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As Prison Population Sinks, Jails Are a Steal
HughPickens.com writes After rising rapidly for decades, the number of people behind bars peaked at 1.62 Million in 2009, has been mostly falling ever since down, and many justice experts believe the incarceration rate will continue on a downward trajectory for many years. New York, for example, saw an 8.8% decline in federal and state inmates, and California, saw a 20.6% drop. Now the WSJ reports on an awkward byproduct of the declining U.S. inmate population: empty or under-utilized prisons and jails that must be cared for but can't be easily sold or repurposed. New York state has closed 17 prisons and juvenile-justice facilities since 2011, following the rollback of the 1970s-era Rockefeller drug laws, which mandated lengthy sentences for low-level offenders. So far, the state has found buyers for 10 of them, at prices that range from less than $250,000 to about $8 million for a facility in Staten Island, often a fraction of what they cost to build. "There's a prisoner shortage," says Mike Arismendez, city manager for Littlefield, Texas, home of an empty five-building complex that sleeps 383 inmates and comes with a gym, maintenence shed, armory, and parking lot . "Everybody finds it hard to believe."
The incarceration rate is declining largely because crime has fallen significantly in the past generation. In addition, many states have relaxed harsh sentencing laws passed during the tough-on-crime 1980s and 1990s, and have backed rehabilitation programs, resulting in fewer low-level offenders being locked up. States from Michigan to New Jersey have changed parole processes, leading more prisoners to leave earlier. On a federal level, the Justice Department under Attorney General Eric Holder has pushed to reduce sentences for nonviolent drug offenders. Before 2010, the U.S. prison population increased every year for 30 years, from 307,276 in 1978 to a high of 1,615,487 in 2009. "This is the beginning of the end of mass incarceration," says Natasha Frost. "People don't care so much about crime, and it's less of a political focus."
The incarceration rate is declining largely because crime has fallen significantly in the past generation. In addition, many states have relaxed harsh sentencing laws passed during the tough-on-crime 1980s and 1990s, and have backed rehabilitation programs, resulting in fewer low-level offenders being locked up. States from Michigan to New Jersey have changed parole processes, leading more prisoners to leave earlier. On a federal level, the Justice Department under Attorney General Eric Holder has pushed to reduce sentences for nonviolent drug offenders. Before 2010, the U.S. prison population increased every year for 30 years, from 307,276 in 1978 to a high of 1,615,487 in 2009. "This is the beginning of the end of mass incarceration," says Natasha Frost. "People don't care so much about crime, and it's less of a political focus."
Am I the only one who thought the prison population was at an all time high?
Sure it's good to have fewer people behind bars...if you happen to be people. But corporations run many jails now, and depend on your tax dollars to simply put food on the table for their corporate families. If there are no inmates, who will make money feeding them $0.86 meals, or use 19th century methods of medical care to maximize profits, or make payments on their newly built facilities? It's still a young industry. Won't you think of the corporate children?
I say it's time we stand up and put more people behind bars. For you. For Me. For the corporations. Because when corporations suffer, we all feel the hurt.*
*not really, but it seems like a good slogan
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Not necessary. First I would put more women in prison. The ratio imprisoned man/woman should at least be 50:50. You know, gender equality and such.
Zombie Apocalypse Shelters.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
Since everything from office buildings to warehouses to shopping malls have been converted to data centers, why not prisons? They already offer a ton of security and the cells would be kind of perfect for those customers that buy those little fenced off spaces of multiple racks. The water lines for the sinks might be repurposable for some knd of cooling loop.
The other conversion option is a secure place for containing Ebola, or perhaps as safe havens FROM Ebola..
as a "casualty" of the US's insane and poorly thought out War on Drugs...I find this news wonderful.
the idea that people like me, whom got caught up in the drug game due to low self-esteem, need to goto state prisons and waste away with child-rapists, murderers, and "lifers" is not only totally ridiculous, but utterly dangerous.
i spent 22.5 months in Florida prison's, all because I got caught with some MDMA and weed at a rave in Orlando, FL in 2001.
i am basically serving a life-sentence for this crime, as corporate BG checks prevents me for getting hired.
hopefully, now others won't be subjected to the things I've been through.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
Hurricanes, flooding, and the occasional viral outbreak would be much easier to weather if some known infrastructure was already in place.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
The main reason for the drop in prison population is because so many criminals in Wall Street went scot free after the 2009 crisis. Just make up the short fall in prison population by jailing the top people of large financial firms. They have long ago gone from "too big to fail" and "too big to jail" to "too big to be free".
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I notice that the author couldn't resist putting some spin on the story - the part about relaxed drug enforcement.
However -
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-1
The government tells us that ALL crime is down. For example, from 2001-2011, the violent crime rate went down 21.9%.
Everything dropped - property crimes, rape, the whole lot.
Good for the programmers. 8x10 cubicle with it's own bathroom. Wired for high speed cablemodem. Has a door that closes so nobody can sneak up behind you while you are working.
Good for the managers. Control smoke breaks and general working hours from a master control system. Video surveillance is taken to a whole new level.
"There's a prisoner shortage"
Framing it this way is typical of a mindset that is depressingly endemic in our culture. We do not have a shortage of prisoners, we have an excess of prisons.
"but can't be easily sold or repurposed"
Bullshit! You know what you have to do to turn it into an airsoft and paintball facility? Put up a sign and a cash register.
California had a massive reduction in prison population due to courts deeming that holding people under severely crowded conditions was unconstitutional. I'm too lazy to do the math and figure out what percentage of the alleged 20% this accounts for. Law enforcement being allowed to legally seize property without any charges has further reduced "criminals" but again to what level? That one we don't know, because there is little to zero accountability by agencies practicing this illegal act (and there are numerous agencies doing this).
Not to take away the point regarding "Crime Conundrum", but rather pointing out that I have a feeling that the claim of reduction is at least partially a statistics game to make someone look good.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
1.6M? The U.S. prison population is 2,266,800 according to Wikipedia. It's been over 2M for years, and was 2,418,352 in 2008.
In the U.S., the word "prison" is more specific than you think. Look at the third figure from the top at your own link.
In 2010, the U.S. prison population was ~1,518,000 (state and federal prisons). The U.S. jail population was ~749,000. The sum of those is 2,267,000; then comes another ~90,000 in juvenile detention (see the table below the figure). Add all these (and a bunch of smaller numbers, such as holding facilities for immigrants, and military facilities), you get the number of incarcerated people, which is the number you mention.
But yes, AFAIK the U.S. still incarcerates more people than any other country in the world, both as a fraction of the population, and in absolute numbers. There's a long way down to the next on the list.
We teach our children that making money is more important than being happy, ie 'that degree is useless' or 'don't go into that field, you won't get paid much.' Our economy is based on wealth (gotta have money to make money), and our media is obsessed with how great the rich have it (next on Cribs, some athlete's ridiculously huge mansion and garage worth more than the GDP of a small nation).
The schools, the media outlets, hell even the sports teams are owned by the same cabal of very, very wealthy people.
So, if there's a 'wealth envy' issue in America, it's cultural, and the rich have no one to blame but themselves.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese