One of the main obstacles to prison reform is lack of awareness. Most do not realize that the American prison population has reached ruinous levels, 7.3 million people. Prisons and prisoners are out of sight and out of the public mind. Issues that are not on the public mind tend to be of little concern to legislators. Few really know or appreciate the problems facing prisons, prisoners and guards. When criticism is made today, it is likely to come from those who have no practical solutions.
Offenders sentenced to prison are the least popular major segment of our society. Many law-abiding people want prison to be miserable. Most advise against inmates receiving services or amenities. Public anger overflows when the plight of a victim of a particular crime is worse than the fate of the perpetrator. Politicians of law and order are elected. Candidates perceived as soft on crime lose. Consequently, legislators do not like to appropriate money beyond the minimum requirements. Prison reform based on continued public funding is almost always doomed to failure.
The biggest barrier to prison reform is the failed incarceration model we use now. American society abandoned the less costly corporal punishment and with it the high value of public punishment. Because incarceration is hidden from the eyes of the people, it cannot provide the benefit of example to those outside the prison. The prisoners live in a human cesspool with the threat of gang violence. Putting people in cages and waiting for them to reform has never worked. Recurrence is usually well above 50%. All prosecutors can do is put people in prison cells for additional years … and adding years to a sentence that we now know has little deterrent value. The likelihood of being caught deters crime, but doubling the length of sentences is only marginally effective as a deterrent. Over several decades, we continued to accumulate additional years and mandatory sentences, increasing the prison population. We reduced the speed and the amount of capital punishment, thus keeping murderers in prison for decades or for life. The lawsuits placed additional requirements on prisons. We have gotten into an expensive corner by abolishing corporal punishment, speedy capital punishment and other methods.
For more than 150 years, since the invention of the penitentiary, everyone agreed that prisoners should work inside the prison, for the benefit of prisoners, the state, victims of crime and families outside the prison. Prisons used to make money until special interests practically banned prison industries. Inmates now manufacture products for the state, but are unable to participate much in private enterprise due to restrictive federal and state legislation. Only a small fraction of prisoners work full time. Prisoners are primarily the largest group of full welfare recipients in the nation.
Societies finally do what makes economic sense with their prisoners. So we know that change is coming. Right now, it costs $ 150 million every day for prison expenses alone, not including mounting costs for other segments of the criminal justice system, missed opportunity costs, or collateral social costs that undermine our entire society.