FEDERAL PRISON REFORM

It’s time for America to pay attention to the impact its laws are making on its citizens and its wallet. Currently the United States has inadvertently created a new welfare state. Not the usual suspects which include poor women and children clinging to government welfare rosters in lieu of earning an honest wage, but able bodied men and women who perpetrate non-violent crimes. Mandatory minimums and the end of Federal parole have left America with a $40k per person bill and many of these low level offenders will spend decades imprisoned, much longer than sex offenders, or murderers simply because of congressional imposition of mandatory minimums. Americans pay more money housing non-violent criminals than reform in direct conflict with the goals of imprisonment outlined by the U.S. sentencing commission and the eighth amendment.
Currently non-violent drug offenses make up MORE THAN 75% of the total federal prison population. Many of these offenders can be rehabilitated to become productive members of society. Instead they are sentenced to prison terms that simply warehouse and do not reform. They have been sentenced to hefty terms under the guise of public safety however more and more people are trying street drugs at levels that seem to prove that drug dealers are not the problem. In fact many studies prove that drug prevention begins at home. The biggest factor in preventing youth drug abuse is in fact parents. Longer prison sentences increase recidivism, meaning that the longer men and women are incarcerated their chances for breaking the law increases. Shorter prison sentences coupled with a concerted effort to provide inmates with marketable skills actually increases their chances of serving their time and returning to society as productive law abiding members. Not to mention the safety issues created by overcrowded prisons on the correctional staff charged with keeping the public safe. In fact a great alternative to correctional officers would be to change the scope and duties of these officials to provide career counseling. Perhaps providing hope and correction would keep our correctional officers safer.
The staggering dollar amount needed to provide care for the incarcerated is astounding many families only have 40k to provide for an entire family. The average median income for a family of 3 is $49,888. Caring for one prison inmate is roughly 40k. This is the average cost the notwithstanding increasing healthcare needs of an aging prison population has not been completely accounted for. Since the end of federal parole in 1987 these costs are increasing at a staggering rate because men and women are serving prison sentences decades with no parole at 87% with good time figured in. What happens to these people when their families have died off and they begin to further tax an ailing Social Security system that they have not paid into? The racial disproportion aside, minorities make up 50% of the federal prison population and 12-18% of the prison population, warehousing able bodied men and women for life for a few kilos of cocaine does not make sense. We are basically providing lifetime care for people who only possessed on average $ of drugs. A person serving a 60 year sentence for 8 kilos of cocaine which has a street value of $800,000 is given $2.4 million of care, excluding any unforeseen health expenses that the geriatric population incurs. If a person is sentenced to 60 years at age 20 and serves 87% and gets released after retirement they will only have social security to rely on which they have not paid into. The bill will fall onto our children and grandchildren. Moreover, few family members will remain to support this aging prison population and they will be left to rely on government housing to supplement the meager income they draw from social security. Who pays? The public that was deemed safer by their incarceration. Federal prison reform has to make sense and it has to meet the goals of incarceration outlined in part by the U.S. Sentencing Commission as “incorporate the purposes of sentencing (i.e., just punishment, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation); and meet the requirements of the 8th amendment which holds that Americans not be subject to cruel and unusual punishment.