OP-ED COLUMNIST
Plantations, Prisons and Profits
By CHARLES M. BLOW
Published: May 25, 2012 | Original here
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| Charles M. Blow |
“Louisiana is the world’s prison capital. The state imprisons more of
its people, per head, than any of its U.S. counterparts. First among
Americans means first in the world. Louisiana’s incarceration rate is
nearly triple Iran’s, seven times China’s and 10 times Germany’s.”
That paragraph opens a devastating eight-part series
published this month by The Times-Picayune of New Orleans about how the
state’s largely private prison system profits from high incarceration
rates and tough sentencing, and how many with the power to curtail the
system actually have a financial incentive to perpetuate it.
The picture that emerges is one of convicts as chattel and a legal system essentially based on human commodification.
First, some facts from the series:
• One in 86 Louisiana adults is in the prison system, which is nearly double the national average.• More than 50 percent of Louisiana’s inmates are in local prisons, which is more than any other state. The next highest state is Kentucky at 33 percent. The national average is 5 percent.• Louisiana leads the nation in the percentage of its prisoners serving life without parole.• Louisiana spends less on local inmates than any other state.• Nearly two-thirds of Louisiana’s prisoners are nonviolent offenders. The national average is less than half.
In the early 1990s, the state was under a federal court order to reduce
overcrowding, but instead of releasing prisoners or loosening sentencing
guidelines, the state incentivized the building of private prisons.
But, in what the newspaper called “a uniquely Louisiana twist,” most of
the prison entrepreneurs were actually rural sheriffs. They saw a way to
make a profit and did.
It also was a chance to employ local people, especially failed farmers
forced into bankruptcy court by a severe drop in the crop prices.
But in order for the local prisons to remain profitable, the beds, which
one prison operator in the series distastefully refers to as “honey
holes,” must remain full. That means that on almost a daily basis, local
prison officials are on the phones bartering for prisoners with
overcrowded jails in the big cities.
It also means that criminal sentences must remain stiff, which the
sheriff’s association has supported. This has meant that Louisiana has
some of the stiffest sentencing guidelines in the country. Writing bad
checks in Louisiana can earn you up to 10 years in prison. In
California, by comparison, jail time would be no more than a year.
There is another problem with this unsavory system: prisoners who wind
up in these local for-profit jails, where many of the inmates are
short-timers, get fewer rehabilitative services than those in state
institutions, where many of the prisoners are lifers. That is because
the per-diem per prisoner in local prisons is half that of state
prisons.
In short, the system is completely backward.
Lifers at state prisons can learn to be welders, plumbers or auto
mechanics — trades many will never practice as free men — while
prisoners housed in local prisons, and are certain to be released, gain
no skills and leave jail with nothing more than “$10 and a bus ticket.”
These ex-convicts, with almost no rehabilitation and little prospect for
supporting themselves, return to the already-struggling communities
that were rendered that way in part because so many men are being
extracted on such a massive scale. There the cycle of crime often begins
again, with innocent people caught in the middle and impressionable
young eyes looking on.
According to The Times-Picayune: “In five years, about half of the state’s ex-convicts end up behind bars again.”
This suits the prison operators just fine. They need them to come back to the “honey holes.”
Furthermore, the more money the state spends on incarceration, the less it can spend on preventive measures like education. (According to Education Week’s State Report Cards,
Louisiana was one of three states and the District of Columbia to
receive an F for K-12 achievement in 2012, and, this year, the state,
over all, is facing a $220 million deficit in its $25 billion budget.)
Louisiana is the starkest, most glaring example of how our prison
policies have failed. It showcases how private prisons do not serve the
public interest and how the mass incarceration as a form of job creation
is an abomination of justice and civility and creates a long-term
crisis by trying to create a short-term solution.
As the paper put it: “A prison system that leased its convicts as
plantation labor in the 1800s has come full circle and is again a nexus
for profit.”
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