Dysfunctional Prisons

To whom it may concern,

The United States has the largest prison population and the highest rate of violent crime of any country in the world. While the causes of these alarming statistics are many and varied the real tragedy of this broken system are its high rates of recidivism. 68 percent of people released from prison are re-arrested within three years. This fact points to the ineffectiveness of our penitentiary system to rehabilitate criminals. Instead, prison is merely a punishment where we let criminals become more criminal, instead of pro-actively engaging, healing, and then preparing these people for their return to society. The most shocking aspect of this problem is the growing use of private prisons. If a private business owns a prison, then to maximize profit, it must retain and even grow their inmate population as they are paid per prisoner. There is no incentive in this equation to rehabilitate and reintegrate these prisoners. In fact, it profits from America’s high rates of recidivism. And a growing prison business equates to growing economic and political influence over criminal law, and more importantly punishment. With decreasing budgets and increasing prison populations, how will this administration handle crime and punishment, and the restructuring of our prison system to promote rehabilitation over incarceration?

GUNNAR HAND, AICP