Crime benefits the crime control industry

 

The latest figures show that the number of people in American prisons and jails passed 2 million last year. The figures tell a story of the results of the Aget tough,@ ultra conservative polices that began in the early 1970s.  The result of these policies is that the crime rate today is about what it was in the early 1970s.  Yet during this same period  the incarceration rate has increased by more than 400 percent, while annual expenditures on the criminal justice system went up by 1500 percent (presently approaching $200 billion). The incarceration rate  is now over 700 (per 100,000 population), higher than any other country in the world (the world-wide average is around 80).

The rising incarceration rate has done considerable damage to racial minorities and their communities.  There is a huge racial gap in imprisonment rates, as blacks are about 8 times more likely as whites to be locked up. The incarceration rate for women (with minorities leading the way) has increased the most, going up by more than 700 percent in the past 25 years.

While many researchers  (me included) have blamed the drug war for this sorry state of affairs, there is another reason for the growth in imprisonment rates, which is less obvious to the untrained observer.  I am referring here to what has been called the crime control industry.  In recent years controlling crime has become a booming business, an Aindustry@ like other industries such as manufacturing and retail trade.  Literally thousands of companies are seeking profits in this booming industry.  The criminal justice system alone provides a steady supply of career possibilities as police officers, prison guards, probation officers and many more. Most of these jobs offer not only good starting pay, but excellent benefits and a promise of future wage increases and job security. The police, the courts and the prison system have become huge, self-serving and self-perpetuating bureaucracies with a vested interest in keeping crime at a certain level.  They need victims, they need criminals, they need customers, even if they have to invent them. (Prison construction is a booming business.  An ad by an investment group states:  "While arrests and convictions are steadily on the rise, profits are to be made - profits from crime.  Get in on the ground floor of this booming industry now!")

In a sense, private industry and the criminal justice system  cannot afford to put a large dent in the crime problem, because it would have such a negative impact on the economy. Two words sum it up: politics and economics.  Politics in the sense that elected officials want to be re-elected, and sounding Atough on crime@ gets votes; economics in the sense of not only the money to be made by businesses, but also the number of jobs created.  Protecting those jobs is often done by strong unions representing criminal justice workers.

Part of the problem can be summed up by way of a parable.  Imagine a large river with a high waterfall.  At the bottom of this waterfall hundreds of people are working frantically trying to save those who have fallen into the river and have fallen down the waterfall, many of them drowning.  As the people along the shore are trying to rescue as many as possible, one individual looks up and sees a seemingly never-ending stream of people falling down the waterfall, and he begins to run upstream.  One of his fellow rescuers hollers AWhere are you going?  There are so many people that need help here.@  To which the man replied, AI=m going upstream to find out why so many people are falling into the river.@