2 Million Locked Up and Locked Out: We All Should Be Outraged

Article by Brigette Sarabi 

America is Number 1 again, but this time we should hang our heads in shame and raise our voices in outrage. We are now the world’s biggest jailer. With 5% of the world’s population, we have 25% of the world’s prisoners – now over 2 million. And perhaps the most important point about this fact is that approximately 70% of our prisoners have been convicted of non-violent crimes. Have they made mistakes? You bet. But is imprisonment the only answer?

Two  million prisoners are in America’s  jails and prisons. Think about it. In our region, two million people is equal to the combined populations of Boise, Cheyenne, Las Vegas, Missoula, Portland, Salt Lake City, Seattle and Tacoma. Or,  to take a more national perspective, our prison population is equal to the combined populations of Boston, Cleveland and Dallas. No wonder the unemployment rate looks so good.

It hasn’t always been this way. In 1980,  there were 501,886 prisoners in U.S. jails and prisons. In the past twenty years we have quadrupled our prison population. What madness has driven us to lock up so many of our sons and daughters, our sisters and brothers, our neighbors and co-workers? Is there anyone left in this country who doesn’t know someone who is, or has been in jail or prison?

Some say we are a nation obsessed with crime. It would be more accurate to say that we are a nation obsessed with fear: fear of our young, fear of people of color, fear of the “other.” And unfortunately, the people we employ to serve and protect us are not immune from this fear. That’s one reason 1 out  of 3 juveniles picked up by the police in Portland, Oregon  and charged with a Measure 11 offense (Oregon’s harsh mandatory minimums law) is African-American. It may be one reason why four police officers in New York shot forty-one bullets into an unarmed African man as he reached for his wallet. Would they have shot a young white man on Park Avenue so quickly, even if he did vaguely resemble a picture of a wanted suspect? Are police in Portland likely to arrest a couple of white teenagers caught shoplifting a six-pack in the West Hills? No – and we should be thankful. But more than that, we should demand that the same courtesy, the same unspoken policy be extended to everyone  young and old, black, brown or white, male and female, citizen and immigrant.

Our fear has led us to institute some of the harshest criminal justice policies in the world. Sure, the media whips up that fear (which sells lots of advertising), and our politicians cave in to the pressure to be “tough on crime.” But in the end, we have only ourselves to blame. Think about the fact that 60% of the men and women locked up in Oregon under Measure 11 are first time offenders. And across the country, voters and legislatures have raced to see who can be harshest, toughest, and most vindictive. The result is a cruel collage of mandatory minimum sentencing laws resulting in situations like these:

• In Kansas City, a three-time drug offender (a user, not a dealer), gets a life sentence for possession of one-sixteenth of an ounce of cocaine – an amount roughly equivalent to two artificial sweetener packets.
• In the Washington, D.C. area, a young woman received twenty-four and a half years for conspiracy in a cocaine ring. She never sold or used the drugs, but  had the bad luck to fall in love with a man who did.
• In South Dakota last summer, a 14-year old girl died of heatstroke after a forced endurance run at a boot camp for juvenile offenders. Her crime?  Shoplifting.
• In California, a grandfather is doing 25-to- life for stealing five bottles of shampoo. His prior “strikes” occurred twelve years earlier.
• Another California prisoner was convicted of a robbery 27 years ago. He is now serving 25-to- life for possession of a forged drivers license.

These are simply the cases that have attracted the public attention.  Every day, in our region and around the country, we are sending people off to serve long prison sentences for crimes like these. Is this justice? Is it the type of justice you want for your children, or yourself?

Research shows that alternatives to incarceration are cheaper and more effective – things like drug treatment, education, intensive supervision and probation, and job training. But in our fear and mean spiritedness, our society prefers to make people disappear behind concrete walls and razor wire. Once they’re in, we don’t want them to receive any of the treatment or services that could help them turn their lives around, because we don’t want to “coddle” prisoners. What happens when our prisoners – and they are our prisoners – get out? 95% of them will be back on the street one day, a street where ex-offenders are regularly denied access to employment, housing, and even the right to vote. Think about how a population the size of Dallas and Detroit combined, a population that has been treated harshly and given little opportunity to improve their lives, will be returning to a neighborhood near you. What kind of neighbor have we been?

Think about these things. But don’t stop there. Do something. In the words of Haile Selassie: “Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.”

We cannot afford to be indifferent, and we must not be silent. Across our region, grassroots action for criminal justice reform is growing. Get involved. Advocate for the humane treatment of prisoners, and a return of power to judges rather than prosecutors. Write a letter to the editor of your local paper. Vote. Be a mentor to someone else’s kid. Give an ex-offender a job. Work to provide more funding for schools, and less for prisons. And together, let us all learn to fear each other a little less.

This article originally appeared in the Spring 2000 issue of Justice Matters.