kinds, psychologists, sociologists, biologists - even philosophers and theologians, cannot get a grasp on exactly what makes a human do what it does, and yet these computer clad, easychair aficionados, with questionable authority on the subject, feel so certain of their perspective. Perhaps it is because their perspective is so narrow? NAW!
17 - Dr Dreadful
Baronius, Marlon:
Diana isn't seriously suggesting we send prisoners to Harvard, she's using the relative costs as an illustration of how America has its priorities arse-backwards.
Anon:
To you, the Bill of Rights, the US Constitution and the UN Declaration of Human Rights are just things that happen to other people, aren't they?
To those who are quite happy with the current system of sending offenders to prison and then forgetting about them:
There's a word that describes the practice of continually throwing money at a problem and expecting a different result. Now what was it? Ah yes - stupidity.
18 - Anon
To you, the Bill of Rights, the US Constitution and the UN Declaration of Human Rights are just things that happen to other people, aren't they?
To me when you kill someone in cold blood or rape a child or engage in drug/sex trade - you give up your rights offered by the constitution and bill of rights. You had your chance and you blew it. I feel no sympathy for such people.
There is a reason why convicts and ex-cons arent allowed to vote. We already make them forgo their rights.
To me they are in jail for one reason only - punishment. And air conditioned rooms, cable tv, 3 meals a day, easy access to drugs , etc are not punishment.
I want them to suffer like their victims did.
I am not happy with the current system. The only money 'thrown' at it should go to guards, security measures and safety of prison employees. Nothing should go to the inmates' betterment.
19 - Dr Dreadful
Then you shouldn't be surprised when inmates come out of the prison system even more brutal than when they went in.
20 - Diana Hartman
I agree all violent offenders should be imprisoned forever. I agree the money spent to keep them away from the rest of us is money well spent.
I do not agree with the notion of spending money later on the very people we could’ve spent money on before but chose not to " and then calling it their choice. It wasn’t their choice to be born into poverty, without access to healthcare, or without access (read: knowledge of how to get and work toward) higher education. It was our choice not to provide the very basics of successful living.
It is calloused to suggest anyone purposefully chooses to abstain from the American dream when we have made it abundantly clear to many Americans that this is instead the impossible dream.
It starts with the little things, you know " our disregard for our fellow human beings. A little disregard here, a little more there; before you know it, we’ve an urban plight on our hands in the form of gangs, drug users and dealers, teen alcoholics, unwed mothers, deadbeat dads, ad nauseum.
By “disregard” I don’t mean our not letting an intellectually barren individual into college. Go further back and start at the beginning, if you would.
While the law says pedestrians have the right of way, first graders know this isn’t true with every precarious step they make on the way to school. Society is not there to protect them, thus sending the message that we don’t really care about them. Relief should not be the emotion a child looks forward to when reaching the school door. By that door, though, we expect excitement and motivation. By elementary lunchtime we’ve made it clear we will feed them shit and then blame them for their nutritional choices.
By middle school we’ve taught them that we won’t keep drug dealers, gun-totin’ hooligans and pedophiles away from them. By now they’ve spent about seven years eating crap food at lunch and failing or doing poorly in any post-lunch classes because their brains are bogged down " assuming they got breakfast. Again we, the adults, chide them, the children, for their poor nutritional choices. When the choice is crap or crap, what else are they to choose? We have the money to feed students and we choose to spend that money on crap. How is that the child’s choice? A parent who can ill-afford the rent, much less the growing cost of fruit and vegetables, isn’t an unwilling advocate in their children’s health. They do what many poor do: they buy the much cheaper white breads and high-fructose corn syrup products in bulk.
By the time a child is in the 9th grade, we’ve made it clear that our uptight, out-of-control puritan beliefs will keep them from knowing about their bodies, how they work and what their bodies will do. We chide their actions and the consequences of those actions while keeping information, education and choices at bay.
In high school we convince those traffic-dodging, crap-food-eating, sexually-ignorant children that getting into college takes an act of Congress. We hammer them with 4.0 expectations, rote learning, relentless testing, and SAT literature until they’re chanting what we’ve taught them all along: those without degrees are doomed " and that’s you, child. Our icing on the cake is telling them that even one failed grade will forever mar their “permanent record” and that their coming to us in 10th grade with a 2.0 has sealed their fate.
Anyone who has attended college without so much as a GED and rich parents knows this is the biggest crock of shit. How many of us with a college education didn’t get it until well after the age of 22 because we didn’t find out until later that it doesn’t take an act of Congress? Why did we have to wait when someone could’ve just said (and shown us how) getting into college is not that damned difficult, expensive or elitist?
For some reason we send elementary children to school at 9am and we send teenagers to high school at 7:30am. Wouldn’t it make more sense to reverse this schedule since younger children aren’t experiencing a developmental growth spurt that requires more sleep - and teenagers are? What could possibly be the harm/cost/inconvenience of flipping these around?
From day one we make it very clear that “by your own bootstraps” really means “Piss off you little bugger! If you don’t have college-educated parents with their own health insurance and more money than pieces of wood in their parquet floors, you’re on your own!”
Every failed adult is the result of our having failed a child. Sure, we can write off the child by writing off the parents " and that’s worked sooo well for us, hasn’t it?
Show me why we should not invest in the futures of our children and I’ll show you an annual $44 billion dollar prison tab.
21 - Anon
Then you shouldn't be surprised when inmates come out of the prison system even more brutal than when they went in.
They come out like that today anyway. So why not make them suffer as much as possible when they are inside?
22 - Baronius
Diana, by your own words you say that we should keep the drug-dealers and other criminals away from children... but I thought your original premise was that we lock up too many people.
Also, you leave out the positive roles that family, church, and neighborhood play. A neighborhood isn't just traffic and drug-dealers. There's Boy and Girl Scouts, Boys' and Girls' Clubs, YM and YWCA. Even a lousy neighborhood can be a motivation to find a way out. The relatives who leave can be role models, as much as those who stay.
Charles Murray once asked an interesting question. If you had to give your children up for adoption, would you rather your kids go to a family of limited means and good values, or a wealth family with no ethics and principles? I think that anyone would choose the latter. So our priorities for the poor (and all of us) have to change. We have to support decency - and I don't believe that government spending can do that.
You and I agree on nutrition. We disagree on sexual ethics. I don't know how much of either of those we can control. They both are more influenced by the parents than by government, even the most intrusive government. In a nutshell, we don't agree on what we would want the poor to do. More than that, we don't agree on whether we have the right to tell the poor what to do. (OK, that's two nutshells, but you see what I mean.)
23 - Dr Dreadful
They come out like that today anyway. So why not make them suffer as much as possible when they are inside?
I don't know, Anon. Perhaps I'd like to have my cake and eat it, too. Perhaps I'd like to find a way of treating prisoners in such a way that they're less likely to go straight back to committing crimes the second they're released. Perhaps I think it would also be a great idea to invest some time, money and effort into finding out why people turn to crime in the first place so that we can work out ways to prevent that from happening. Perhaps I'm fed up with so many of my taxes being tossed without a care into the penal money pit.
Marlon's assertion that inmates had the same opportunities as everyone else and should pay the penalty for making the wrong choices is simplistic and does nothing to advance the debate.
And rehabilitation isn't some wishy-washy, left-wing, liberal thing either. Even ultra-conservative Republican Senator (and erstwhile presidential candidate) Sam Brownback thinks it's a good idea, as does President Bush. The Senator and the President may disagree with liberals on the how, but the why seems painfully obvious.
Will any of this work? No-one knows. Try Googling "inmate rehabilitation statistics" and see what you come up with. It's not an idea that has ever really been taken seriously in this country. But some people are starting to realize that it at least deserves consideration. To dismiss rehabilitation out of hand without even trying it is idiotic and unforgivable.
24 - Baronius
Dread, it's not like we've never done studies. We know what steers people toward crime. It's like everything else in human behaviour: there's some heredity, some environmental conditions, and some personal choice. (It's unfair to say that we're dumping money into a criminal justice system without researching the root causes of crime. I'm pretty sure that you know your statement is false.)
The question is, how to best influence the root causes? A lot of it is cultural and moral, which are arenas that government can't control and shouldn't try to. Income and education are indicators, but those are related to cultural factors too.
I'm not taking Anon's position. He and I agree on the importance of an effective penal system, but he wants to make prison harder on the inmate. There's one real, important reform that we need to make, and that's protecting prisoners against physical and sexual violence. Incarceration should be punishment, not hell. We need a prison system that takes away civil rights but not human rights. Our current system actually encourages gang membership, which is just about the best way to guarantee future incarceration.
25 - Diana Hartman
Diana, by your own words you say that we should keep the drug-dealers and other criminals away from children... but I thought your original premise was that we lock up too many people.
We lock up too many non-violent criminals for too long. The only exceptions to “non-violent” should be stalkers, those who violate restraining orders, those who deal drugs and those in court for their 2nd DUI.
For example, (feel free to throw another one at me; I’m full of ideas) first time DUIs should be in court-mandated driving school (not that weenie classroom-only class they have now), community service to include having to participate in high school DUI-prevention programs, attend counseling, pavement-scrape wrecks caused by alcohol, and attend minor tasks in emergency rooms on weekend nights for the same duration as was going to be their sentence. Their license should be suspended that entire time, and they should be issued government-paid bus passes for that time. After they’ve done their time and work, they should have to pay a $1,000 re-licensing fee.
The uninsured, unlicensed, improperly tagged, those who could have caused wrecks with their negligence, and those who did cause wrecks should be treated similarly. From DUI to the negligent, any driver on their second offense and whose behavior could have caused injury or death should be treated as if they did. This is the only way to prevent them from accomplishing their unintended goal.
Driving is a privilege, not a right. Treating it like a right has caused a lot of people a lot of unnecessary pain and anguish.
Also, you leave out the positive roles that family, church, and neighborhood play. A neighborhood isn't just traffic and drug-dealers. There's Boy and Girl Scouts, Boys' and Girls' Clubs, YM and YWCA. Even a lousy neighborhood can be a motivation to find a way out. The relatives who leave can be role models, as much as those who stay.
I didn’t leave them out. This article is not about the good; it is about the bad. You want to read an article about the effects of positives, write it. I’ll be happy to read it. Please include what amounts of money and what resources these programs find and employ that allows hungry children to eat and college-worthy children to get their degrees. In this way, you’re telling those who wish to reach out and help where to go to do so.
Charles Murray once asked an interesting question. If you had to give your children up for adoption, would you rather your kids go to a family of limited means and good values, or a wealth family with no ethics and principles? I think that anyone would choose the latter. So our priorities for the poor (and all of us) have to change. We have to support decency - and I don't believe that government spending can do that.
Why can’t government spending do that? I would venture to guess that, at present, society is too busy thinking up dumbass questions, like Mr. Murray did, and pondering the answer to it instead of doing anything productive. Doing so also allows the inactive to shift the focus away from the fact that they’re not doing anything.
You and I agree on nutrition. We disagree on sexual ethics. I don't know how much of either of those we can control. They both are more influenced by the parents than by government, even the most intrusive government. In a nutshell, we don't agree on what we would want the poor to do. More than that, we don't agree on whether we have the right to tell the poor what to do. (OK, that's two nutshells, but you see what I mean.)
I believe we have the control to pay for healthcare, proper nutrition in our schools, and education across the board and up the ladder. We don’t exercise that control. That’s not the same as not having it.
We currently teach and train athletes. Sex is a way more important sport, if you will. How does one justify telling an athlete how to avoid injury by proper exercise and play, but we don’t want our children knowing how and what happens when egg and sperm meet? Better yet, many still don’t know why they should wear condoms. They wear them (when they do) for the same reason children look both ways before crossing the street: it’s not because they understand the meaning of the action; it’s because they think of it as a magic potion. This is why, every now and then, you’ll see a small child look both ways, and then cross the street right into traffic. There are those kids (and adults) who don’t understand why a condom doesn’t always work, or that it will not work if it breaks.
I’m not suggesting we tell the poor to do anything. I’m flat out telling my fellow man (and government representatives, and every naysayer of every community program I’ve ever worked for and with) that the poor (and fast, the middle class) are not afforded the same opportunities as the rich for no other reason than because they aren’t rich.
Working for what one has is by all means the best way to get it, and society should support that by providing the opportunity to do just that (see: how to get your driver's license back after just one DUI). Presently we expect a significant portion of the population to show up to work bathed even though they can’t afford to pay their water bill. We expect children to have energy and enthusiasm even though we know they haven’t eaten in a couple of days. We expect college-ready seniors in high school to have been born with the knowledge of how to approach, enroll and pay for college. We expect single parents to live off minimum wage when that wage won’t even cover the cost of daycare.
We allow potato chips to be bought with food stamps, but not vitamins. The government supports people but does not require attendance in finance classes, parenting classes, nutrition courses or vocational/GED/college training. In many instances, these classes are not available to be taken. It would still cost less to provide this, as well as transportation to these classes, than it would to continue to support them.