Prison Reform

I've been giving some thought to the prison system. It doesn't work. At least, not the way we all wished it would. The threat of prison just isn't enough of a deterrent to thwart crime. Yes, prison is a horrible place to be, an experience no one sane would wish for. For the lucky ones, prison is merely boredom. You wake, eat, exercise, shower, and sleep to someone else's schedule. You're confined to a little room most of the time, and entertainment is severely limited. At the other end of the spectrum, you might end up locked into isolation twenty-three hours of every day, slowly going mad because you've been cut off from all human interaction. In between are the regular prison horror stories of drug abuse, rape, violence, and fear of fellow inmates.

If prison was a deterrent, the rate at which people are being sent there would have declined over the years rather than increased, which has been the reality. There are, as I see it, three solutions to the booming prison population.

First, the easiest, though not the cheapest, is to build more prisons. Housing a prisoner is not inexpensive. Not only must the State or the Federal Government feed, clothe, and shelter the prisoners, health care must be provided as well. Prisoners often get much better health care than many who are not incarcerated. It's estimated that as many as thirty percent of US citizens do not have health insurance or have insurance that is inadequate to their needs. While at the same time, prisoners are guaranteed one hundred percent coverage of health problems, whether the problem arose while they were in prison or before. Sometimes it seems the best way to get the health care a person needs in order to survive is to commit a crime and go to prison.

Rather than face such an enormous drain on public resources, instead of building more prisons there is option Two. Make prisons exactly the kinds of places everyone would most fear to be. There is a large obstacle to this, of course, and that is the fact that prisoners still have basic human rights. Rights which would have to be stripped away in order to institute the kinds of changes necessary to make prisons an ultimately effective deterrent.

First, make it clear that every prisoner has no right to entertainment of any kind. Lock them in their cells twenty-three hours a day. Yes, some prisons already do that, but the vast majority of prisoners still enjoy privileges like hours of time in the "exercise yard," jobs for which they get paid, televisions to watch, radios to listen to, books to read. Make every single prison a SuperMax, and prisoner-on-prisoner crime would just about vanish altogether. Eliminate communication between prisoners and no one on the "inside" would be running his criminal enterprise from behind bars. No one would be able to smuggle in narcotics. No one would get raped or "shanked." Make the food bland but nutritional. Exercise time would be enforced. Require that all prisoners engage in some kind of manual labor to earn their keep.

The drawback, other than the obvious one of lawsuits from civil rights groups, is that most prisons cannot be switched over to the SuperMax system without major reconstruction, which falls back to Option 1 of building more prisons. Instead, as I see it, Option 3 is probably the best. An amalgamation of both Options 1 and 2, but with other significant changes.

What we must decide is whether prisons are meant to punish or reform. If they are to punish, then they fail. They also fail to adequately reform prisoners. Many people who go to prison once are destined to be incarcerated again and again. If that weren't true, the "three strikes" law would not exist. The reason many ex-cons re-offend is because the world is very unkind to those who have been in prison. Sex offenders must register themselves for the rest of their lives, and those databases are open to the public. Others who engaged in crime may have done so because they had no other life-skills on which to fall back on, and prison does nothing to provide ex-cons with the means to survive in a non-criminal environment.

Prisons must punish, there's no doubt about that, but they must also work to ensure that those who have been punished have learned their lesson and will not re-offend. To that end, here is what I think the ideal prison would be like.

Prisoner interaction is kept to a minimum. Any time a prisoner is out of his cell, he's in restraints. Personal possessions are severely restricted and closely monitored. Hygienic tools are issued by the prison and accounted for on a daily basis. No turning a toothbrush into a weapon. Cells are searched randomly and constantly.

One prisoner to a cell. The cell is small and deliberately uncomfortable. The bed is a concrete slab made into the wall. Prisoners are issued a sleeping mat, a pillow, and a blanket, all of which must be turned in at the start of each new day. Every cell has a television protected behind Plexiglas. It shows a constant stream of educational videos which the prisoner cannot shut off. He can mute the television but only for one hour at a time, and then not again for another half hour. A camera mounted inside the case with the television keeps watch on the prisoner and also provides the means for televised group therapy sessions. Therapy is mandatory for all prisoners.

The only way to get out of his cell is for a prisoner to apply for work. After a screening process, approved prisoners (the ones judged to be least likely to commit an act of violence, larceny, or other criminal activity) are allowed to work for six hours each day. Money they earn goes toward restitution or a charity which they choose from an approved list. Good behavior earns rewards such as a movie to watch in his cell, a dessert with the evening meal, extra time in the exercise room, books to read. Visitation is conducted by teleconference; prisoners are not taken from their cells, they do not interact with visitors physically in any way, thus eliminating the smuggling of contraband. All communication is monitored, even when it's between the prisoner and his lawyer. Being convicted means being stripped of citizenship and the rights that go along with that privilege.

Sentences carry a minimum length of incarceration but no maximum. Prisoners are only released when and if his therapist says he is reformed and only after the prisoner has demonstrated that he is proficient in a legitimate trade. Training can be conducted through teleconference in the beginning and in classrooms once the prisoner has proved himself trustworthy.

Basic healthcare is free to prisoners. This includes regular checkups and treatments for injuries or life-threatening conditions. Medications, extensive medical care, and the treatment of any condition which the prisoner had when he arrived in prison, comes at a cost. The cost of such things accumulate and must be repaid by the prisoner either by working off the debt while in prison or by making regular payments once he has been released. Ensuring repayment would fall to the IRS and/or the Social Security Administration.

Prisoners sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole or to death are treated differently and kept separate from those prisoners who can be reformed. The only purpose of those sentences is punishment, so that is what they get. Locked into a cell twenty-three hours every day. Each of them lives under a no-resuscitation order. No life-saving surgeries will ever be performed on them. If a liver fails, they will die. They'll be given pain medications, but that's the limit. They're in prison until they die, there's no reason to make that sentence longer than God intended.

When prisoners finally come out of prison, they'll have new life-skills, they'll be able to cope, they'll be free of addictions and able to deal with the compulsions that got them into trouble in the first place. The first place they go is to a federal housing project for ex-cons. They'll get a small apartment to live in, be given a job they must report to, goals they must meet. They're required to pass drug tests, continue to attend therapy, and are monitored daily. Failure to comply means they aren't reformed and they go back to prison. Once they prove they're capable of living in society as a law-abiding citizen, full citizenship and rights are restored and they can continue their lives away from the prison system.

Of course, there are drawbacks to this kind of system, and I would never claim to know everything about how to reform prisoners. But it's clear the current system isn't working and something must be done about it eventually. We should never have to live in fear. Right now, we do. We fear the people out there who don't fear prison, who will commit their crimes because they don't fear punishment. We have to teach them to fear it, or teach them to live differently. Only then can we say we truly live in the land of the free.