The tide is turning

The tide is turning

By: Enver Solomon

America is the world’s highest incarcerator of people in prison but hard financial times are now causing the US to close prisons. Enver Solomon urges the UK Government to do the same

Out of a crisis often comes unexpected opportunity. In America, where one in every 33 adults is incarcerated or on parole, the economic recession is leading to the closure of prisons and a reduction in prison budgets that have ballooned in recent years. The world’s highest incarcerator is finding that hard financial times are the best chance to try to curb its addiction to prison.

A number of states have decided to consolidate operations and simply close down prisons. Colorado, Kansas, Michigan and New Jersey have all shut down or announced the closing of at least one jail. Despite opposition from powerful vested interests and communities that want to protect employment opportunities, these states have concluded that locking up so many adults is simply financially unsustainable. As J. Michael Brown, the secretary of the State Justice and Public Safety Cabinet in Kentucky, a part of America that is not known for being soft on crime, told journalists, the brutal reality is that when ‘dollars get scarce, it forces a tremendous amount of scrutiny’.

Even the tough talking Republican governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has called for $400 million (£268.5 million) to be cut from the state’s corrections budget, which in recent years has grown larger than the state’s education budget. California’s jails are overflowing and the money has run out leaving Schwarzenegger, who has long opposed any change in prisons policy, with no option but to think again. Nearly all prisoners serve long periods of parole in California, regardless of the severity of their offence. Many revolve in and out of custody as a result of punitive parole conditions but now the governor has finally acknowledged that his policies fail to rehabilitate offenders. As a first step, officials are seeking to divert more drug offenders into treatment.

In recent years, criminal justice budgets across America have grown at a phenomenal rate. An analysis published earlier this year found that in the past twenty years, budgets have quadrupled and are outpacing every major spending area outside of health care. States spend on average nearly six per cent of their total annual expenditure on prisons and probation, which in 2008 amounted to a total of $48 billion (£32.2 billion).

The most common cost saving trend among prison and probation departments has been to look at parole systems. Overall, far more prisoners are required to serve parole in America than in England and Wales. Rather than taking a strict prescribed approach to parole violations (something that has become increasingly common in the UK) states are adopting new programmes that seek to assess offenders’ risks and needs and then support compliance.

Several states are also looking at sentencing reform. In New York state for example, Democrat Governor David A Paterson has taken the bold step of proposing an overhaul of the so-called Rockefeller drug laws that impose lengthy mandatory sentences on many non-violent drug offenders. There is a good chance that the law will finally be repealed as politicians from both Democrat and Republican sides increasingly acknowledge that there are thousands of people behind bars who don’t need to be there.

The reform agenda is also finding a voice in Congress in Washington. A bill has been introduced in the upper house, the Senate, by Virginia Democrat Jim Webb proposing the creation of a national commission to review the criminal justice system, with a particular focus on sentencing and the use of custody. The proposed legislation has bi-partisan support from Senators including senior Republicans. It will require equal support from politicians in the lower House of Representatives if it is to stand any chance of legislative success, but for now there is clearly a national consensus emerging that the endless prison building of recent decades needs to stop.

Whilst there are promising signs that the hard line on the use of prisons for adults is being relaxed, the incarceration of juveniles has already been subject to progressive reform in many states. Policies have been implemented to divert children who have committed minor offences from prosecution, to dramatically reduce the numbers held in custody awaiting trial and to set up evidence based alternatives to custody. In New York state, three juvenile detention centres have been closed and in Illinois the number of children in custody has been cut by a third in the last ten years. Meanwhile in Washington DC a former prison reformer who is in charge of the capital’s juvenile justice system has embarked on a radical reform agenda. Vincent Schiraldi’s vision is to have a relatively small number of children held in secure units that have a treatment focus rather than a punishment ethos.

There are of course still plenty of examples of tough law and order policies to be found across the United States but for now, at least, the tide does appear to be turning in many parts of the country. There are no signs yet of this happening in the same way in England and Wales. Perhaps as fiscal belts are tightened even further in the months ahead, politicians from all parties, who have often looked across the Atlantic for policy ideas, will take note of the new approach to prison reform that is unfolding across America.

Enver Solomon is deputy director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King’s College London. He is currently coming to the end of a 12 month leave of absence in Boston, USA.