A report released by the Pew Center on the States shows over 1 in 100 adults in the United States are now living behind bars.
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The figure reflects more than 30 years of steady expansion of the prison population. The United States also leads in absolute numbers with 2.3 million adults incarcerated. China, whose population is more than four times that of the United States, places at a distant second with 1.5 million prisoners.
The Pew report expresses incarceration rates relative to the adult population. By contrast, the U.S. Department of Justice computes less meaningful statistics relative to the entire population, including those too young to be incarcerated.
The authors of the Pew report—which focuses primarily on the population in federal and state prisons and local jails—admit that even their statistics leave many inmates uncounted. Excluded are those held in territorial prisons, facilities managed by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, military facilities, juvenile facilities, and jails in Native American territories. At the end of 2006, there were 126,230 people held in such facilities.
One of the study’s conclusions is particularly noteworthy: Current prison growth is not driven by a parallel increase in crime or a corresponding growth in population, but rather by policies enacted by lawmakers.
Three-strikes measures, the criminalization of minor offenses such as drug possession, and scores of other sentencing enhancements touted by “tough-on-crime” politicians have fueled the prison population surge. There is no evidence that such harsh measures have a substantial impact on crime rates.
Another cause of the surging prison population is the increasingly severe punishment for parole violations. For instance, out of all California parolees who return to prison within three years of their release, 39 percent do so because of violations like failing a drug test or as minor as missing an appointment with a supervisor. Whether or not a prisoner even receives parole is largely up to the whims of parole boards.
In 2007, states spent $49 billion in prisons and jails that could have been put toward a number of social needs. While inflation-adjusted higher education spending from state general funds grew by 21 percent between 1987 and 2007, spending on the prison system rose 127 percent during the same period.
Pre-kindergarten schooling, which is proven to dramatically reduce juvenile and adult crime and improve high school graduation rates, could also benefit from dollars currently flowing into prisons.
In characteristic bourgeois fashion, the Pew analysis focuses primarily on the fiscal concerns of state governments. The inhumane character of the prison system takes a backseat.
For instance, the report points to the high risk of communicable diseases in prison, including Hepatitis C infection rates hovering between 25 and 40 percent in the vast majority of states. Older convicts must cope with depression and the early onset of chronic diseases. Rather than indicting the prison system for such appalling conditions, the authors focus solely on the high cost of treatment.
Similarly, the report mentions that legal struggles in California have court oversight of inmate health care with an annual price tag of $2.1 billion. A smaller prison population, the report argues, would mean less healthcare spending. Shorter sentences or earlier paroles are not seen as ends in themselves, but rather means to cut spending, since freed inmates would enjoy the same lack of government-provided health care as the general population.
The Pew report’s concern with ballooning prison budgets overlooks an important point: prisons are a profitable business. The largest U.S. private prison operator, Corrections Corporation of America, reported nearly $1.5 billion in total revenues in 2007. The Geo Group came in second reporting over $1 billion. Each person behind bars is a new profit opportunity.
Corporate vultures compete to divvy up government resources amongst themselves. Legislators are at the service of the highest bidder. Pleasing their major financial backers is a much higher priority for politicians than any fiscal responsibility considerations.
Prisons are also fundamental for the maintenance of the capitalist order. Capitalist competition leads to recurring crises where capitalists produce more than they can sell for a profit. The burden of these crises is placed on the shoulders of the working class in the form of mass layoffs, poverty, homelessness and want. In addition, national oppression keeps many African American and Latino communities in a perpetual state of economic crisis.
Especially since the high-tech revolution and decline of U.S. industry, incarceration has been a primary tool to control the increasing number of working poor and unemployed.
The Pew report reveals that only one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is incarcerated, but when we look at only Black males in the same age group, the figure shoots up to a mind-boggling one in nine. Black women too are imprisoned at much higher rates than women in general, and rates for youth far outpace other age groups.
The same institutionalized racism that confines people of color to the lowest rungs of the economy also makes them first in line to enter the prison system.
Whether one argues for prisons, correction programs, or a combination of measures such as those proposed by the Pew study, the bourgeois narrative puts all blame on those behind bars. But it is the ruling class that is guilty. It is guilty not simply of “faulty policies.” It is guilty of maintaining a fundamentally anti-worker, racist social order that incarcerates the poor and unemployed at an ever-growing rate.
