Prisons to Work

The latest economic stimulus package has a One Billion Dollar Federal prison construction allowance in it. Just what we need do not need to stimulate the economy. Here is a better set of plans to stimulate the economy. Prisons are part of gray -- not green industry. Public safety should replace tough on crime rhethoric, the social science does.

That one billion? Re-launching the Civillian Conservation Corps would save billions and begin saving immediately.

Decarceration - Plan One

My favorite federal decarceration plan was written by sentencing expert Michael Tonry in 1995 and was likely a large inspiration behind the November Coalition’s initial appeal for a drug war amnesty in 1998.

“Stop imprisoning most user-dealers and most property offenders. Revise sentencing standards and guidelines to prescribe prison sentences for violent offenses at 1980 levels. Rescind mandatory penalty laws retroactively. Create special parole boards with the power to consider the release of every prisoner who is over age fifty and has served at least five years and every prisoner who has served ten years or more. The only valid general criterion for denying release would be that, on actuarial grounds, the offender presents an unacceptable risk of future violent criminality. Denying release might also be justified for especially notorious offenders like political assassins and serial murderers.

“What would be done with the diverted offenders? For some, nothing. Most former prisoners over age thirty-five present little threat of violence or other serious offending. The best thing to do is to let many of those released early get on with their lives. For current offenders, depending on the gravity of their crimes, confinement or community penalties are the answer. Those confined  should receive sentences scaled down at least by half from current levels of time served to 1980 levels and never more than is commensurate with the relative severity of their offenses. Most, however—should be sentenced to community penalties like intensive supervision probation, community service, house arrest, daytime or nighttime confinement, and financial penalties coupled when appropriate with compulsory participation in treatment programs. When it is feasible, restitution or community service should be routinely be ordered.”

Malign Neglect, by Michael Tonry 1995

Decarceration - Plan Two

With unemployment rates climbing under a crumbling economy we have a President on record supporting Prisons-to-Work programs. A marriage of the Civilian Conservation Corps with Tonry’s Decarceration Plan, seems a match that could light a prairie fire of change.

I’m just old enough to have no personal recollections of President Roosevelt, but have a personal connection to his programs and legacy. Most of my cousins fathers’ were in the Civillian Conservation Corps, meeting my aunts when CCC camps sprung up along the remote Salmon River to build a road. My grandfather taught plenty of men from the city how to hunt and fish in the 30's. Born on the Salmon, he was a miner raising a family there when the "CCC boys" came down-river.

Today our president promised green projects to take us into a new world. I’m mostly reading about roads. Projects for a green future are energy efficiency, and developing sustainable renewable energy for declining need. People are going to have to insist on green projects because most corporate power won’t. Most people think that this would take a lot of extra money, but the money used on endless incarceration could be put immediately into green. Part of green needs to be skills-building for people who need it the most, not gray prisons.

Cutting to the quick of these ponderous issues, one memorable obstacle to the success of the CCC programs of the 1930’s was homesickness, fears of leaving home. Measures of institutionalization is required for people to live and work in large, and small collectives. People in prison are already institutionalized and thousands of federal prisoners are behind waist high fences. They need meaningful work and job skills as they wear the life-long badge of drug offender. Earlier release increases chances of successful reentry.

Most drug crime is economic crime. Most men and women in federal prison came from neighborhoods where jobs have disappeared, where the drug trade filled vacuum to vortex. A prisons-to-work program doesn’t cost a cent, and in fact will save untold billions in prison construction alone.

Drug prisoners often express great willingness to serve their country, in lieu of serving soul-numbing years and decades behind bars for their non-violent drug offenses. They would trade hard work for early release, but they want to be able to compete in a modern world, not relegated to life-long, ditch-digging, drug felon.

How will we build public wind farms? Sustainable, renwable public projects and retrofitting so we use less energy is labor intensive. Examples are endless and abound in the Ameri-Corps and other small public works programs. Rapid expansion, with the inclusion of federal non violent prisoners seems uncomplicated solution to the unemployment and carceral crisis.

Re-employing prison guards into the same programs as administrators and Corps leaders would create new opportunities for civil servants who long to do meaningful work. Public works programs should employ returning veterans who are having problems finding work, or living outside institutional boundaries. Too many veterans are not able to convert war service into civillian work. Others can't adjust from war to the competiveness of the job market timely enough, and find themselves homeless, or in prison.

We hear more about diversion programs, and drug courts and less and less about what will be put in place of the prison pipe line. Divert unemployed people that use or deal drugs to what? If drug users need meaningful employment and stable life to stay clean and legal, offer them a way to move out of the catagory of part of the problem and into part of a solution.

Another billion dollars worth of federal prison will only ensure we have more prison beds for people that become problems.