[NYTr] More on US prison system a costly and harmful failure

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Reuters - Nov 19, 2007
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1841666120071119

U.S. prison system a costly and harmful failure: report

By Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of people in U.S. prisons has risen
eight-fold since 1970, with little impact on crime but at great cost to
taxpayers and society, researchers said in a report calling for a major
justice-system overhaul.

The report on Monday cites examples ranging from former
vice-presidential aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby to a Florida woman's
two-year sentence for throwing a cup of coffee to make its case for
reducing the U.S. prison population of 2.2 million -- nearly one-fourth
of the world's total.

It recommends shorter sentences and parole terms, alternative
punishments, more help for released inmates and decriminalizing
recreational drugs. It said the steps would cut the prison population
in half, save $20 billion a year and ease social inequality without
endangering the public.

But the recommendations run counter to decades of broad U.S. public and
political support for getting tough on criminals through longer, harsher
prison terms and to the Bush administration's anti-drug and
strict-sentencing policies.

"President (George W.) Bush was right," in commuting Libby's perjury
sentence this year as excessive, the report said. But he should also
have commuted the sentences of hundreds of thousands of other
Americans, it said.

"Our contemporary laws and justice system practices exacerbate the crime
problem, unnecessarily damage the lives of millions of people (and)
waste tens of billions of dollars each year," it said.

The report was produced by the JFA Institute, a Washington
criminal-justice research group, and its authors included eight
criminologists from major U.S. public universities. It was funded by the
Rosenbaum Foundation and by financier and political activist George
Soros' Open Society Institute.

The Justice Department dismissed the recommendations and cited findings
that about 25 percent of the violent-crime drop in the 1990s can be
attributed to increases in imprisonment.

"The United States is experiencing a 30-year low in crime, in large part
due to the tough enforcement actions we've taken in the last decade,"
department spokesman Peter Carr said.

SHIFTING ATTITUDES

But there are signs of shifting attitudes on sentencing policies. Some
financially strapped states are shortening sentences and Congress is
moving to pass increased help for released prisoners, said Executive
Director Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project, which has advocated
alternatives to long sentences.

"Compared to where we were in the mid-(19)90s, it's been a very
significant change," Mauer said.

More than 1.5 million people are now in U.S. state and federal prisons,
up from 196,429 in 1970, the report said. Another 750,000 people are in
local jails. The U.S. incarceration rate is the world's highest,
followed by Russia, according to 2006 figures compiled by Kings College
in London.

Although the U.S. crime rate began declining in the 1990s it is still
about the same as in 1973, the JFA report said. But the prison
population has soared because sentences have gotten longer and people
who violate parole or probation, even with minor lapses, are more
likely to be imprisoned.

"The system is almost feeding on itself now. It takes years and years
and years to get out of this system and we do not see any positive
impact on the crime rates," JFA President James Austin, a co-author of
the report, told a news conference.

The report said the prison population is projected to grow by another
192,000 in five years, at a cost of $27.5 billion to build and operate
additional prisons.

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.
Women represent the fastest-growing segment of the prison population,
the report said.

"The massive incarceration of young males from mostly poor- and
working-class neighborhoods, and the taking of women from their families
and jobs, has crippled their potential for forming healthy families and
achieving economic gains," it said.

(Editing by David Alexander and Cynthia Osterman)

) Reuters 2006. All rights reserved.