Spring Break
Prison capacity issues symptomatic of problems
Editorial Board Harvard Crimson Harvard
Issue date: 2/16/09 Section: Opinion
(U-WIRE) - In the next few years, up to 57,000 inmates may walk free from California's prisons.
On Monday, a panel of federal judges ordered the state to reduce its incarcerated population by up to 40 percent within a two-to-three year period in order to relieve severe overcrowding.
The court stated that overcrowding was the primary reason for what it called "unconstitutional conditions" in California's prisons - conditions that judges said were so poor that prisoners regularly commit suicide or die from lack of adequate health care.
This drastic nature of Monday's ruling underlines the serious practical problems within not only California prisons, but also within our current prison system as a whole.
Prisons at around 200 percent capacity - with thousands bunked in hallways and gyms for lack of housing space - cannot possibly provide an acceptable level of medical or mental health care to inmates.
In addition to prompting action to reduce overcrowding, we hope that the court order will also be viewed as a call for a more thoughtful, long-term evaluation of our theory of punishment.
Strategies, such as outsourcing prisoners to other states or privatizing prisons, do little to solve the deeper issues that cause overcrowding in the first place - we need a critical examination of the ways in which we deal with those who have broken the law.
While rising crime rates contribute to a continually growing prison population, the current capacity issue is also a product of problems in our legal system and our conception of punishment.
The legal system is designed to penalize those who commit crimes and to decrease the likelihood of persons committing subsequent crimes - for many offenses the focus should not be on punishment, but on rehabilitation and preventive measures.
Reforming sentencing policies could go a long way in taking the pressure off crowded prisons. Instead of heading to prison, more inmates could be sent to rehabilitation facilities that would help them prepare to reenter society once their sentences are up, going a long way toward reducing high recidivism rates.
On Monday, a panel of federal judges ordered the state to reduce its incarcerated population by up to 40 percent within a two-to-three year period in order to relieve severe overcrowding.
The court stated that overcrowding was the primary reason for what it called "unconstitutional conditions" in California's prisons - conditions that judges said were so poor that prisoners regularly commit suicide or die from lack of adequate health care.
This drastic nature of Monday's ruling underlines the serious practical problems within not only California prisons, but also within our current prison system as a whole.
Prisons at around 200 percent capacity - with thousands bunked in hallways and gyms for lack of housing space - cannot possibly provide an acceptable level of medical or mental health care to inmates.
In addition to prompting action to reduce overcrowding, we hope that the court order will also be viewed as a call for a more thoughtful, long-term evaluation of our theory of punishment.
Strategies, such as outsourcing prisoners to other states or privatizing prisons, do little to solve the deeper issues that cause overcrowding in the first place - we need a critical examination of the ways in which we deal with those who have broken the law.
While rising crime rates contribute to a continually growing prison population, the current capacity issue is also a product of problems in our legal system and our conception of punishment.
The legal system is designed to penalize those who commit crimes and to decrease the likelihood of persons committing subsequent crimes - for many offenses the focus should not be on punishment, but on rehabilitation and preventive measures.
Reforming sentencing policies could go a long way in taking the pressure off crowded prisons. Instead of heading to prison, more inmates could be sent to rehabilitation facilities that would help them prepare to reenter society once their sentences are up, going a long way toward reducing high recidivism rates.
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