As of 2008, there were roughly 2.3 million inmates in state and federal prisons, and local jails, representing about 0.7 % of the entire population, and about 1.0 % of the adult population.
The rate for violent crimes peaked in 1992 at 0.76% of the population. The rate has been falling since then, and is now at 0.47 %, the lowest rate since 1976. The rate for property crimes peaked at 5.35 % of the population in 1980, hovered around 5% for the next decade, then began declining in 1992. It now stands at about 3.3%, the lowest it’s been since 1969. 1992 was a watershed year, apparently.
The population of the U.S. has been increasing steadily, however, rising from 179 million in 1960 to over 310 million today, for a 68% increase in just over 50 years. Ergo the steady rise in absolute number of prisoners. One other factor contributes to the rise in prison populations: repeat customers. Depending upon the type of crime, the recidivism rate within three years of release from prison ranges from 40% to 80%, with an average of about 70%.
Okay, that’s the number of people inside the walls of a jail or prison. But the total number of people who are under “supervision” by law enforcement agencies is much higher. Here’s the headline from a report by the Dept. of Justice in December of 2007: “One in every 31 U.S. adults was in prison or jail or on probation or parole at the end of last year.” As 2006 closed, that number was 7.2 million men and women. Now for the money.
State and federal prisons have roughly the same annual cost per inmate, around $22,600, as of 2001. I imagine this price has escalated in the last few years. But with that value alone, applied to all institutions, we’re talking roughly $52 billion in annual costs. Add a couple of billion for capital expenditures involving facility construction, expansion and equipment, and you have a total “correctional industry” of about $54 billion.
Two-thirds of these expenditures go to salaries, wages and benefits. That’s about $36 billion going into the local economies surrounding the institutions. If we estimate an average annual income of $50,000 (the average salary for a deputy or federal guard) for “correctional industry” employees, that equates to over 723,000 employees. That’s an employee population of about half of WalMart’s worldwide staff. Another way to look at it is that 723,000 people are being paid to keep 2,300,000 out of the workforce. So we’re talking 3,000,000 people consuming $36 billion to produce nothing—no products or services of any significance (discounting for the moment as inconsequential the license plates, golf shirts, roadside janitorial services). This industry is paid to ensure that very little is produced, and especially very little damage, by keeping people out of the community’s where they would otherwise (likely) cause material and physical harm to others. Tax payers, that is.
Therefore, I would like to posit that the “correctional industry” is a form of a protection racket. The industry essentially guarantees us that nothing bad will happen by the hands of its participants if we keep paying our annual extortion of $54 billion. It’s not even insurance, because if something bad does happen to us by one of those many former inmates who (two out of three times) repeats their poor behavior and lands back in a cell, we can’t file a claim and receive reimbursement for fraud: we paid for protection and didn’t get it.
It has been said by experts and the headlines confirm that prisons are overcrowded. We don’t have enough beds and cells to house all the inmates. Our prisons have been averaging between 95 % and 114 % of capacity. So new prisons are built, as they have been over the last few decades, get filled up, and then we have to build more. Build it and they will come.
One more, admittedly anecdotal, piece of evidence for the extortion racket interpretation of the “correctional industry” comes from someone who should know, i.e., a convict. I won’t complicate this column by going into how this occurred, but I hired an ex-con a couple of years ago. We got to talking about recidivism and I asked Charles why he thought the rate was so high. One reason he described is that the gangs inside the walls are weakened when one of their members is released. He talked about one gang whose paroled members are required to commit a crime within a specified time period and return to prison. Charles also said what we all might logically conclude: many prisoners come to prefer prison, whether consciously or sub-consciously. It represents a stable social structure, with little demands and a low risk of eviction. The prisoners spend years incarcerated, learning how to succeed in a socio-economic system that is not found outside the prison walls. Upon release, they soon find themselves drawn back to the friends, habits and comfortable routine that prisons offer. Food, shelter, health care, education, recreation and even conjugal visits…with no bills and little to lose.
One example of an alternative approach to the “correctional industry” is Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona. He’s the guy you read about who houses convicts in tents, removed TV and coffee from the services offered inmates, established chain gangs for men and women, created an accredited High School curriculum, designed an effective drug treatment program and requires inmates to wear pink underwear. Sheriff Joe has made the prison environment just distasteful and inconvenient enough that inmates who inhabit his world wish they were somewhere else. They don’t want to come back. The ACLU has had its beefs with Sheriff Joe, and that’s good. “Distasteful” can quickly become “torturous” if someone isn’t watching closely. And Joe’s approach to preventing illegal immigration has many Hispanics worried that he is just a racist. The bright light of scrutiny is always welcome when it’s aimed at people who have the authority to take freedom away from citizens.
But Sheriff Joe evidently doesn’t care if the “correctional industry” shrinks and his job becomes superfluous. That’s why he’s running for re-election again this year. He gets paid if he prevents crime before the outlaw is jailed, rather than getting paid when the jail is full.