Prison Crowding and the Evolution of Public Policy

Abstract

While crowding has been a persistent feature of the American prison since its invention in the nineteenth century, the last decade of crisis has brought more outspoken media investigations of prison conditions, higher levels of political and managerial turmoil, and a judiciary increasingly willing to bring the conditions of confinement under the scope of Eighth Amendment review. With the added incentive of severe budget constraints, liberals and conservatives alike now question whether this is any way to do business. Although crowding cannot be defined by quantitative measures alone, many institutions have far exceeded their limits of density according to minimum standards promulgated by the corrections profession. Some fall far below any reasonable standard of human decency. The results are costly, dangerous, and offensive to the public interest. Breaking the cycle of recurrent crisis requires considered efforts to address the decentralized, discretionary nature of sentence decision making and to link sentencing policies to the resources available to the corrections function. The demand to match policy with resources is simply a call for more rational policymaking. To ask for less is to allow the future of corrections to resemble its troubled past.

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References

for a brief summary of this report, see “Real and Intangible Costs: Wickersham Report,” Commonweal, 13: 562-563 (25 Mar. 1931).

2. See Claudia Angelos and James B. Jacobs , “Prison Overcrowding and the Law,” this issue of The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

3. For the relationship between riot grievances and crowding, see Hans Toch , “Warehouses for People?” this issue of The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

4. Stephen D. Gottfredson and Ralph B. Taylor , Corrections in Court: Prison Populations and Public Policy (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University, Center for Metropolitan Planning and Research, 1982).

and Bailus Walker and Theodore Gordon , “Health and High Density Confinement and Jails and Prisons,” Federal Probation, 44(1):53-58 (Mar. 1980).

6. Michael Sherman and Gordon Hawkins , Imprisonment in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).

7. Ibid.

8. Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research , Census of State Adult Correctional Facilities, 1979 (Washington, DC: Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1981).

9. Joan Mullen and Bradford Smith , American Prisons and Jails, vol. 3, Conditions and Costs of Confinement (Washington, DC: Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, 1980).

10.

10. Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research , Census of State Adult Correctional Facilities, 1979.

11.

11. Garvin McCain , Verne C. Cox , and Paul B. Paulus , The Effect of Prison Crowding on Inmate Behavior (Washington, DC: Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, 1980).

12.

12. David Fogel , We Are the Living Proof: The Justice Model for Corrections (Cincinnati, OH: Anderson, 1976), p. 1.

13.

13. Barry Krisberg , Paul Litsky , and Ira Schwartz , “Youth in Confinement: Justice by Geography,” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 21(2) (May 1984).

14.

14. These issues are discussed in some detail in Gail S. Funke , “The Economics of Prison Over-crowding,” this issue of The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

15.

15. See, for example, Nagel , The New Red Barn: A Critical Look at the Modern American Prison (New York: Walker, 1973).

16.

16. The tendency to apply so-called alternatives to incarceration to those who might have received lesser sanctions is a phenomenon discussed in M. Kay Harris , “Reducing Prison Crowding and Nonprison Penalties,” this issue of The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

17.

17. Time, 13 Sept. 1982.

18.

18. The advantages and limitations of this approach are discussed in Harris , “Reducing Prison Crowding.”

19.

19. Stephen Gettinger , “The Prison Population Boom: Still No End in Sight,” Corrections Magazine, 9(3) (June 1983).

20.

20. See Gerald Kaufman , “The National Prison Overcrowding Project: Policy Analysis and Politics, a New Approach,” this issue of The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.