Word: prisonment
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Owing to budget crises, many states are now having trouble affording to keep so many people locked up. Some states are cutting incarceration expenses by consolidating prisons; some are trying to slash prison-food and health-care costs. But real savings come only when you reduce prison populations, and so some states - including California, Colorado and Kentucky - have begun releasing inmates early. "The pressure in state legislatures all over the country is to bring down the populations, because we just can't afford the level of punishment that we've had the last 20 years," says Joan Petersilia, a criminologist...
...possible that in some cases, particularly with first-time, nonviolent offenders, early-release initiatives could actually help reduce crime. "There are two effects of incarceration," says criminologist Alfred Blumstein of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pa. "One is specific deterrence - you go to prison, and you say, 'Holy s___, I don't want to go through that again.' That is the crime-reducing component of prison. But the other effect of incarceration is criminalization. You have connection with gangs. You have diminished opportunities after you get out - and therefore you have some higher chance of returning to crime. Lots...
Some states, like Colorado, are launching new efforts to help the recently released find housing and secure other social services. California has allocated some $42 million for an entire re-entry facility - a former prison for women - where inmates within a year of release will get training and, if needed, substance-abuse counseling. But other states may be flirting with disaster by cutting re-entry programs even as they let some inmates go early. The state of Washington was having trouble releasing some of its inmates early because they had no place to live. Now the state is helping roughly...
...politics of early release are delicate. The prison boom of the past 25 years benefited a great many politicians who could claim to be tough on crime. One can easily imagine the political ads that will air in the next cycle in attempts to defeat elected officials who vote not only to set prisoners free but also to spend more on social services for them...
That's why some states are opting not to open the cells of current inmates. Instead, they're making it harder for those who are already out on parole to return to prison. Parolees who commit minor infractions - missing a meeting with a parole officer, for instance - account for an astonishing proportion of incarceration costs. "Every year," Stanford's Petersilia told the Los Angeles Times recently, "[the state of California] sends some 70,000 parolees back to prison, about 30,000 from L.A. County alone. Most serve two to three months. Everybody knows this revolving door does not protect...