Start Here: A Roadmap to Reducing Mass Incarceration

   Berman and Alder compare the US incarceration policies unfavorably to those of Asia and Europe. According to their sources (mostly from policy institutes) there are 3000 prisoners in Norway’s prisons and 50,000 detainees in the LA County Jail. There are obvious reasons; Norway has no teen pregnancies and they never had a crack epidemic. On the flip side, my research shows that there are a lot of Norwegians who should be in prison, but thanks to Norway’s liberal pacifism, they aren’t.

   The authors provide examples of programs that can keep people out of jail, while at the same time reducing the crime that sends them there. For starters, there’s Brownsville, Brooklyn, an area that deserves its terrible reputation, where the programs are seeking to change the local norms. Efforts are made to discourage the cult of easily avenged honor and violent revenge, which was the subject of the 1995 book All God’s Children. Do young people know that shooting someone over an insult is not allowed? Do they understand that they’re setting themselves up for 15 years in prison if they do it? Then there are nonprofit organizations like Harlem Children’s Zone, which tries to keep kids off the streets (at least until they’re 18) by providing activities. It has a program called The Baby College, which teaches parenting skills as a way to discourage neglect and child abuse.

    One of the problems with poor communities (not just Black areas of Brooklyn, but also White ones like Southie) is that the parents handle meagre annoyances with mean looks, yells, and smacks. Those that read the recent memoir Hillbilly Elegy will see how the idea of “parenting through intimidation” is a problem in Appalachia, and it teaches children to handle everything through aggression. While spanking kids may have been the norm in the old days, most experts now agree that it only teaches “might makes right” and leads to kids handling problems the same way. I’ve had Black kids ask me why the White parents work so hard to discipline their kids (talking to them, time-outs, withholding privileges) while Black parents just slap the kid. My response is always “What are you going to do when the kid is too big to slap? What are you going to do if he’s bigger than the parent and slaps back?” These are the problems that Harlem Children’s Zone (among others) tries to address. They form a “bottoms-up” effort that focuses on the children, because they are the most susceptible to influences.

    Money is another problem in reducing mass incarceration. If a stupid kid punches a store clerk and gets a $250 fine and probation, what happens if the parent has no money? What happens f the kid lives in a foster home and nobody supervises him? He’ll start a long cycle of jail, and learn none of the life skills he needs for independent living. Similar problems were discussed in another recent nonfiction book titled On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City, where Philadelphia’s poor are constantly evading police, thanks to unpaid fines and open warrants.

    A recent documentary on Wyoming’s one and only men’s prison shows the connection between crime and local norms. Given the tiny population of Wyoming, it makes sense for them to have only one prison. Out of the prison’s entire population, there’s one Black American (how many Black Americans are there in Wyoming?) and a lot of Native Americans, and I wonder if, at an earlier time, their crimes might have been part of tribal warfare? One of the prisoners, a man with a distinct Native American accent, looks like he has FAS, which might explain his lack of self-control. If so, then the reservations might benefit from the type of social program mentioned in this book, at least if they want to discourage alcoholism. Then there’s the geography angle; as long as Wyoming remains way out west, I doubt things will get worse, because not a lot of people migrate there. However, the shale gas drilling business is increasing in the area, and if thousands of men migrate there for work, then there will be trouble. You’ll have all the problems of a town with a large ratio of men-to-women; drinking, prostitution, gambling, and crime. More arrests will follow, and that will mean another prison.