The Ex-Con Racket
The Problem of Returning
Inmates
By Eli Lehrer
America
releases 600,000 prisoners each year, does little to prepare them for
work or improve their habits and, not surprisingly, re-arrests most of
them within three years. People who have already spent time in prison or
jail move back to some of America's poorest neighborhoods to terrorize
neighbors who can ill afford the costs of crime. While quadrupling the
number of people in correctional facilities over the past 30 years has
played a major role in reducing crime, America's burgeoning prison
system has done a poor job insuring that convicts leave the prison gates
ready to lead productive lives.
A new Urban
Institute study, "From Prison to Home: The Dimensions and
Consequences of Prisoner Reentry," provides frightening
documentation of America's failure to improve the prospects for released
prisoners. The past decade, indeed, has seen nearly every indicator move
in the wrong direction: Fewer prisoners get education and drug treatment
behind bars while more violate parole terms. Despite tough-on-crime
rhetoric, over 100,000 people a year get released without any
supervision and per-convict spending has fallen for those who remain
monitored. Few released convicts find full-time work and many abandon
spouses and children. Some policies reek of negligence: California, for
example, releases mentally ill patients with only one day's worth of
psychotropic medication.
This situation needs to
change. Jeremy Travis, the former head of the National Institute of
Justice who conducted the study along with Amy Solomon and Michelle Waul,
has often observed that the one thing we know for sure about the people
we send to prisons is that nearly all of them will get out. Working to
improve prisoners' social integration should find a place at the heart
of a conservative, tough-on-crime policy. When hardened gangsters begin
terrorizing their neighborhoods as soon as they step off the bus, it's
clear that the punishment they received by going to prison didn't do
much good. So where does this lead us?
To begin with, we need
more research. Prior to the current study, nobody had taken a
comprehensive look at prisoner re-entry for 20 years. The Urban
Institute plans more studies and one can hope other think tanks and
universities will take notice. Existing research, however, suggests that
conservatives should support four policies: improved follow-up, better
drug treatment, in-prison work programs, and faith-based rehabilitation.
First, states should
follow up with nearly every inmate released from prison or jail. The
Urban Institute found that most states have no formal way of telling
released prisoners how to report for correctional supervision, much less
where to find work or get medical care. Parole and probation officers
have seen their caseloads swell along with the inmate population: While
existing programs in Boston and Orange County have shown that intensive
follow-up including home visits can do a lot to protect communities,
most areas will not spend money to replicate these programs. Almost
nobody, meanwhile, has even tried to replicate intensive supervision for
supposedly less dangerous offenders who, for example, "only"
break into cars rather than steal them. Long stretches of intensive
monitoring for these criminals might provide more effective punishment
and better community protection than a few extra months in jail. The
police can also play a role and corrections officials can help by
telling them where recently released convicts plan to live. Likewise,
states should require men and women who have spent more than a few
months behind bars to organize their post-incarceration lives. In
addition to the traditional bus ticket and cheap suit, released
prisoners should walk through the front gate with a plan for their
post-prison lives.
Second, we should
increase spending on drug treatment for everyone under correctional
supervision. The easy availability of drugs
behind bars lets prisoners believe that drug use has no real
consequences. Since about one-third committed their crimes on drugs,
this proves disastrous. Forcing convicts to undergo drug treatment both
on probation and while behind bars would improve their behavior upon
release. Likewise, states should redouble their efforts to keep drugs
out of prisons by improving education and training standards for the
guards who are the primary conduits for illegal drugs.
Third, work programs,
particularly those linked to commercial enterprises, offer significant
hope for rehabilitation. The federal prison system, where nearly all
inmates work for pay, presents a model in this regard. The discipline
and standards of work can adjust prisoners to social norms while wages
offer them a chance to pay restitution, offset the costs of their own
imprisonment, and build a nest egg to begin a normal life upon their
release.
Finally, we need to allow
more experiments with faith-based programs but shouldn't expect them to
help everyone. In a 1974 Public Interest article, scholar Robert
Martinson famously concluded that "nothing or almost nothing
works" in rehabilitating prisoners. While this remains conventional
wisdom, Martinson later revised his thinking: Individual programs can
work but no broad category or approach presents a foolproof path to
prisoner rehabilitation. This indicates that we need to try as many
different approaches as possible. A long history of left-wing
anti-religious bias has insured that faith remains one of the least
tried approaches and, given monotheism's 4,000-plus year track record of
success in improving people's lives, it deserves a chance.
Not even the power of
faith, however, will successfully reintegrate all of the 600,000 men and
women who leave correctional facilities each year. But being tough on
crime mandates that we start caring about them.
-- Eli
Lehrer is Visiting Fellow, Center for Legal and Judicial Studies
at The Heritage Foundation.
06/28/01
