The US over-reliance on incarceration is lazy and cruel
The taking of time is the taking of life
The United States ranks 1st in the world for incarcerated population1 and 5th for incarceration rate2. The nation in 2nd place for population holds the 129th position for rate, imprisoning 1/5th as many people per capita. Which is this freedom-loving nation with, both absolutely and relatively, fewer prisoners than the US? China. The “land of the free” is more likely to imprison you than a regime so brutal that it has concentration camps.
To put this in a more immediate perspective, consider Navy veteran Michael Cassidy. He “dismantled” the Baphomet Altar in the Iowa State Capitol, doing up to $1,500 worth of damage. His maximum possible sentence, given that this was religiously motivated and therefore a hate-crime, is five years.
Valuations of human life vary significantly. The lowest I found was $50,000 per year. Per that standard, Mr. Cassidy could face $250,000 worth of penalty (excluding fines) for $1,500 worth of crime. This is not justice.
If justice is balancing the scales, Mr. Cassidy would need to spend just under eleven days in prison.
If you feel time in prison can’t be equated to loss of life, consider it in terms of working off his debt. With a federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, he’d have to work two-hundred and seven hours to repay the victim. That’s just over five weeks, not years.
Would deterrence justify the maximum sentence? Not hardly.
The average annual cost per prisoner is $45,771. If Mr. Cassidy destroys two altars per month and society pays to rebuild them, we save nearly ten grand per year.
There’s also no reason to believe that reduced incarceration increases recidivism. Per the Harvard Political Review, “Norway has one of the lowest recidivism rates in the world at 20%. The U.S. has one of the highest: 76.6% of prisoners are rearrested within five years.”3
Norway has less crime, less than one tenth the rate of incarceration, and barely more than one quarter the recidivism rate of the US. They also sentence criminals to dramatically shorter times in vastly more civilized prisons. Where the US’ approach to justice is retributive, Norway’s is restorative. Rehabilitating prisoners is, in every respect, vastly better than treating them like animals.
It’s incredibly unlikely that Mr. Cassidy will be given the maximum sentence but that possibility should not exist at all. It exemplifies the casual cruelty with which the United States pursues justice. In the span of five years I married, started a successful business, and welcomed two wonderful children to the world. Would you take all that life from me for damaging someone’s property? Would you willingly bear the same penalty for one misdeed?
We tend to think of criminals as a separate class of people, fundamentally flawed and morally impoverished, but that couldn’t be more wrong. The Brennan Center for Justice reports that, “Today, nearly one-third of the adult working age population has a criminal record.” That’s not counting all the criminals who were neither caught nor convicted.
Statistically, there’s a one in three chance you’re a criminal. It’s certain that someone you love is a criminal. It makes sense to confine violent offenders until we’re confident they won’t reoffend. For the rest of us criminals, we need to do better than taking years of life.
Total prison population.
Prisoners per 100,000 population.
If Mr. Cassidy destroyed two altars per month, his five year recidivism rate would be 12,000%!