The Cost of "Justice" Is
Straining the Budget
By: Michael Meehan
At the end of 1996 there were officially 34,537 prisoners in
Pennsylvania's state prisons. It had taken 220 years for the prison
population to balloon to such a number, a rate of growth of about
150 new prisoners per year. In the ten years following 1996,
the prisons exploded by an average of about 1,050 prisoners per
year, almost 10 times as fast.
As of January of 1997 there were 14,168 prisoners who were past their minimum release date. More than 41% of all Pennsylvania state prisoners were serving more than their minimum sentences. On average, they were serving 14 months more than their minimum sentences. No court added that extra "sentence." The Parole Board did it on its own. Adding to this enormous extra burden on the prisons and taxpayers, an additional 6,316 persons were back in prison as so-called technical parole violators. Their "offenses" ranged from failure to report a change of address or possession of a cell phone to drinking alcohol. Combining the 6,316 with the 14,168, the number of prisoners still in prison after the expiration of their minimum sentences, there were 20,484 prisoners locked up who should have been free, 59% of everybody in prison. Since 1997 the situation has become even worse - far worse. An ordinary taxpayer would be rightly outraged if he knew that on average a Pennsylvania family of 4 pays about $433 a year in taxes toard the Department of Imprisonment's staggering 1.32 billion dollar annual budget. At least $275 of that sum goes to pay for those who are beyond their minimum release date and/or are trivial technical parole violators; $275 to imprison persons who should be on parole. Unquestionably, the real reason for the outrageous imprisonment budget as well as for the crushing prison overcrowding is the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole. It has a costly and repressive philosophy of not releasing prisoners at the end of their minimum sentences and of helping ex-prisoners succeed in the community. The Parole Board's philosophy is an all-to-typical right-wing political over-reaction to the Robert "Mudman" Simon incident in 1994. Mr. Simon was a long-time member of the Warlocks motorcycle gang. He was released on parole after supposedly trying to kill a Hispanic rival. Not long after his parole, while in very ill health and psychological!y crippled, he reportedly killed a cop in New Jersey.. The terribly regrettable and very unusual incidnet, brought the right wing republican and conservative crackpot politicians out in droves. They ran on "tough-on-crime" cliches. The awful result was a 180 degrees spin in the parole policy. Rehabilitation was out! Mindless revenge was in. The Parole Board saw itself as an instrument of wrath and vengeance. Prisoners were not paroled until long after the date they were eligible. In addition, parolees already on the streets were no longer helped. They were persecuted, harassed and hunted down. The Board's philosophy became a witch-hunt, "we tail 'em, surveil 'em and jail 'em." By 1997 the parole denial rate had grown from about 10% or 15% (in the 1970s) to about 60%! As a result, the number of prisoners applying for parole grew from 8,650 to 17,512 during 1999-2000. Of that number, 9,021 or 51% were rejected! In 2007 Doctor John Shaffer, a Department of Imprisonment administrator admitted that there were about 44,700 inmates In Pennsylvania state prisons. Actually, the number was even higher. Shaffer revealed that prisoners were flowing into the system at the rate of about 125 per month. By then, the prisons were at about 175% capacity. Trying to house such a throng of new and unreleased prisoners has caused the Department to reopen closed institutions and to start building additional space for over 7300 inmates! Of course, the politicians love it. The explosion of prisons means thousands of jobs for staff. Most of the staff is incompetent to be employed in any real job. Imprisonment is Pennsylvania's only growing industry. Even with such a big expansion, by 2012, the prison system will be out of space. One of the greatest individual costs are the supposed addiction "treatment" programs. They cost taxpayers in excess of $82 per day, but they don't work. Addiction is a disease like asthma or leukemia. You can't talk a person out of a disease. The old myth of "weakness" preaches that addiction is a personal choice, like what to watch on TV. If a person were only "strong," the myth goes, he or she could chose not to be addictive. This silly doctrine is religious mythology based on the nonsense of "sin." Treatments for addiction must start with the recognition that it's like a brain tumor. When the prisons force inmates into drug/alcohol treatment and when the Board requires prisoners to attend such programs in prison or sends them to such programs, the so-called Halfway Back houses, they are not just wasting tax money, they're dooming the prisoner to "failure" and to return to prison. And his sentence is lengthened. Sometimes aging seems to change a person's body chemistry enough to allow the victim to recover from addiction. Sometimes other physical changes seem to work. Generally, medications affecting the brain's pleasure centers must be used. In any event, prison and parole addiction treatment is a failure. Ask any addict. One of the biggest reasons for parolees returning to prison is employment. The Department of Imprisonment spends absolutely no money to re-integrate exoffenders back into the community. The prisons have no meaningful job training. Guards are afraid that job training will make the prisoners feel some pride. Guards want to be in a position to demean prisoners and to always feel superior to them. All prison jobs are designed to be demeaning, inane and unproductive. Maintenance types of jobs such as changing washers, light bulbs and tightening screws, have no real money-making application in private industry. Even if a person can win parole, how can be earn a living? When he falters, the parole cop is right there rooting for him to fail and delighted to send him back to prison. The real reason for most of these enormous costs can be traced directly to the Parole Board and to parole policy. For a tiny fraction of the money, society could be turning tax-burdens into taxpayers and helping victims of addiction find cure.
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