Senator Jim Webb Calls for Prison Reform
Jim Webb’s talked about prison reform before, and now is prepared to take action on the issue with a new bill. The introductory document notes that “with 5% of the world’s population, our country now houses 25% of the world’s reported prisoners” and “four times as many mentally ill people are in prisons than in mental health hospitals.” This fact, in particular, seems unlikely to be an effective or humane way of dealing with the issue. The legislation’s specific mandate is for not much more than the creation of a national commission on the issue. But I think that’s a good idea. The politics of trying to turn this around are treacherous, but my impression is that there’s actually a lot of common ground that people who’ve analyzed this issue seriously find themselves reaching.
A few favorite points on the issue:
– Obviously, mentally ill people should be getting treatment for their mental illness; it’s quite possible that with treatment many of these people would be no danger to anyone.
– An effective parole system could keep criminals who are also drug addicts off drugs, and thus sharply reduce their proclivity to commit crimes, without the financial or human costs involved in keeping them incarcerated over the long term.
– At the margin, it’s better to fight crime by having police officers patrolling the streets than by expanding the number of people in prison.
– Insofar as drug use is criminalized, it’s still possible to target actual law enforcement in the first instance at people involved in violent criminal enterprises.
– Overcrowded prisons are unsafe, which encourages people to join gangs which, since the prisoners get out eventually, makes the crime problem worse.
– Sentence lengths should be better-calibrated to reflect actual research on preventing crime rather than pure moralistic outrage. Keeping a person who’s likely to commit violent crimes in prison is an effective crime-control tactic, but we need to focus on people who are actually likely to commit violent crimes. Many people in prison have already aged out of the period at which violent crime is likely.
There seems to be some interest on the Hill in this bill so hopefully something will happen.
26 Responses to “Senator Jim Webb Calls for Prison Reform”
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March 27th, 2009 at 11:24 am
Also, have you read the article about solitary confinement in the recent New Yorker? Horrifying. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande
One policy proposal out of there:
March 27th, 2009 at 11:26 am
Hey, look at that! Perhaps Sen Bayh can take notes from Sen Webb on how to act like a moderate centrist?
March 27th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Didn’t you link to the New Paternalism .pdf a while back? Maybe not – it’s a very good policy paper and seems to be where a lot of these ideas are coming from.
http://www.spa.ucla.edu/faculty/kleiman/Coerced_Abstinence.pdf
I agree this is a step in the right direction of sorts, though as you note there is already a broad consensus on a lot of this stuff. In fact a lot of the primary research was done in the 1980’s.
Someday in the misty future some politician is going to have to finally say “we know a lot of our approaches don’t work and it’s time to reform them now” instead of “we know a lot of our approaches don’t work so let’s talk about it some more while we continue the failed policies.”
March 27th, 2009 at 11:37 am
Sen. Webb has again demonstrated that the proper place for a sane conservative is in the Democratic Party.
March 27th, 2009 at 11:45 am
I’m a career state prosecutor, currently in charge of our office’s Diversion and First-Offender programs.
I couldn’t agree more with Matt’s post or with Senator Webb’s efforts – especially with regard to mentally ill prisoners.
Somewhere between 10-20% of all criminal defendants are mentally ill and/or developmentally disabled. Only a tiny percentage (<1%)of mentally-ill defendants are found not guilty by reason of insanity or incompetent to stand trial. That leaves tens of thousands jailers cycling through a revolving door of arrest/incarceration/re-arrest/re-incarceration without receiving adequate treatment.
March 27th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Poor Mr. Yglesias, he just doesn’t understand the mentality of the US approach to the criminal justice system. The philoophy is, lock ‘em up like a mad dog and keep ‘em locked up. Given that, I’d say that Senator Webb is pedaling uphill against the wind.
March 27th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
– An effective parole system could keep criminals who are also drug addicts off drugs, and thus sharply reduce their proclivity to commit crimes, without the financial or human costs involved in keeping them incarcerated over the long term.
Wow! You’re incredibly naive!
I support prison reform, but, geesh, the sheer naivety of this statement deserves comment.
The worry is that when you talk about things like heatlh care you’re this delusional and child-like.
The only kind of program that could keep addicts off drugs would be a Draconian nightmare beyond Pat Buchanan or the Chinese politburo’s must punitive and totalitarian fantasies.
Again — I’m all for prison reform. It’s the fantasies of prepschool kid bloggers like that make me roll my eyes.
That said, it must be nice living in a cocoon of fantasy and privilege.
March 27th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
One tired social-worker:
“The only kind of program that could keep addicts off drugs would be a Draconian nightmare beyond Pat Buchanan or the Chinese politburo’s must punitive and totalitarian fantasies.”
That’s not true at all. I wonder if you’ve kept up with much of what we know about the behavior of drug users, especially drug-using criminals, in the last couple decades?
The problem with our current system is that it presents people who already have a lot of trouble accurately weighing risks and benefits with behavior choices whose consequences are too uncertain.
We would be much better off with a much less punitive parole and probation system that focused on the most dangerous offenders and brought them the promise of certain, mild punishment for noncompliance, rather than our current system of uncertain, severe punishment.
Rolling your eyes at the foolishness of bloggers is easy enough, but maybe you should familiarize yourself with the work being done in what you seem to be claiming is your own field before you get to casting too many aspersions on the informedness of others.
March 27th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Social worker burnout is really depressing to watch.
March 27th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
“Social worker burnout is really depressing to watch.”
But it’s really common. I was on probation a year and a half ago. I met regularly with six different social workers. And how many of them are still at their job? Zero. I would say that keeping addicts off drugs is possible. Give them two breathalyzers a day, three drug test a week, and the knowledge that they are headed straight for jail if they screw up, and half the people will stay clean while they are on probation. I’ve seen it happen. And it may seem draconian, but it still beats jail.
March 27th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Does One Tired Social Worker think that being in prison keeps people off drugs?
March 27th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Dear JB2 and Fostert
This comment thread is actually inspiring. I admire a prosecutor who is eager to denounce the failings of the current system and support Sen Webb and an ex parolee who has something good to say about very tough probation.
Dear Fostert
You respond convincingly to “one tired social worker,” but isn’t it hard to hold down a job and find time for 2 breathalyzers a day ? Not to mention keeping the people who breathalyze from quitting (clearly paying social workers as little as we do is a false economy). Also one of Webb’s big complaints is that so many people are in prison for parole violations. I’d stick with three times a week (breath and urine).
Ape Man
Do you think a very brief punishment for the first one or two parole violations (like a week in lockup) be better than current practice where it’s nothing or months (or years) ? This along with the Kleinman-Fostert super tough monitoring.
Dear Matt Yglesias
Here you contrast incapacitation (good) and outrage (bad)
“– Sentence lengths should be better-calibrated to … Many people in prison have already aged out of the period at which violent crime is likely.”
You ignore a third consideration — deterrence. Basically you are assuming that long prison sentences don’t reduce crime by deterring crime. To put it more bluntly, I think
you assume that when people say “deterrence” they mean retribution. In any case, that’s what I think they mean.
However, it is harder to tell if locking up a 70 year old is deterring a 25 year old than it is to infer that the 70 year old is not likely to go around mugging people if he is released. Given the fact that people believe in deterrence (or love retribution) without needing evidence, it will be hard to convince them that deterrent effects are too small to justify say 3 strikes and you’re out, but I think that you and Webb will have to try.
March 27th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
“but isn’t it hard to hold down a job and find time for 2 breathalyzers a day ?”
It sure is. That’s actually something that makes it so effective. You only have time for four things: work, sleep, breathalyzers, and therapy. Any kind of normal social life is out of the question. There just isn’t any time for it. Your social life becomes group therapy sessions.
“Not to mention keeping the people who breathalyze from quitting”
Breathalyzers are usually performed by private companies that use barely-skilled workers who get paid only slightly above minimum wage. Turnover is huge, but there always seems to be someone willing to do it. And workers are up to speed in a few days. Operating a breathalyzer is pretty easy, and if a worker can’t do it, the clients can show him how. Such companies usually have one or two actual social workers to run therapy sessions, and those therapists tend to own the company, so their turnover is low.
“I’d stick with three times a week (breath and urine)”
For serious alcoholics, once a day isn’t enough. They’ll just get wasted after their breathalyzer and pass out in time to blow zeroes the next morning. Three times a week works for young, first-time offenders only. And it doesn’t work for a lot of them. Some people are easily scared straight, and some are not.
“Do you think a very brief punishment for the first one or two parole violations (like a week in lockup) be better than current practice where it’s nothing or months (or years) ?”
I think that’s a great idea. A little reminder of how much jail really sucks can help keep people on the straight and narrow. In general, I don’t think it’s a good idea to overly punish people who slip up with addiction issues. Everyone has occasional relapses, and they should be treated with understanding so long as they are just occasional. I’d use a point system like we use with driving violations. Apply points for every relapse and let those points get reduced for extended periods of compliance. And rather than define the probation period by time, just keep it going until the person gets down to zero. And I’d add a system where lower points results in less frequent monitoring. That would create a system where the people in greater need spend more time in the program. And that’s a good thing.
March 27th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
David,
So you agree with Gawande that solitary confinement is a form of torture? Where is the outrage from all the anti-torture fundamentalists at this long-standing and pervasive form of torture by the U.S. criminal justice system? Why aren’t they demanding that the people responsible for this “torture” be held accountable for their crimes?
March 27th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
“Why aren’t they demanding that the people responsible for this “torture” be held accountable for their crimes?”
The way solitary confinement is used varies greatly from state to state, and even county to county. So we don’t really agree on what the term means. It could be disciplinary action, or it could be torture, depending on how it’s used. There is a genuine need for solitary confinement. You need to have some form of disciplinary action to keep inmates under control, and it has to be more severe than just losing TV priveledges. So I have no problem with a few days in solitary for discipline problems. But a year in solitary is way out of line. If an inmate is that much of a problem, he needs psychiatric care, not isolation. I’d consider Thorazine in such a case. Obviously, Thorazine carries it’s own risks and problems, but we don’t have much of a choice when we insist on using our jails to house mental patients. Of course, we would be wise to listen to JB2’s advice.
And if you find it strange that JB2 and I would have similar opinions, consider that fact that people like he and I end up spending a fair amount of time together. We may see the system from opposite perspectives, but at least we are looking at the same system. Ultimately, I have more in common with jail guards than prosecutors, and I have more sympathy for jail guards. The fact is, when my fellow inmate is being an asshole, he pisses off the guards just as much as he pisses me off. Fortunately, the guards will do something about it. After a while, you get to like the guards (well, most of them, there’s always an asshole guard), and you recognize that they have a very difficult job that is not respected enough by society. Every now and then, I run into someone who used to be my jail guard, and I make a point to say hello. And I tell him that I don’t want see him again at his place of work. The feeling is reciprocated, I can assure you.
March 27th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Stop trolling, “johnson”.
Let’s take everything in this thread as read, and see if you can come up with something new and on-topic to say, instead of repeating yourself in search of an argument for argument’s sake..
March 27th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
It’s cruel to lock up non-violent offenders with sociopaths. Some reasonably reliable tests could be done to separate predators (who are most likely to be recidivists) from other offenders.
March 27th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
You’re not fooling anyone, ‘Mixnerspotter’.
March 27th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Nice thread, Mixnerspotter.
I was accused of “insane anti-torture fundamentalism” on that thread.
It’s nice to be accused of something like that.
March 27th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
I wish fostert’s handle linked to a blog – one thing you rarely see, even in these days when our discourse has supposedly been “democratized” is someone who realizes that they or most any of us could easily wind up behind bars or otherwise “in the system.”
When I turned 18 I was very wild and had terrible judgment. I used drugs haphazardly to control my moods and I wasn’t careful at all about who I spent time with. When someone challenged me, I stood up to him, no matter what, with no regard to the consequences for myself or anybody else.
I’m sitting where I am today, happy, healthy and living a successful small-city life with my family because I was lucky. Not because I was better than any of the other guys I used to hang out with who wound up dead or crazy or in jail. I was lucky I never picked the wrong fight, on the wrong day, with the wrong guy. And I picked a few that got real, real close.
No one who knows me now holds any of it against me, even the people who knew me then. I’m known as a loving, patient, even sometimes overly passive man.
What would have happened to me if I, instead of some guy who lived a few floors up from me, had gone to jail for drug possession instead of moving back in with my parents and getting into the computer business? Would I, like him, have later spent many years in jail for other crimes? I hope not. But I can’t know.
We owe it to everyone to remember that parolees, prisoners, anybody doing any kind of time is a person. It’s you or me, if our lives had taken a different path. Most people in jail could fully reenter society successfully if we would let them, and even many of those who can’t could be better served by a different type of approach to controlling their antisocial behavior.
It’s time.
March 28th, 2009 at 4:39 am
“I was lucky I never picked the wrong fight, on the wrong day, with the wrong guy.”
Man, ain’t that the truth. I’ve argued with people pointing guns at me. Most people don’t actually have the guts to pull that trigger, so you usually get away with crap like that. But our crime statistics make it very clear that some people really can pull the trigger. That I’m even alive is just dumb luck. So far, I’ve run into only those people who didn’t have the guts to pull the trigger. But arguing with them is still a good strategy. If they are going to kill you, arguing will make no difference. If they can’t do it, arguing is a good way to reveal that fact. If someone is pointing a gun at you, whether they can actually pull the trigger quickly becomes very valuable information. But here’s a good rule: if they are wearing a badge, they’ll pull the trigger. They can get away with it. Although I should warn people that there is a third option that I never considered before it happened. I faced a guy pointing an AK-47 at me and told him to shoot me. Turns out, he’d served in the Thai army and was well trained. Instead of shooting me, he knocked me out cold with his weapon. When I regained consciousness, I was flat on my back and the barrel of his gun was pressed hard enough against my skull to pin me down. At that point, cooperation is the only option.
March 28th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
I read the article written by Senator Jim Webb. I have had the unfortunate experience of knowing about the federal prison all too well for the last five years. My husband at the time was sentenced for 13 months, he got scared and was on the run for about a week or two. His sentenced then increased to five years. As the article says, you are mixed in with everyone from violent gang members, hard core drug dealers, young kids in for 20 years on a drug bust to sexual predators. (He was in for business fraud) You can get anything you want in there if you have the money, so there are still drugs, home made liquor, self made tattoos – you want it, you can get it. Mentally, it takes all that you have to try to stay the person you are, to find someone that you can converse with and to try for hope so that when they do get out, they can have another chance.
HERE IS ANOTHER ISSUE that I noticed while standing in line for sometimes 2, 3 or 4 hours to get a visit. Our facility had no protected covering, so you would really have to dress for the environment – cold, raining, snowing or heated summers. When you stand in line for that long, you get a chance to visit with the other mothers, brothers, sisters, children and friends who have also come for a visit. I was lucky enough that I got a reasonable job that could help support me and my three kids. But some of these mothers, have no education, toddlers and babies in their arms. Yet another burden put on taxes, because most of them are on food stamps or welfare – or are working 24/7 to pay the bills. When their dad is put away for so long and their mother is not at home to take care of them, you have kids who are left on their own and surely will follow in their dads path. I am not saying that the offenders should not do time because they have in some cases really done something to hurt society, but in some cases they have not. I know for myself it was an extreme hardship for my family. One of my boys got on drugs because I was not there for him. And when I was home, I was tired from working all day – yet still had to make dinner, do the dishes, keep laundry going, and help with homework, pay the bills, go the grocery store, replace the air filters, change the oil – well the list goes on and on. You are on your own to do it all – be both mother and father.
Happy to say after many encounters and many rehabs (which is hard to find if you don’t have $$$$$ to send them to) my son is finally clean and is happy with his life. (although he needs lots of counseling) My younger son was so scared for so many years that I too would disapear in the middle of the night and being embarrassed when friends ask “where is your dad?” The sadness and lonliness the spouse feels – we have had 3 deaths in the family, a college graduation, a marriage,and a divorce in the past five years – and all without their father. What I deemed as a normal middle class family, living in a great neighborhood, being involved in all of the school and church activites and just being happy to be together for dinner – has been shipwrecked. We will never be able to forget this experience.
The stories I heard while standing in line were horrifying – how the outside of “us” kept going and what we were all trying to do to keep what is left of the family.
The guards were rude. They would line us up like we were the prisoners and walk up and down and look at how we were dressed. If they didn’t like what they saw, they would point and say – “you are not visiting today” One night I had been waiting for over 1/12 hours to get in (they only let 5 through at a time) and when I got inside, there were 3 guards trying to figure out how much each one had to pay to the pizza guy – they finally agreed that one would just have to pay the extra penny. Come on! That took a good 20 minutes of my time waiting to visit. Little things like that (too many to mention) would get us in such bad moods, everyone would say “and we pay for that” The guards who were all so slow, so busy talking with their co workers etc – it doesn’t take long for the public to look at the whole system as a joke.
I applaude Jim Webb – yes there must be a better way!
March 28th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Hehe, that’s the trouble with the “He’ll blink first” strategy. It almost always works. But that one time it doesn’t can carry a big downside risk.
March 29th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Dear Mr. Webb,
I appreciate your willingness to look at all aspects of our nation’s prison system. Here in California we seem to have an especially difficult set of problems to deal with at the present time – as a U.S. senator, I’m sure your aware of the many basic prison issues we face in our state.
I believe too much focus on the prison system itself is counterproductive. Analogies abound: if fires are being set all over town, do you put your focus and resources on improving the fire department? The fix for a leaky boat would be better Coast Guard services? These and many others focus on “closing the barn door…..”
The common thread for people in the prison systems would have to be that today’s prisoner was yesterdays troubled youth. Sometimes that means literally “yesterday”, in most places, you’re a youth at 17 and an adult at 18 years of age.
It amazes me how voters will clamor for tougher sentencing rules and more prisons and then penny-pinch school districts and other youth services that might really make a difference in the long run. How does it make sense to be willing to pay upwards of $40,000 per year to warehouse an adult rather than spend an extra $4,000 per year on youths in school and give them a chance at becoming productive, contributing, tax-paying citizens for the next sixty years? Not to mention decreasing the odds the youth will perpetrate crimes on the rest of society.
The fact is, there are many hopeful signs of what might be accomplished. One of my favorites is the Green Dot organization’s efforts with Locke High School in Los Angeles. Green Dot choose Locke High School to privatize because that school was nationally infamous for being one of the worst in the nation. Any way you looked at it – graduation rates, test scores, truancy, on-campus crime or gang activity, Locke was one of the worst of the worst. In the past two years, they have improved many of these problems. Recent articles in the L.A. Times prove the point ( see: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-lockehigh-gallery,0,490143.storygallery ). The success stories will bring tears to your eyes.
Senator Webb, please seriously consider the “youth effect” with your recent efforts. You are in a unique position to champion this cause. Think of even a ten percent difference – one in ten youths becoming productive citizens (and eventually raising healthy families) versus finding a way to build more prisons and hire more police officers.
March 30th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Wow! Reading everyone’s words shows me how, no matter what, we all care. I was raised in group homes, juvenile halls, drug programs, jails and prisons. Having lived amongst thousands of different opinions taught me that every single one of us have something to offer another. We have our ways and they are, indeed, our ways. The only time someone was stabbed, shot, or in an altercation (inside) was when the opinions varied. Seems we do the same ‘out here’, except most of the time staying within the realms of our laws and not the laws of lockup. I practice being who I want to become and figured out we all do that. We were all infants and from there we individually absorbed our surrounding information. I sure have my faults and I know those that are locked up have their faults too. Okay. Moving past that information, what’s next? I’ve seen goodness in hard-core killers and goodness in punk lames. (Pardon, but there are thousands in-between and figure you understand my meaning.) I say we build a town named, “Fun”. Having since built homes and other structures, I believe convicts can accomplish anything together because of the strength of how each have been individually raised. Many software programs do not interact well with another because they are different (and written by different people). Same for people… we ARE different. Yet, placing such a mixed variety of convicts into one basket and expecting to rid the disgrace of ‘why we must fix our prisons” is not the answer. (pardon, there I go, giving an opinion). My 2,2,8 years of prison were comfortably provided. Thank you. Offer a chance of freedom to build a town named, “Fun” and I expect to reduce our prison population. Pampering convicts does not work. Working pride will. Thanks for your time. Thankful without being holier-than-thou, while wishing our convicts a freedom way of life. http://theluckiest.com
March 30th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Dear Senator Webb,
I read your atricle in Parade yesterday 3-29-09. I was encouraged. I’m encouraged too to see the activity on this site. I’m a psychologist(employed by a medical school) working in a state prison (some 1240 Inmates housed here-ages 18 to 28 or so). I treat the Special Needs (mental health)Inmates here and interact with all depts in the prison as a result. I’m concerned about what I’ve observed in the system. We need real solutions to establish the humane justice that all men require. I understand that the cost of corrections to the tax payer, nationally, is second only to Medicare/caide. This cost will only continue to climb unless you, senator, and others in the power hireracrhy go beyond rhetoric to real solutions.
I don’t want to be long winded here. I’ll be as brief as I can be and say that yes, we need to change our archaic drug laws; we need to solve the gang problem in the prisons and on the streets (our is a Blood dominated prison with some Latin Kings, Neta, CRIPs, MS13, Arian Bros etc); we need to confront and eliminate the vested interests that want to enable the prison population to increase and not decrease -why? = $$$; community reentry programs are few and feable and need revisiting; and most importantly prevention in the community (not just crime prevention a la law enforcement) that will address the problems of the family, education for the residents of the inner city with a focus on work adjustment and work habits and of course job opportunities to follow. These are some of the problems to a solve. And it’s obvious that it’s complex and long term.
If you’re inclined to hear some notions about solutions I’d be pleased to share them.