Is This Really the Only Answer

In response to Jacob Smith's editorial in the March 8th edition of the The Bulletin, which depicted a correlation between rising prison populations and the decrease in violent crime rates, thus justifying spending “large sums of money” on more prisons, as he claims “there is no other alternative.” I don’t think anyone would disagree that we should put violent offenders behind bars. However, further research into the issue indicates that it is far less cut and dry than how it was presented, and shows that there are potentially other alternatives to just building more and more prisons.

According to the Department of Justice, while prison population in the United States has increased over the last 3 decades, the percentage of those inmates that were locked up due to violent crimes has remained steady (around 50%). At the same time, the percentage of inmates in prison due to drug related crimes has sky-rocketed (over a 15% increase since 1980). There are many different ideas as to why this shift has occurred. Some would argue it was caused by the "Drug War" initiatives started in the mid 90's, which changed the focus from rehabilitative measures for drug offenders to giving them more jail time. Others make the case that the rising inequalities between the upper and lower classes has lead to increased drug crimes within the poorer communities in the United States. Whatever the reason for the increase may be, one could potentially make an argument that there is at least one alternative solution to spending tax money to build more prisons: shift the punishment for drug offenders away from prison time and more towards rehabilitation. This would free up room in existing prisons for violent criminals. I may not necessarily agree with this idea, but it does open up the possibility that there are other avenues to look at for controlling our prison populations, without throwing tax dollars at it.

The larger question mark for this whole issue comes to the surface when comparing our crime and prison numbers to that of similar countries. Recent reports put our incarceration rate at over an astounding 1 in 100 citizens (approximately 1,000 prisoners for every 100,000 citizens). Most research indicates that Canada has about the same violent crime rate as the United States (it can be tough to compare the two because the definition of "violent" crime varies for each country, but most official reports put them very close). However, their incarceration rate is drastically lower, at about 130 in 100,000. Why are our violent crime rates so similar, if we put 8 times more of our population behind bars? England's incarceration rate is almost as low as Canada's, at 139 in 100,000. So why have they experienced, according to their official police reports, a 41% drop in violent crimes since 1995? What are they doing as a society to reduce violent crimes if they aren’t throwing more people in prison? I want my family to be safe, just like everyone else. But statistics like these prove that there are alternatives out there for making our country a safer place to live rather than simply building more and more prisons and locking up more and more of our citizens.