http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=3080f72f-f81d-4ca2-957f-1752a9f6e2b4
As Parliament prepares to pass Criminal Code changes that would lengthen penalties and expand mandatory minimum sentences, a new report says the U.S. experience with similar measures has been a costly waste of money.
Due largely to tough-on-crime policies, the Unlocking America report says, there are now eight times as many people in U.S. prisons and jails as there were in 1970.
Yet the crime rate today in the U.S. is about the same as it was in 1973, and there's little evidence that the imprisonment binge has had much impact on crime, says the report by the JFA Institute, a Washington-based organization that does criminal justice research.
In fact, the U.S. states with the lowest incarceration rates generally have the lowest crime rates, it says.
Since 1990, the growth in U.S. prison populations has been driven by longer sentences, including mandatory minimum sentences and laws that require offenders to serve most of their sentences in prison.
The report calls on U.S. lawmakers to embark on a program of "decarceration" by shortening sentences, eliminating the use of prison for technical violations of parole or probation, and decriminalizing "victimless" crimes such as drug offences.
The recommendations run directly counter to measures in the Harper government's omnibus crime bill.
The Harper tough-on-crime bill increases mandatory minimum sentences for a variety of violent offences and includes reverse onus provisions that could keep repeat violent offenders behind bars for life.
The bill, which the government has designated as a matter of confidence, is expected to receive third reading before the House rises Dec. 14.
The report's proposals also fly in the face of legislation introduced this week that would provide mandatory minimum penalties for various drug crimes and double the maximum penalty for cannabis production to 14 years.
Critics accuse the government of relying on the same tough-on-crime strategies that have failed in the U.S.
"We hopefully don't want to start importing crime policies that have been demonstrated to be ineffective and counter-productive in the United States," says Don Stuart, a law professor at Queen's University.
Rather than looking for effective ways to deal with crime, says University of Toronto criminologist Tony Doob, the government has opted for simple changes in the criminal law that "obviously aren't going to do anything. But they sell the public on the idea that these things are going to be effective." Unlocking America's nine authors are leading U.S. criminologists and sociologists who have spent their careers studying crime and punishment. "We are convinced that we need a different strategy," they say.
With 2.2 million people behind bars on any given day, the U.S. leads the world in imprisonment. China, with 1.5 million imprisoned, is second.
U.S. taxpayers now spend more than $60 billion a year on corrections, says the report. "The net result is an expensive system that relies much too heavily on imprisonment, is increasingly ineffective and diverts large sums of taxpayers' money from more effective crime control strategies." Much of the burden has fallen on disadvantaged minorities. Blacks and Latinos make up 60 per cent of the U.S.'s prison population. According to the report, eight per cent of American black men of working age are now behind bars. "In effect, the imprisonment binge created our own American apartheid," it says.
"At current rates, one-third of all black males, one-sixth of Latino males and one in 17 white males will go to prison during their lives. Incarceration rates this high are a national tragedy." U.S. prisoners receive sentences that are twice as long as British prisoners, three times as long as Canadian prisoners and five-to-10 times as long as French prisoners, the report says. "Yet these countries' rates of violent crime are lower than ours." Since the early 1990s, U.S. crime rates have fallen sharply and are now about 40 per cent below their peak. The report says it's "tempting" to conclude that this decline occurred because incarceration rates soared during the same period.
But a "large number of studies" contradict that claim, it says. "Most scientific evidence suggests that there is little if any relationship between fluctuations in crime rates and incarceration rates." In fact, in many cases, crime rates have risen or fallen independent of imprisonment rates, it says. "New York City, for example, has produced one of the nation's largest declines in crime in the nation while significantly reducing its jail and prison populations." The report draws three conclusions about imprisonment's effect on crime: if there is one at all, it's small; it diminishes as prison populations expand; and the "overwhelming and undisputed negative side effects of incarceration far outweigh its potential, unproven, benefits." Incarceration in the U.S., it says, has had numerous unintended consequences, ranging from racial injustice and damage to families to civic disengagement and worsening public health.
Incarceration can even increase crime, the report says. One study found that after incarceration passes a certain tipping point, it becomes counter-productive. "When too many men are removed from a community, family and social life are destabilized, leading to higher crime rates."
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It's uncanny how similar racism and the stigma of drug-users can be. I often hear people (in my rich college community) refer to drug-users as if they are not even human, or at best, irresponsible, helpless, addicts.
The reason prison and drug policies in the U.S. is the same reason for all of the mind-blowing failures of our way of life; People are raised to fear the government, and to "hate" drugs, to the extend that "rights" and "scientific fact" are placed on the back shelf.
The problem lies within the subconcious of Americans. Just like racism, the tendencies to fear and "hate" the drug-culture are passed down through parents and school systems as standard. And just like Racism, it's going to take a long, long time to fight the indifference and ignorance that many people people accept as Truth.
And just like Racism, nothing will ever be accomplished while conservative media, right-wing religious nut-cases, soul-less politicians, and an insight-less voterbase are steering the opinions and legislation in the States.
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