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Critique of Prison Building

NCJ Number
86982
Journal
New England Journal of Prison Law Volume: 8 Issue: 1 Dated: (Winter 1982) Pages: 121-139
Author(s)
D J Newman
Date Published
1982
Length
19 pages
Annotation
New prisons should not be constructed, because they do not deter, rehabilitate, or effectively incapacitate offenders; an expanded prison system will not be required in a few years; an inflexible correctional system is promoted; racism is perpetuated; and it is not cost-effective.
Abstract
Prison overcrowding results from the convergence of three factors: a real increase in the crime rate, an increment in mandatory and determinate sentencing structure (reflecting the prevailing punitive stance), and a diminution in federally funded community alternatives to prison. Efforts to deal with prison overcrowding have included refusal by the correctional system to receive any more prisoners from the courts, storing convicted felons in local jails awaiting vacancies in the State prison system, double bunking inmates in cells designed for one, and building new prisons. The first three approaches do not successfully deal with overcrowding, and the building of new prisons does not effectively address the crime problem. The increasing crime rate yoked with increased incarceration is sufficient to undermine claims that imprisonment deters, rehabilitates, and effectively incapacitates offenders. Further, the burgeoning of prison populations today is partly an artifact of shifts in the age demography of the general population, such that an expanded prison system will not be needed in a few years. Also, the construction of new prisons commits the correctional system to the prison as a centerpiece of the system, even when more flexibility and variety in corrections approaches would be more effective. Prison expansion is also the most costly means of addressing the crime problem, although alternatives have proven to be less costly and just as effective in protecting the public. Prisons are also inherently brutal institutions that disproportionately house racial and ethnic minorities who come to be labeled as a criminal class. Forty-eight footnotes are listed.