What Solutions Do They Offer?

SINCE prisons generally are not reforming offenders, and they certainly are not deterring the spread of crime, what now? What should be done with people who commit crimes?

The answers coming from officials, police and the common man are conflicting. There is no consistent pattern. Authorities themselves contradict one another.

Harsher, or More Lenient?

One school of thought is to stop “coddling” prisoners. Those holding this view say that the punishment should be much worse, the jail sentences more severe.

The London Times notes that Britain’s Police Review says that “the time has come to hang, flog, starve, or do a variety of things to certain criminals to make them suffer.” It says that people are “getting fed up” with the leniency shown to criminals.

Even some prisoners agree to the use of physical punishment​—provided it means shortening the sentences. One who had been in Alcatraz said to a prison official: “There are three reasons why men are sent to prison. For punishment, for rehabilitation, and to protect the public. Sometimes, I think the last two are lost sight of in giving sentences. If a man spends three, or five, or ten years away from his family and friends, under fair but repressive treatment, shut up inside a cell, deprived of all the graces of normal living, and forced to follow a monotonous routine, isn’t that too much?”

What does he recommend? This prisoner said: “I think most prisoners would say no to prison reform​—they’d say, ‘Go on, make the prisons tough, make them really rough, even brutal, but make the sentence short and get it over with.’ Nobody would think of whipping a man, day after day, month after month, for the same offense. But years of imprisonment are worse.”

Yet, there are others who say just the opposite. They say that prison life is already too brutal. They would like more tax money put into prisons to make them places where prisoners could live decently and be given productive, stimulating work to do. They want to make the lot of the prisoner easier, happier.

Obviously, there is no agreement on the matter. But one thing should not escape our notice. In recent centuries just about everything related to prisons has been tried. What some recommend now as to more brutality or less brutality, longer sentences or shorter sentences, reforms or no reforms​—have been tried before. And they have generally failed. Does it seem reasonable to go back and try past failures again?

Prisons Themselves Questioned

That is why some authorities are now beginning to question the entire concept of prisons. They wonder whether the overwhelming majority of persons in them should even be there.

The book The Ethics of Punishment says: “After more than 150 years of prison reform, the outstanding feature of the present movement is its scepticism concerning imprisonment altogether and its search for new and more adequate methods of treatment outside prison walls.”

Former federal prison head James Bennett said of prison life: “It takes men from their families and friends for extremely long periods. It imposes a lifelong stigma. It confines them to a few dreary acres and enforces a monotonous clockwork of hours. It clothes them in cheap uniforms from which individuality has been expunged. It destroys their privacy and clusters them with fellows they might loathe. It deprives them of normal sexual relationships and imposes a temptation toward homosexuality. A prison sentence at its worst amounts to a refined torture much harsher than corporal punishment.”

Others agree. A lawyer who was at a meeting of prison administrators writes this about their views:

“Each man headed a major prison institution; all were veterans in the business; none were ‘bleeding hearts,’ ‘soft’ on crime or naive about criminals.

“I asked the warden sitting next to me what percentage of the people under his supervision needed to be in prison. ‘By what standards?’ he asked. ‘In order to protect society from personal injury,’ I replied. ‘About 10 to 15 percent,’ he said. We canvassed the other wardens in the room; none disagreed.

“Since then, on visits to numerous prisons around the country and abroad, I have always asked the same question. I have never received a different answer.”

Ramsey Clark, former attorney general of the United States, has much the same viewpoint. He emphasizes “a philosophy of avoiding detention wherever possible through prevention efforts, community treatment and probation supervision.”

Hence, after years of trial and failure, the conclusion now being reached by more and more officials is that prisons are neither deterring crime nor reforming offenders. They are simply not doing the job anticipated, and something else is needed. But as to what the standard should be for arranging a substitute, there is no agreement. Instead, there is an anarchy of ideas.

More Involved

One should not be quick, however, to jump to the conclusion that the failure of prisons generally is the basic cause of the exploding crime situation. This is not the case, although the failure of prison does make a bad situation worse.

What is involved is far more fundamental. There is a basic sickness that pervades mankind in general. The bulging prison population merely reflects this sickness of society.

For a long time, especially since World War I, nations have been saturated with negative influences. There have been mass violence and destruction in warfare, racial prejudice, growing slums, ghettos, poverty, and selfishness and hypocrisy on the highest levels of political, religious and economic life. Permissive teachings regarding morals have further eroded high principles and have encouraged criminal tendencies.

You reap what you sow, aptly says the Bible. With such negative influences bombarding minds for more than half a century now, it should really come as no surprise that a gigantic crop of lawbreakers is being reaped.

Also, a report issued by the U.S. Department of Justice notes “that 75% of all persons arrested for robbery were under the age of 25.” It shows that, of those, “33% were juveniles.” Therefore, many young persons commit crimes before ever having seen the inside of a prison. So prison life cannot be blamed for most of the crime increase. The defects in society are spawning it.

Nor is it just a few people involved in crime and supporting crime. The responsibility lies on a large part of the population. Former presidential consultant on organized crime, Ralph Salerno, addressing a Canadian audience said:

“The people who bet and cater to the offer of goods and services from syndicate criminal figures are the same people who tell your pollsters and mine that they want law and order and justice.

“[Do you] want to stop Organized Crime tomorrow morning at 8:00? You get every Canadian and I’ll get every American to stop supporting their illegal activities and Organized Crime goes out of business. You don’t need policemen. You need honest citizens. You need to attack hypocrisy.”

Thus, reform efforts inside prisons fail for the very same reason criminals are spawned outside of prison: the world’s teachings, attitudes and actions work against creating healthy minds. It cannot realistically be expected that prison reforms will work, or crime will diminish, in view of the mental diet people are now getting. What is the answer? What can be done in regard to prisons themselves? Will anything ever be done about the conditions that breed lawbreakers?

[Blurb on page 10]

SOME MAIN CAUSES OF CRIME

Mass violence in warfare, racial prejudice, slums and ghettos, poverty, political and religious hypocrisy and permissive teachings.

[Picture on page 11]

Former federal prison head says: “A prison sentence at its worst amounts to a refined torture much harsher than corporal punishment”