Real prison reform needed beyond election talk

by Rachel Cramsey, PEP Board Member

Prison reform has become a popular topic of conversation among prominent political actors as of late.  We have seen many Left and Right voices come together to call for a revamp of the United States’ current prison system.  There’s a good reason for this outcry: two million people are currently incarcerated for nonviolent offenses alone^[1].  We have locked away a large portion of our own population.  Part of this increase is evident in communities of color and how they have been targeted by police practices.  A recent study showed a 231 percent increase in the number of black men imprisoned between the early 80s and 2011, as opposed to an increase of 198 percent for white male sentences in the same time period^[2].  Another way of considering our prison population is to understand that one child in 28 is presently experiencing the trauma of having an incarcerated parent^[3].  A 2010 study found that 43 percent of women in prison were of communities of color, and of these women, many were found to be the sole caregiver of a child or children under the age of 18^[4].

This is who we have incarcerated.  Not long ago political leaders spoke highly of the need to be tough on crime, and now with a prison industry teeming with prisoners, attention is being called to undo that.   We are seeing a shift-some of it verbally -in what political parties have to say about the prison industry and what the next steps are in reducing crime.  And everyone seems to have an opinion.   Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Hilary Clinton, Sen. Ted Cruz, Gov. Chris Christie and Gov. Scott Walker have all called for some sort of prison reform-all of them will also soon be on the campaign trail.  In a recent speech made at Columbia University, Hillary Clinton called for two things: first for oversight of federal funds to police departments to ensure funds are going to the implementation of best policing practices rather than the purchase of war weapons for local departments, and secondly she called for an alteration in how we approach punishment in our current prison system^[5].  Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Mike Lee (R-UT) have been working on legislation that will lessen mandatory minimums and allow judges to have more voice in the sentencing process for the cases they hear^[6] and Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) are propositioning that inmates who go through rehabilitation should be credited an earlier release date^[7].  Similarly, Texas is trying to defer those with drug offenses into rehabilitation rather than prison while New York is offering education programs as deterrents^[8].

As plans for prison reform are enacted, it will be telling how real the steps taken are going to be.  We don’t have enough rehabilitation programs in this country outside or inside prisons to give access to those who would benefit, and a large portion of those returning from prison will face issues of unemployment and an inability to pay fines accrued along the way.  Those constraints will have to be faced.  Cruz, Walker and others have spoken to the need for prison reform, but have worked hard against marginalized communities in myriad ways, so it’s hard to say how far they will go in reforming a very broken system, especially as that broken system becomes more privatized and corporate interests step into the fray.  Prison reform isn’t about addressing just the issues of mandatory minimums. This topic goes beyond decreasing how many men and women are housed in our cells. Prison reform also means social reform, and it will be a topic that will have to be discussed far beyond the election season.