By Emily Cheatham | Staff writer
America contains 5 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of the world’s prison population. According to the International Centre for Prison Studies, based in London, America is blowing other countries out of the water in prison population.
At the end of 2013, 716 out of 100,000 people were currently behind bars in America, with Russia coming in second, with 627 per 100,000.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is addressing this problem through drug sentencing reform. Holder’s idea is to have low-level drug offenders put into treatment and community service programs instead of prison. The new idea also calls for the release of some elderly, non-violent offenders. However, it only applies to federal crimes, which account for just 14 percent of all U.S. prisoners or about 200,000 inmates. In that 14 percent though, just 3 percent are incarcerated for murder, assault or kidnapping. About 51 percent are in federal prison for drug crimes, according to a prison study recently completed by University of California-Berkeley and University of California-Los Angeles.
State leads nation in % of black incarcerations About 21,775 of America’s 2.4 million prisoners are incarcerated in Wisconsin. Just like America beats all other countries in prison population, Wisconsin beats all other states in incarceration rates of African American men and Native American men. The national average for the imprisonment of African American men is 6.7 percent, in Wisconsin it’s 12.8 percent. The national average for Native American men is 3.1 percent, in Wisconsin it’s 7.6 percent. African Americans make up 6 percent of the state’s population, but 51 percent of the prison population in Wisconsin.
The especially high numbers are largely concen- trated in Milwaukee, where one out of eight working age African American men have served time at some point, all according to a detailed analysis of state corrections records by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Employment & Training Institute. UWM’s training institute goes on to add in the report that if Wisconsin’s incarceration rates are to decrease, particular attention needs to be paid to African American men. Young men in the Milwaukee County will either begin to swell the ranks of institutionalized slavery, most likely for drug-related offenses, or successfully join the workforce contributing to the economic health of their families and the community, the report says.
“High rates of incarceration remove young working-age people from the community during the college or career-beginning age and return them several years later with reduced prospects for education and employment,” according to the Commission on Reducing Racial Disparities in the Criminal Justice System 2008 Final Report. “Further, the young people often return with greater ties to criminal networks.”
It should also be noted that this phenomenon is not because African Americans are committing crimes more often. According to economists and law professors at Harvard University, the University of Chicago – Illinois, and the University of Pennsylvania, black defendants are 30 percent more likely to go to jail than white defendants for the same crimes, and 96 percent of rape is committed by white men, but 80 percent of those incarcerated for the crime are black.
Kenosha leaders join forces to cut inmate numbers. These numbers have religious leaders joining together to create the 11×15 campaign, which strives to cut the incarceration rate to 11,000 by 2015.
Congregations United to Serve Humanity in Kenosha is an ally of the 11×15 campaign. “We’re especially focused on drug abuse and encouraging young people to not end up in the court system because of it. It isn’t worth it if you end up in adult court,” said Marge Krupp, the chair for the 11×15 campaign in Kenosha.
“It’s a great habit to know the politicians that represent you and talk to them. We all need to call them and let them know why this is important to us,” Krupp said. “Teenagers need to call and let their representatives know that they are not okay with being tried as adults, and that Wisconsin’s prison system needs reform. You’ve got to call and make sure they know you’re watching.”
“This is a non-partisan effort to try to save the tax- payers’ millions of dollars and get prisoners the treatment they need,” Krupp said. “Treatment is brutal, it’s facing your demons, but it’s necessary to help and fix this system.”
In Kenosha, Krupp and her team are currently working on a new project, opening up a recovery home for those trying to complete treatment or detox from an addiction. The 11×15 campaign Kenosha Task Force meets monthly at the Bradford Church.
The campaign is also working on legislation that would have 17-year-olds charged in juvenile court. Thirty-seven states currently have 17-year-olds charged as adults for crimes, and 11 states, includ- ing Wisconsin, allow 16-year-olds to be charged as adults.
Some local teens are questioning the move to charge minors as adults for crimes.
“If a person is not treated as an adult in any other respect and denied the privileges of adulthood, he or she cannot be granted the accompanying punish- ments,” said Carly Bellerive, a Biotechnology Acad- emy senior.
Dollars and sense: In addition to the rising prison population, the cost of housing these prisoners is also rapidly increasing. In Wisconsin alone, according to the 11×15 campaign, the cost of incarceration has increased from $200 million per year in 1990 to more than $1.3 billion in 2011. The average inmate in a maximum-security federal prison costs $33,000 each year, enough money to get a bachelor’s degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. These costs are expected to rise 30 percent by 2020, according to the U.S. Department of Justice’s budget.
In contrast, it would only cost $1,000 to $4,000 per inmate to receive treatment, instead of $37,994 per inmate per year to incarcerate, according to Krupp and the 11×15 campaign.
“The potential for rehabilitation, even if low, would be greater than that of imprisonment, which additionally fuels anti-judicial and anti-enforcement sentiments. At any rate, even if the person were to return to a life of drug abuse, taxpayers will have saved their money,” Bellerive said.
It is common knowledge that those in prison make license plates for cars, but prisoners also help manufacture high-tech missiles, and other military technology, according to a report by Global Research in Canada. Prisoners also make a lot of the furniture one would see in a government official’s office. Even Victoria Secret has contracted prisoners to make their products. These prisoners make 0.23 cents an hour for this labor, with no union, no social security, no healthcare, essentially no benefits of any kind.
Currently, the Wisconsin State Senate is working on a bill, SB 308, that would put 17-year-olds and younger back in juvenile court.
In the 2014 federal budget, Congress has created the Charles Colson Task Force, an independent, nine-member panel of experts who will issue recommendations on federal prison reform. The task force is currently working on giving smaller sentences to those in federal prisons for nonviolent offenses.