REACTION ESSAY

PRISON SITING, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, RACISM, AND JUSTICE REINVESTMENT

LEO CARROLL University of Rhode Island

African-American men are incarcerated at a rate 7.7 times in excess of that for white men, and fully 10% of African-American men aged 20-29 are in prison. Despite constituting only some 15% of the population, nearly half of the prisoners in federal and state prisons are African American (Harrison and Beck, 2003).

As others have noted (e.g., Tonry, 1995), figures such as these are evidence of the racism inherent in the war on drugs. They also unmask the racism that is implicit in the policy to use prisons as a vehicle for the economic development of impoverished rural areas. Given the geographic distribution of the population by race and the racial composition of the prison population, said policy necessitates that people of color, once again, be forcibly removed from their home communities and relocated in “foreign” territories for the betterment of the largely white population residing there. Once again, we seek to build a rural economy on the backs of black people in bondage while ignoring the plight of their home communities and the impact this forced transportation has on them.

RACISM IN RURAL PRISONS Most immediately, the attempt to develop rural economies via prison

construction thwarts other goals that should be at least of equal priority. One prison at which I spent several days last year was sited, in large part, to help develop a rural area, the economy of which was in serious decline.’ Another goal of that department, however, is to build a diverse workforce, and it is clear at this institution that these two goals conflict. Minority staff have to be recruited from outside the immediate area, often from other institutions, and because of the hostility of the local white population, most choose to commute as much as two hours each way rather than move. Some African-American staff who have tried to live in the area told

1. Over the past two years, I have had the opportunity to visit a dozen institutions in the capacity of a consultant with the Criminal Justice Institute of Middletown, CT, which has a cooperative agreement with the National Institute of Corrections to assess institutional cultures. Each visit lasts 3 or 4 days, during which the assessment team has 24-hour-a-day unescorted access to all areas of the prison. The team also conducts focus groups and extensive interviews with both staff and offenders.

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of having their car tires slashed and rocks thrown at their home windows. They, and others, recounted racist remarks and insults directed at them by some white staff, and-in a racially mixed focus group-white staff angrily denounced the recent promotion of a black officer whose ignorance, they claimed, would jeopardize institutional security and their personal safety. It is scarcely surprising, then, that recruiting minorities to work at this institution is difficult, to say the least, and retaining them even more so. Most either transfer to another institution closer to home as soon as they accumulate enough seniority or leave the department altogether.

This institution is far from unique. Huling (2002:208) cites a recent unpublished study by Kelsey Kaufman that documents numerous incioents of racism in rural prisons around the country. Such incidents include race- based threats, racist remarks and insults, the displaying of racist symbols such as KKK tattoos at work, retaliation against staff who complain about the incidents, and tolerance of such behavior by managers. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC, 2000) reports that as of the year 2000, minor- ity correctional officers in at least 13 states had filed hostile work environ- ment suits alleging racist harassment and violence by their colleagues. Most such suits are settled out of court with no admission of guilt on the part of the alleged offenders or departments. But so far the SPLC reports that over $5 million has been paid out to plaintiffs who number in the hundreds.

Although courts have upheld the firing of correctional officers for racist activities (cf. Weicherding v. Riedel, 1998), many administrators appear reluctant to take such action. In New Jersey, for example, a hostile work environment suit by black officers at the state prison in Rahway cost the Department $2 million, and the Department was ordered to establish a centralized mechanism for handling racial harassment. Three years later, however, officers at another New Jersey institution filed suit claiming that prison officials failed to investigate Klan recruiting activities that had been brought to their attention (SPLC, 2000).

THE PRISON BOOM AND THE INNER CITY

Less visible but certainly no less important is the impact of the rural prison boom on the distribution of political representation and federal aid. The decennial U.S. Census, upon which Congressional representation and federal aid are based, counts prisoners as residents of the locality in which they are incarcerated at the time of the Census, not the community from which they came. Thus, as political boundaries are redrawn, poor inner- city areas, home to the majority of prisoners, lose representation to rural areas. This gain in rural political power is increased even further in the 48 states in which prisoners are disenfranchised. Moreover, the inner-city

REACTION ESSAY

areas, where the lack of employment and resultant crises are certainly equal to those in rural areas, stand to lose the “prisoner share” of the approximately $2 trillion in federal aid that will be allocated over this dec- ade on the basis of the 2000 US. Census (Huling, 2002:210-212). And this comes at time when the majority of the approximately 600,000 prisoners who will be released each year will be returning to those already devas- tated areas.

Building new prisons in inner cities rather than rural areas might allevi- ate some of these problems and provide considerable benefits to offend- ers. Another prison I visited recently was opened ten years ago on land that had been abandoned when a large manufacturing concern had moved its operation out of the city. Designed for 550, this medium-security insti- tution held 1,050 at the time of my visit. Approximately 80% of the pris- oner population was nonwhite as was about 75% of the staff. The majority of both groups live and/or grew up in the nearby area and expressed a strong commitment to making the institution run smoothly. Officers were more highly educated than those in most institutions. A good number were graduates of a nearby university or were taking courses there part time. While maintaining a professional decorum, they were friendly, open, and responsive in their interactions with offenders as were the offenders with them. At the time of the visit, there were only three offenders in segregation, a statistic that amazed us given the size of the population. Almost to a person, staff asserted that one of the things they most enjoyed about working at this institution was “feeling safe and knowing you’re going home at the end of the day.” Prisoners who had served sentences at other institutions claimed to feel much safer in this prison. All agreed that this high degree of safety and security was because of the cultural compati- bility of staff and inmates, to the fact that the prison’s location facilitated visits with family and friends and made possible the establishment of a large community volunteer program that provides the offender population with programming suited to their interests and tastes.

Using abandoned land in inner cities to site new prisons would also help maintain the political power of those areas and the flow of federal aid. It would not necessarily resolve, and may in fact aggravate, existing problems, however. If the economic costs of prison construction in rural areas outweigh its economic benefits, as King et al. conclude, there is no reason to believe that its effect will be any different in inner cities. By attracting the families of prisoners, it may even further concentrate dis- rupted and poverty-stricken families in small areas. In a recent review of the research, Clear (2002:193) concludes that there is now “a solid body of evidence indicat[ing] that high levels of incarceration concentrated in impoverished communities has a destabilizing effect on community life, so that the most basic underpinnings of informal social control are damaged.

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This, in turn, reproduces the very dynamics that sustain crime.” Recent research suggests that this effect of concentrated disadvantage on crime is greater for blacks than for other raciallethnic groups (McNulty and Bel- lair, 2003).

There is also a large literature indicating that inequality causes crime (see Pratt and Godsey, 2003; Velez et al., 2003), and recent research by Bruce Western et al. (2002) strongly suggests that the explosion of the prisoner population over the past two decades has increased racial ine- quality. Including the incarcerated among the jobless when calculating employment rates, which conventional employment figures do not, they estimate that the percentage of white male high-school dropouts, aged 22-30, who were employed fell from 74.7% in 1980 to 72.9% in 1999. Among African Americans of the same age and education, however, the percent employed dropped from 55.5% to 29.9% (Western et al., 2002:172). The disproportionate incarceration of African Americans also increases inequality by virtue of the impact of a prison record on future earnings. If blacks and whites were incarcerated at the same rate, Western et al. (2002:178) estimate, the current wage gap among men under 30 would be reduced from 18% to 12%.

ALTERNATIVES TO INCARCERATION

Increasing racial inequality and further concentrating poverty in inner- city neighborhoods will not promote public safety. We do not need to begin constructing new prisons in inner cities; we need to stop building prisons and incarcerate fewer people. The primary justification for the mass incarceration that has occurred over the past quarter century has been incapacitation: Offenders in prison cannot commit crimes in the com- munity. However, the amount of crime, if any, estimated to be prevented by incapacitation is dependent on a number of uncertain assumptions, and it is hotly debated. Moreover, lengthy sentences bring diminishing returns in terms of crimes prevented because as offenders age, they commit fewer crimes. Likewise, at the current level of incarceration, every dollar expended for new cells may be bringing diminishing returns because those who are not now in prison are more likely to be low-frequency offenders (MacKenzie, 2002:334-338).

Incarceration is expensive, and the current fiscal crises facing the states is forcing state authorities to rethink correctional policy and practice. Many of the new proposals merely aim to save money by privatizing ser- vices, cutting programs, and laying off staff. Increasingly, however, correc- tions officials are looking for creative ways to cut costs while ensuring public safety even more effectively. After three decades of research, social

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scientists have more to offer these policy makers than Martinson’s (1974) oft-quoted overgeneralization that “nothing works.”

A recent comprehensive and rigorous assessment of more than 600 eval- uations of crime-prevention programs shows that there is indeed much that works and even more that is promising (Sherman et al., 2002). A detailed summary of effective and promising programs is well beyond the scope of this essay, but a sampling of the types of programs proven suc- cessful includes the following:

Home visitation programs providing training in parental skills for

School-based programs that combine parental and child training Intervention programs to improve school discipline policies, social

Instructional programs focusing on social skills development using

Intensive residential vocational training for at-risk youth In-prison therapeutic communities with follow-up treatment in the

Vocational education programs Community employment programs, especially those that begin indi-

adults and social skills for children

climate, and management capability

cognitive-behavioral methods

community after release

vidualized assistance prior to and continue after release

JUSTICE REINVESTMENT As the cost of mass incarceration becomes prohibitive and evidence of

less expensive and more effective alternatives grows, a social movement to promote a fundamental shift in criminal justice policy is emerging. Termed “justice reinvestment,” its goal is to “redirect some portion of the $54 bil- lion American now spends on prisons to rebuilding the human resources and physical infrastructure. . .of neighborhoods devastated by high levels of incarceration” (Tucker and Cadora, 2003:2). Theoretically rooted in social disorganization theory, the movement’s basic principle involves a redefinition of the concept of public safety to include “strengthening the capacity of high incarceration neighborhoods to keep their residents out of prison” thereby ending the cycle of “coercive mobility.” A second princi- ple is that responsibility and accountability must be devolved to the local level; measures to increase public safety by strengthening the community should be locally generated and implemented (Tucker and Cadora, 2003:2-4).

An example of justice reinvestment in action is the community service program in Deschutes County, Oregon (Open Society Institute, 2003). In 1997, the state began allowing Deschutes County to supervise juveniles who were headed for state facilities, and it provided the county with the

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funds it would cost to incarcerate each one, about $50,000 per youth per year. With the funds, the county developed a mechanism to supervise the youth, a wide variety of community service programs, and a number of primary prevention programs. The county also agreed to assume financial responsibility for each youth it subsequently sent to a state institution.

Youth served their sentences by landscaping local parks, working with Habitat for Humanity, building a homeless shelter, and constructing a child advocacy center. Surplus funds were diverted to support schools, libraries, and health clinics. The program became so popular that it was extended to adults released from prison or jail, and when state funding ended in 2003, local government picked up the tab.

A similar program is under consideration in Ohio (Tucker and Cador, 2003:4-5). Under the “Reclaim Ohio” proposal, local governments can take responsibility for law-breakers and redirect the funds the state would pay to incarcerate them. Local governments would have the freedom to spend these funds on programs directly aimed at decreasing crime, to blend them with other funding streams focused on community restoration, or to use them to attract investment in housing, employment, or education.

CONCLUSION

One of the central problems of our globalized postindustrial society is what to do with surplus labor generated by technological advances and the transfer of low-skill jobs out of the country. For the past 25 years, the United States has attempted to manage this problem, in part, by a policy featuring a war on drugs and mass incarceration. As the need for more prisons has grown, that has been joined to one that promises to solve rural poverty through prison construction, turning loggers and fishermen into correctional officers.

There is ample evidence that the war on drugs has failed, and mass incarceration has become prohibitively expensive while providing dimin- ishing returns in crime prevention. King et al. now have provided us with credible evidence that siting prisons in rural areas does not promote their economic development, and it may in fact contribute to their continued impoverishment.

Adding to the failure of these policies is the fact that they have had a devastating effect on nonwhite minorities, especially African Americans, by making incarceration a virtual rite of passage, disrupting families, destabilizing communities, thwarting affirmative action programs, and subjecting nonwhite prison staff and inmates to overtly racist violence, intimidation, and harassment.

We are now at a point where the right thing to do is not only just but also fiscally sound. Redirecting and reinvesting a significant portion of the

REACTION ESSAY

billions of dollars now spent on incarceration will provide greater returns not only in preventing crime but also in sustainable economic develop- ment in both urban and rural areas.

REFERENCES

Clear, Todd R. 2002 The problem with “addition by subtraction”: The prison-crime relationship

in low-income communities. In Marc Mauer and Meda Chesney-Lind (eds.), Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment. New York: The New Press.

Harrison, Paige M. and Allen J. Beck Prisoners in 2002. Washington, D. C.: U. S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Building a prison economy in rural America. In Marc Mauer and Meda Chesney-Lind (eds.), Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment. New York: The New Press.

Reducing the criminal activities of known offenders and delinquents: Crime prevention in the courts and corrections. In Lawrence W. Sherman, David P. Farrington, Brandon C. Welsh, and Doris Layton MacKenzie (eds.), Evi- dence-based Crime Prevention. New York: Routledge.

What works‘? Questions and answers about prison reform. The Public Interest 35:22-54.

McNulty, Thomas L. and Paul E. Bellair

2003

Huling, Tracy 2002

MacKenzie, Doris Layton 2002

Martinson, Robert 1974

2003 Explaining racial and ethnic differences in serious adolescent violent behav- ior. Criminology 41:709-748.

From prisons to parks in Oregon. Ideas for An Open Society: Occasional Papers from 0%-U.S. Programs 3:6-7.

Social support, inequality, and homicide: A cross-national test of an inte- grated theoretical model. Criminology 41:611-643.

Sherman Lawrence W., David P. Farrington, Brandon C. Welsh, and Doris Layton

Open Society Institute 2003

Pratt, Travis C. and Timothy W. Godsey 2003

MacKenzie (eds.) 2002 Evidence-based Crime Prevention. New York: Routledge.

Guarding against hate. Intelligence Report 100 (Fall). Available online: http:llwww.splcenter.org. Accessed 31412004.

Malign Neglect: Race, Crime and Punishment in America. New York: Oxford University Press.

Southern Poverty Law Center 2000

Tonry, Michael 1995

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Tucker, Susan B. and Eric Cadora 2003 Justice reinvestment. Ideas for An Open Society: Occasional Papers from

OSI-US. Programs 3:2-5. Velez, Maria B., Lauren J. Krivo, and Ruth D. Peterson

Structural inequality and homicide: An assessment of the black-white gap in killings. Criminology 41:645-672.

2003

Weicherding v. Riedel, 160 F.3d 1139 (7th Cir., 1998). Western, Bruce, Becky Petit, and Josh Guetzkow

2002 Black economic promise in the era of mass imprisonment. In Marc Mauer and Meda Chesney-Lind (eds.), Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Con- sequences of Mass Imprisonment. New York: The New Press.Author Bio

Leo Carroll is Professor of Sociology at the University of Rhode Island. Serving as a correctional officer in the military sparked his interest in prisons, which has been the main focus of his research and teaching. His Hacks, Blacks and Cons: Race Relations in a Maximum Security Prison (19740988) was the first major sociological study of race relations in a prison. A more recent book, Lawful Order: Correctional Crisis and Reform (1998/2000), examined the history of a court intervention from the development of the conditions that gave rise to it through its termination. It was recognized by the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences as the outstanding book by one of its members in 2000.