Here’s what Charles Shaw, author of Exile Nation, says about our incarceration rate:
“The United States has 5% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s prisoners. Criminologists have found that when too many people are incarcerated the crime rate actually increases. Imagine if we spent some of the $60 billion a year prisons cost on education, job training and healthcare. Paul Butler, a law professor, former federal prosecutor and author of “Let’s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice” (click) suggests ways to undo the damage caused by overincarceration.”
Could our County opt-out of the War on Drugs just a little bit? Instead emphasize Harm Reduction and Alternatives to Incarceration? Is the Get-Tough-On-Crime (especially victimless crime like drug use) really sustainable? Is the Incarceration Nation sustainable, along with the rest of our macho national profile? Is a macho militarized empire really sustainable? (Especially when funded by borrowed $$ and borrowed fuel?)
“Major responsibilities required of the county include the provision of most social service programs (child welfare, juvenile justice, senior citizen services, public health, mental health, jail, developmental disabilities, etc.) and responsibilities for local and state road maintenance. Counties also provide the majority of cultural and recreational amenities (e.g. parks, libraries, and snowmobile trails), law enforcement, health services, zoning and road maintenance for citizens in rural, unincorporated areas within their borders.” from this County Govt. in Wisc. fact-sheet from UW Extension.
In other words, the County can choose to some degree how to prioritize whether to emphasize law enforcement, prosecution, and jailing, or a social services approach to the problems I mention.
Ask many a voter “do you favor getting tough on crime, and locking up a lot of bad guys?” and you’d probably get a “yes.” Then ask, “do you favor an unsustainable, never-ending, ever-growing incarceration system paid for by ever-increasing taxes on you, the taxpayer, to accomplish this?” and you’ll probably get a Sarah Palin Tea-Party resounding “HELL NO!”
See, we Americans are capable of holding two completely mutually-exclusive contradictory ideas in our minds at the same time, and attempting to act on them simultaneously. That’s where real leaders distinguish themselves from people who are just going along to get along in the status quo. Good leaders cut through the cognitive dissonance and suggest a clear path out of a quagmire such as our current “criminal justice” system.
And that’s another reason why I’m endorsing Patty Dreier for our County Executive here in Portage Co., Wisc. While she doesn’t yet have available a fleshed-out position on county government’s role in the larger prison-industrial complex, I believe she would look at these issues with a far more open mind than Jim Gifford, the long-time county board member who has NOT been raising the issues of excessive incarceration, de-criminalization, alternatives to incarceration, and other notions of reform. His pitch has been: “I’ve been in County Govt. a long time, I have the experience.”
Perhaps, but it’s the kind of experience that keeps us trudging down the same old, dead-end road. As soon as the voters had defeated a $72 million referendum on a new Justice Center, the County Exec. and Board began trying to find a way to build the thing anyway, deciding to pursue a $29 million Courthouse expansion first (with the $43 million jail expansion to follow soon thereafter, no doubt). Perhaps this decision to thwart the voters played some role in the defeat of the sitting County Exec?
Perhaps if the Board and Exec. will take some time and allow the economy to recover (as everyone expects), then pursue a big new building project several years from now under a new economic boom (which everyone expects), this will sit better with voters. What will have been lost in taking more time, getting more real input from citizens, and studying alternatives to the prosecutorial, jail-prone methods now in use? Could we lessen the pressure on the criminal justice system, along with the need to proceed toward that expensive new set of buildings?
Major props and thanks to Charles Shaw for keeping this issue in the front of my mind, too.
Bobby G
Stevens Point WI