Red and Blue
A 21st Century Prison System
Arnie Arnesen and Michael Krull
- Total annual cost of U.S. Correction System: + $68 billion
- U.S. incarceration rate world ranking: 1
- China's rank: 2
- The U.S. represents this percent of the world's population: 5
- But represents this percent of the world's prison inmates: 25
- The number of adults in prison, on parole or on probation: 1 in 31
- The total population of the U.S. corrections system exceeds: 7.3 million
- The number of adults in Georgia in prison: 1 in 13
- Number in Idaho: 1 in 18
- Number in NH: 1 in 88
- Percentage of prisoners that have been previously convicted: 60
- Number of African American adults in jail or prison 1 in 11
- Number of Hispanic American adults: 1 in 27
- Number of White American adults: 1 in 45
- Percent of Black Americans in the total U.S. population: 10
- Percent in the U.S. jail and prison population: 50%
- Total number of crimes reported annually: 36,500,000
- Percentage of crimes Black Americans are involved in: 9
- The likely hood that a black will be sent to prison vs. a white for drug offenses: 10.1x
- Percentage increase since 2000 in the cost of caring and housing prisoners: 300
- Percentage increase in higher education spending since 1987: 24
- Average cost per prisoner: $29,000
- In 2009 the prison population dropped by: 4777
- This is the first decline since: 1972
- Number of states that spend more on prisons than on education: 5
- The percent of reimbursement rates under Medicare or Medicaid that North Carolina health care providers bill the North Carolina Department of Corrections: 467
- The national one-year recidivism rate for offenders over 55: 3.2%
- The rate between 18-29: 45%
- Number of states that allow for Medical release of prisoners but rarely use it: 15
- The percentage range of the states total Medicaid costs paid for by the Federal government: 50-76%
- The percentage of the states total prisoner health costs paid for by the states: 100%
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D. Arnie Arnesen is a radio and TV commentator based in New Hampshire. She has lectured at Harvard, Dartmouth, UNH, SNHU, Vermont Law School, St. Olaf, and other colleges. She is a former NH Legislator and a former democratic nominee for Governor and Congress. Arnie has been a Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government's Institute of Politics at Harvard and has trainied women who want to run for office throughout the United States and future NH Leaders. You can hear Arnie every Wednesday on Talk of Iowa on IowaPublicRadio.org and every Friday on the Dan Mitchell Show on WKBKam.com. politicalchowder@gmail.com
RED
Prison Reform
By Michael Krull
Anyone who cares about the poorest communities in America must be concerned with the appalling conditions found in our prison system. Rather than places of rehabilitation, most prisons have degenerated into a nightmare of illegal activity (drugs, gang activity), brutality and a lack of control. If the government can’t control people who are under lock and key, how can it trust them when they are released into society?
In many inner city African American neighborhoods in our country, especially for the young males there, the cycle of poverty, crime, drugs, violence, gang activity and prison is all they’ll really know of life. In some neighborhoods, there are now third and fourth generation prisoners.
It seems clear that our current prison model is broken. Rather than helping people reform their lives and return to society, we have a model that creates generations of hardened criminals who are so used to prison culture they are unable to cope in society.
Rather than continuing to pursue the same failed model, we need to re-think how best to rehabilitate people so they are able to reenter society as productive citizens. At the state and local levels we must be willing to fund experiments and programs that work. By every measure, individual, social as well as financial, it will be far less expensive to experiment and develop programs that really work rather than continue to warehouse people in failed and dysfunctional prison systems.
Research has shown that many faith-based systems, or those which mirror significant aspects of faith-based programs, have a far better rehabilitation rate than the current model. Programs such as the Prison Fellowship’s Inner-Change Freedom Initiative create a faith-based center of activity and commitment aimed at changing a prisoner’s outlook on life. In other words, they create positive changes by helping an individual prisoner appreciate his or her family members and building bonds between people, which in turn create more positive outlooks.
Similar to the successful Alcohol Anonymous program’s 12 steps, the Inner-Change Freedom Initiative promotes five goals for successful rehabilitation:
- Willingness to condemn previous behavior
- Recognition that life is “a work in progress” and that spiritual growth is a lifetime process
- Replacement of the values of prison society with something more worthwhile
- Development of a sense of hope and purpose
- Recognition of the need to give back to society
Simply put – the program works. Research has shown that “graduates” of the program are two times less likely to be rearrested when compared to inmates with similar backgrounds and offenses who had not participated in the program. In Texas, where the program started, the recidivism rate is 8 percent, compared with 20.3 percent in the comparison group.
The American Psychological Association, hardly a right-wing group, has reported that, among those recovering from substance abuse, “higher levels of religious faith and spirituality were associated with several positive mental health outcomes, including more optimism about life and higher resilience to stress, which may help contribute to the recovery process.”
In a four-year recidivism research project by the National Institute of Healthcare Research funded by the Templeton Foundation which studied inmates in four New York State prisons, the Institute concluded that prisoners who attended 10 or more Prison Fellowship programs each year were 64 percent less likely to return to prison than inmates who did not participate.
One need not believe in a Supreme Being to believe that these programs work or to appreciate the benefits that these programs provide to those they touch: less crime, fewer victims, safer neighborhoods, more stable families, fewer court cases and fewer prisoners.
The Wall Street Journal wrote in an editorial entitled, “Jesus Saves,” “Critics of the faith-based approach may claim that their only issue is with religion. But if these results are any clue, increasingly the argument against such programs requires turning a blind eye to science.”
What we’re presently doing is clearly failing. We need to experiment to find better ways to help prisoners return to society. We have it in our power to literally save lives, rebuild families and reshape communities, yet some are so hostile to change, too afraid to rock the boat or too timid to experiment, that we may lose a vast majority of African American men to brutality, drug addiction and incarceration. That is an unacceptable outcome.
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Michael Krull is a graduate of Luther College and Iowa State University. He has worked on disaster relief for the State Department, a major Washington, DC public relations and political consulting firm, and is currently working for American Solutions for Winning the Future. He is a member of the Council on Emerging National Security Affairs.
