U.S. Prison population explodes after requested research ignored.
Fred Nold’s Legacy
Why We Send So Many Americans to Prison and Probably Shouldn’t
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20040812.html
By Robert X. Cringely
The interface between science and public policy is awkward at best.
Scientists and academics need money for research, while politicians need
research to build better weapons and sometimes to justify intended policy
changes. But what happens if you look for scientific support for some new
policy and the results of the research show that what you are intending to
do is wrong? You can change your plan or ignore the research. This latter
decision, one example of which is the topic of this column, brings with it
some peril because if it later becomes known that the research was
commissioned, completed, and ignored, then someone’s job is on the line. So
if you are going to bury research findings, it is a good idea to bury them
deep.
America does a better job of putting people in prison than any other
country. Just over two million Americans are behind bars right now, a number
that has been growing far quicker than the overall population for more than
20 years. The impact of this mass imprisonment is felt especially in the
African-American community, where one in 12 men are in prison or jail. The
reasons given for these high numbers vary, but something that is frequently
mentioned in any discussion is the impact U.S. federal sentencing guidelines
have had on sending more people to jail for longer periods of time. Those
very guidelines are now coming under scrutiny by the courts because their
imposition may have denied some inmates their constitutional right to a
trial by jury. That will be decided soon by the U.S. Supreme Court, but for
the moment, all that I know for sure is that the sentencing guidelines in
use now aren’t working as intended, and the people who installed those
guidelines probably knew this even before we started building so many
prisons.
Even if the U.S. Supreme Court shortly finds that the sentencing guidelines
are constitutional, THEY DON’T DETER CRIME.
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