Nonviolent offenders Ð'- Is Incarceration the Answer?

Neil Condon

CRJS 600

Dr. Richeson

Nonviolent Offenders Ð'- Is Incarceration the Answer?

"It's really clear that the most effective way to turn a nonviolent person into a violent one is to send them to prison," says Harvard University criminologist James Gilligan. The American prison system takes nonviolent offenders and makes them live side-by-side with hardened killers. The very nature of prison, no matter people view it, produces an environment that is inevitably harmful to its residents.

America locks up five times more of its' population than any other nation in the world. Due to prison overcrowding, prisoners are currently sleeping on floors, in tents, in converted broom closets and gymnasiums, or even in double or triple bunks in cells, which were designed for one inmate. Why is this happening? The U.S. Judicial System has become so succumbed to the ideal that Imprisonment is the most visibly form of punishment. The current structure of this system is failing terribly. To take people, strip them of their possessions and privacy, expose them to violence on a daily basis, restrict their quality of life to a 5x7ft cell, and deprive them of any meaning to live. This scenario is a standard form of punishment for violent offenders, although not suitable for nonviolent offenders.

Today, almost 70% of all prisoners are serving time for nonviolent offenses. U.S. States are spending an average of $100 million per year on new prisons and all U.S. taxpayers front the bill for a system that is not working (Carson). Why should we force taxpayers to pay to keep nonviolent criminals sitting in prison cells where they become bitter, aggressive, and more likely to repeat their offenses when released? The answer is we shouldn't, there are more reliable forms of punishment available, and rehabilitation and restitution are two alternatives I firmly believe are most effective than incarceration.

Nonviolent criminals should be punished differently. This is because nonviolent criminals do not learn from the misery of being in cells with violent inmates. Drug offenders for example are a public health problem, not public safety problem, and nonviolent offenders can be properly educated. We offer convicts no opportunities to learn compassion or take responsibility for what they have done, nor make restitution or offer atonement to their victims in any practical ways.

Nonviolent offenders should not be placed in institutions, such as prisons, which are full of violent murderers and rapists. Approximately 240,000 brutal rapes occur in our prison systems each year (Lozoff). Most of the victims are young, nonviolent male inmates, many of them teenaged first offenders. They are traumatized beyond imagination. Most of these inmates are nonviolent criminals who cannot or will not defend themselves. Unfortunately, this results in many of those nonviolent offenders turning violent by the time they leave prison.

A gruesome example of the ill-effects incarceration they have on a nonviolent person. A young man was once arrested for participating in a peaceful march that turned ugly when some young thugs started hurling objects at police. In the commotion he was arrested and was jailed in lieu of paying a fine in protest for his moral beliefs. He spent a forty-eight hour period incarcerated, in this time he was savagely raped by numerous violent prisoners. This savage and inhumane attack occurred over twenty years ago, and since then he has had years of therapy, and yet he has never recovered emotionally (Lozoff). His entire life still centers on the decision of one prison superintendent to place him in a violent cellblock in order to scare him and teach him a lesson. He cannot function properly in society; he is mentally scared and still to this day suffers ill effects crippling him of a normal life. If this is a normal outcome of incarcerating nonviolent offenders then this is not the answer.

Prisons are not scaring offenders away from crime; they are incapacitating them so they are hardly fit for anything else. The criminal justice system is keeping non-violent offenders, who offer little threat to the community, incarcerated for unduly long periods of time, with no opportunity for effective treatment, and no meaningful interaction with family members (NYSCC). In my opinion preventive programs, rehabilitation, and restitution is necessary when punishing nonviolent offenders. The purpose of sentencing is to effectively punish a person for their offense against society, and provide treatment for the adjustment of returning an offender as a constructive member of society.

Treatment is one answer, to rehabilitate a convicted offender to a constructive place in society through educational or vocational training or therapy. Community control programs offer solutions that can divert some nonviolent offenders from prison and place them under strict supervision, by use of probation, house arrest and electronic monitoring, community service, hallway house, or substance abuse treatment when deemed necessary. These programs involve scheduled supervision, restrictions on daily lives, and completion of community work hours, work programs, and rehabilitative service through outside agencies. These alternatives to incarceration are known as intermediate sentences. The punishment should fit the crime; by using these types of intermediate sentences the prison system can maintain expensive prison cells for violent offenders.

If nonviolent drug addicts are not being traumatized by the violence of prison, they are simply clogging our