Guest Column: What prisons say about society

In his Oct. 2 New York Times article "To More Inmates, Life Term Means Dying Behind Bars," Adam Liptak stated that a growing reliance on life prison sentences in the United States raises a host of questions. With a growing number of studies showing that most prisoners become less violent as they grow older, Liptak asked if the cost of keeping them locked up justifies what may be a diminishing benefit in public safety. After nearly 175 years of prison use in America, we should take Liptak's inquiry one step further and reflect upon how prisons are utilized in today's society. Prisons have lost their way since the introduction of Eastern State Penitentiary in 1829. In fact, the prison experiment failed from the very beginning. When solitary confinement for the purpose of penitence created insanity, prison officials adjusted with different accommodations. Shortly thereafter, when overcrowding was a problem, they built more prisons. When governments found this burdensome, private companies were asked to help. Perhaps we have allowed for these and other failures of prisons because we have not adequately defined what success should be, or we have changed the definition too often throughout the years. The role of prisons today is no longer functional, it's symbolic: Prisons symbolize "justice." Victims and fearful potential-victims alike demand justice. Prisons deliver. In fact, the ominous structures themselves are probably all that is needed to satisfy the collective rage of society towards those who violate the laws. I have trouble getting past the symbolism of prisons in American society, and the punishment that is inflicted within their walls. Are we really protecting society by removing the select few who are caught committing illegal acts? Or are we more concerned with punishing these offenders at any cost? Fyodor Dostoyevsky claimed that the degree of civilization in a society can be measured by entering its prisons. So, to what degree are we civilized in America? Well, we must not expect too much of ourselves if we believe that society will improve by forcing people to survive the incivilities of prison life. The way in which we deal with our law violators can make us less than civilized. From the Salem Witch Trials to public stoning, America has a long history of uncivil punishments. Penitentiaries were developed as a way to correct this problem. That is, to facilitate repentance in a humane way. This implies that the degree of civilization in the United States is (and has been) measured by the way in which we punish. Only today, prisons have become more of a tradition that we follow blindly. Instead of serving their original purpose, they act more as a shield to protect us from the physical and mental abuses that we subject our incorrigibles to in the name of justice. Just as prison walls prevent us from seeing the penalty for illegal activity that is inflicted on our behalf, they also leave the realities of this punishment to our imagination - perhaps letting us believe that prison is deservedly worse than it may or may not actually be. In his 1972 opinion in Furman v. Georgia, Justice Potter Stewart claimed that capital punishment safeguards the stability of a society governed by law. "When people begin to believe that organized society is unwilling or unable to impose upon criminal offenders the punishment they 'deserve,' then there are sown the seeds of anarchy - of self-help, vigilante justice and lynch law." Although Stewart is talking about incarceration through death, this statement puts the rationales for other forms of incarceration into a new light. The way in which we use prisons in the United States says something about us to other countries. In his book Crime and Punishment in America, criminologist Elliott Currie wrote that "An incarceration rate that is many times higher than that of comparable countries is a signal that something is very wrong." Whether we're attempting to satiate the public's desire for punishment or to deter future offending, we cannot incarcerate our way out of the crime problem. Prisons have hastily become our employment policy, our drug policy, our mental health policy and our quick fix to meet demands that justice be served. True justice initiatives, however, should aim to create a society where it is easier for potential offenders to be good, not a prison system that is easier to overcrowd. Before America builds another prison, let's all take a moment to profoundly ask: "What are prisons for?" In many ways prisons harm the fabric of society, yet we build them and fill them regularly as if their overcrowding defines successful law enforcement. I only see a failed social welfare system. This should mortify all U.S. residents, as much as it damages America's image throughout the world.

Joel Caplan is a Ph.D. student in Social Welfare Policy.

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