The troubling U.S. incarceration rate and the dubious governmental policy of overcriminalization have been frequent topics on this blog. The toll of the overcriminalization policy on citizens and their families is incalculable.
Part of the problem in modifying this destructive policy is that the constituency of current and former prisoners and their families is not powerful politically. But another aspect of the problem is that most well-meaning citizens who could make a difference on this issue politically have never experienced the hell that is most prisons in the United States. Itís human nature to avoid addressing even an important issue that one has never had to confront personally.
Thatís why this A Public Defender post is important ñ it provides penetrating insight into the destructive nature of our governmentís overcriminalization policy:
I sat in a prison cell yesterday. . . .
There was a bed ñ a small bed ñ that was the length of the room. At the foot of the bed a metal toilet, with no cover. Just beyond that the heavy metal door, with a slit for a window. The door was maybe 3 feet wide, if that. At the head of the bed, if you were laying on your right side, youíd be about half a foot away from an ugly metal desk with holes that pretended to be drawers. This could not have been more than a foot long. The bed was flush with one wall. The desk with the opposite.
The bed looked hard, cold and dirty. And thatís it. This particular cell happened to have a window at the head of the bed. A window looking out onto nothing. Any future inhabitant of this particular cell would have it good. It was a single. Across the narrow passageway from this cell was another, identical in every respect except two: it was a double cell and there was no window. (Hereís a post I wrote a while ago about a different take on prisons in a foreign country.) [. . .]
I willed myself to stand there, though, for a minute. To look around at the bare walls, the bare desk, the dirty toilet and imagine someone ìlivingî there.
I even briefly closed my eyes and tried to picture myself there, day in and day out, for months, which turned into years, which turned into decades.
Would I survive? How does anyone? Would I give up and stop bathing, shaving, eating? Would I maintain my sanity or would I quickly decompensate? How long would it be before Iíd want to kill myself? [. . .]
People in cells are lucky, though. The next portion of the tour took me to the dorm-style housing. Which is nothing like any dorm youíve ever lived in. Imagine instead the makeshift MASH hospitals, or perhaps the busiest train station in your neighborhood at rush hour, except instead of standing, people are milling about a hundred bunk beds on that tiny platform.
There is no privacy, there is no solitude, there is no being left alone. You are part of a large crowd. You are in someoneís face and they are in yours. You are a collective. Day in and day out. You share your bedroom with 125 other people.
Leaving the prison, I asked my colleague: cell or dorm? Thereís no debate. Cell. Iíd rather lose my sanity by myself.
A truly civilized society would find a better way.
tom,
you frequently, correctly detail the relatively uncommon problem of white collar over-criminalization and might more constructively address the more common problem of, say, drug criminalization?
i disagree the toll is incalculable–it is well articulated by you and terrible for the wrongly convicted. it is part of the price for the correctly convicted. even if drug criminalization is wrong-headed, legalization would still carry a calculable toll.
also disagree rate of incarceration is too high–it should be proportional to the rate of crimes committed and historically has been lower due to lack of space, due to prohibition-style drug laws clogging our prisons. this is also what strains prison funding which results in the inhumane prison conditions you articulate. add freedom from sexual/physical assault to the TOP of the list that a truly civilized society would demand for the incarcerated.
Dr. T, I don’t dispute that ending drug prohibition would have costs. However, the reality is that drug prohibition simply doesnít work.
Given that, the issue really becomes harm reduction, not ìwinning the war on drugsî. Once the goal becomes harm reduction, it becomes a lot easier to swallow the idea of ending drug prohibition and the huge amount of violence and ruined lives it has produced. And even if ending prohibition would increase drug addiction, is a policy that allows people to harm themselves really worse than a policy that imposes substantial harm on innocents?
The Cato Institute recently published a study by Glenn Greenwald on Portugalís eight-year experiment with drug decriminalization. The fact that most people probably werenít aware that use of even hard drugs in Portugal doesnít carry a criminal sanction is a good sign that the program is working.
Greenwald found that drug overdoses were down, drug-related crime and violence was down, and there was no measurable increase in overall drug use.
I don’t draw any broad conclusions about a policy enacted in a country with a small and homogenous population as compared with the U.S. Moreover, no one can know for certain what would happen if America were to legalize drugs. Weíve had some form of prohibition in this country for 100 years, so one knows what will happen if that policy is changed.
My sense is that the best approach is simply to end the drug war at the federal level. Let states and localities formulate their own policies. Youíd have little Amsterdams and Portugals, as well as little Utahs and Georgias. Youíd probably have some cities that completely legalize and youíd have places — probably entire states — that donít change a thing. People who think this is an important issue could then vote and move to jurisdictions with drug laws that reflect their own values.
great info, tom. i have had the impression your musings on over-criminalization were directed more toward less common, white-collar crime and appreciate these thoughts on drug prohibition.
think i would favor portugal style legalization of ALL drugs, throughout the nation, as a matter of civil liberty and allow darwin and personal responsibility to deal with the ramifications. the portugal findings are not surprising though i would have expected a slight uptick in use.
legalizing pot only will please some pot-heads but do little to addressing the problem of drug crime.