AN ALTERNATIVE FOR PRISON Essay, Research Paper

America’s prisons have been called “graduate schools for crime.” It

stands to reason: Take a group of people, strip them of possessions and

privacy, expose them to constant threats of violence, overcrowd their

cell-

block, deprive them of meaningful work, and the result is an embittered

underclass more intent on getting even with society than contributing to

it.

Prisons take the nonviolent offender and make him live by violence. They

take the nonviolent offender and make him a hardened killer. America has

to wake up and realize that the current structure of our penal system is

failing terribly. The government has to devise new ways to punish the

guilty, and still manage to keep American citizens satisfied that our

prison

system is still effective.

Americans pay a great deal for prisons to fail so badly. Like all big

government solutions, they are expensive. In the course of my studies

dealing with the criminal justice system, I have learned that the

government spends approximately eighty-thousand dollars to build one cell,

and $28,000 per year to keep a prisoner locked up. That’s about the same

as the cost of sending a student to Harvard. Because of overcrowding, it

is

estimated that more than ten-billion dollars in construction is needed to

create sufficient space for just the current prison population. The plain

truth is that the very nature of prison, no matter how humane society

attempts to make it, produces an environment that is inevitably

devastating

to its residents. Even if their release is delayed by longer sentences,

those

residents inevitably return to damage the community, and we are paying

top dollar to make this possible.

Why should tax payers be forced to pay amounts to keep

nonviolent criminals sitting in prison cells where they become bitter and

more likely to repeat their offenses when they are released? Instead, why

not put them to work outside prison where they could pay back the

victims of their crimes? The government should initiate work programs;

where the criminal is given a job and must relinquish his or her earnings

to

the victim of their crime until the mental and physical damages of their

victims are sufficed. A court will determine how much money the criminal

will have to pay for his restitution costs, and what job the criminal will

have

to do to pay back that restitution.

The most obvious benefit of this approach is that it takes care of the

victim, the forgotten person in the current system. Those who experience

property crime deserve more than just the satisfaction of seeing the

offender go to prison. Daniel Van Ness, president of Justice Fellowship,

has said:

All the legal systems which helped form western law

emphasize the need for offenders to settle with victims. The

offense was seen as primarily a violation against the victim.

While the common welfare had been violated and the

community therefore had an interest and responsibility in

seeing that the wrong was addressed and the offender

punished, the offense was not considered primarily a crime

against the state as it is today. (76)

Restitution offers the criminal a means to restore himself-to undergo a

real

change of character. Mere imprisonment cannot do this; nothing can

destroy a man’s soul more surely than living without useful work and

purpose. Feodor Dostoevsky, a prisoner for ten years during czarist

repression, wrote, “If one wanted to crush, to annihilate a man utterly,

to

inflict on him the most terrible of punishments…one need only give him

work on a completely useless and irrational character” (77). This is

exactly

what goes on in the “make work” approach of our prisons and it is one of

the contributing factors to prison violence. To quote Jack Kemp, author

of

Crime and Punishment in Modern America:

The idea that a burglar should return stolen goods, pay for

damage to the house he broke into and pay his victims for

the time lost from work to appear at a trial meets with

universal support from the American people. There is, of

course, a reason that the concept of restitution appeals to

America’s sense of justice. Restitution also provides an

alternative to imprisonment for nonviolent criminals,

reducing the need for taxpayers to continue building

prisons. (54)

Working with the purpose of paying back someone that has been wronged

allows a criminal to understand and deal with the real consequences of his

actions.

Restitution would be far less expensive than the current system.

Experience shows that the cost per prisoner can be as low as ten percent

of

that of incarceration, depending on the degree of supervision necessary.

Removing nonviolent offenders from prison would also relieve

overcrowding, eliminating the necessity of appropriating billions more

public dollars for prison construction.

Restitution would deter crime with the same effectiveness as prison.

Prisons themselves have not done much of a job when it comes to

deterrence. Nations with the highest incarceration rates often have the

highest crime rates. But studies of model restitution programs

demonstrate

that they greatly reduce the incidence of further crime, since they

restore a

sense of individual responsibility, making the offender more likely to be

able to adjust to society. Reducing recidivism is the most direct way to

reduce crime.

Criminal justice authorities also tell us that it is not so much the

type of punishment that deters crime, but rather the certainty of

punishment. With respect to deterrence, virtually any sanction, imposed

swiftly and surely, has a deterrent effect. An effectively run

restitution

program will deter crime. It is believed that in many cases, aggressive

restitution programs would be a greater deterrent than the threat of

prison.

To quote author David Simon,

I remember talking in prison with a hardened convict who

had spent nineteen of his thirty-eight years locked up. He

was in for a heavy narcotics offense that drew a mandatory

life sentence. ” How in the world could you have done it?”

Simon asked.

” I used to be a rod carrier,” the convict answered, “on the

World Trade Center building-eighty floors up, getting

eighteen dollars an hour. One misstep and I was dead.

With hash I could make $300,000 a week. One misstep and

I was in prison. Better odds.” (Simon 75)

The immediate payoff of crime is so great that many are willing to risk

prison. The certainty of restitution, by requiring payment, takes the

profit

out of crime. The assets of organized crime members and big time

narcotics dealers, for example, could be seized at arrest and confiscated

on

conviction, with the offender ordered to make further restitution through

work programs. That is real punishment.

Many Americans believe in our current prison system, and

also believe that it is an effective form of punishment for the criminal.

Some would say that criminals can live decent, civilized lives in prison

and

graduate to decent, civilized lives in the free world. My question to

these

people is; how can criminals live civilized lives in an environment that

only

offers chaos and mild forms of anarchy? It is well known what goes on

behind closed doors in prison; terrible atrocities that make the blood

boil

and the stomach curdle are the only thing these prisoners are accustomed

to while they are in prison. Most inmates learn little of value during

their

confinement behind bars, mostly because they adapt to prison in immature

and often self-defeating ways. As a result, they leave prison no

better-and

sometimes considerably worse-than when they went in. The first time

offender who is arrested for burglary does not belong in a prison where

the

only thing he will learn is how to become a better and more violent

burglar.

Instead, why not make him pay restitution to the store owner whom he

robbed? In my opinion, if this form of punishment was initiated for the

lesser offender, our prisons will have the vacancies to incarcerate the

Jeffery Dahmers of the world in prison for life, instead of the infamous

“ten

to twenty, out in five”.

Crime is the result of morally responsible people making wrong

moral decisions, for which they must be held accountable. The just and

necessary response to such behavior is punishment, which may include

restitution for community service, stiff fines, or , in cases where the

offender is dangerous, prison. But let’s not kid ourselves any longer.

The

prison was not designed to cure the individual; it was made to lock him

up.