Michael Welch - Ironies of Imprisonment

MICHAEL WELCH

Copyright 2005 by Sage Publications, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

Welch, Michael

Ironies of imprisonment / Michael Welch.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 1-4129-0480-3 (cloth)

ISBN 0-7619-3059-0 (pbk.)

1. ImprisonmentUnited States. 2. PrisonsUnited States. 3. CorrectionsUnited States. 4. Criminal justice, Administration ofUnited States. I. Title.

HV9471.W4594 2005

364.60973dc22 2004007913

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

04 05 06 07 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

When it comes to the problem of imprisonment in the United States, there are indeed a host of ironies worth our contemplation. For instance:

When it comes to penal policy, we have a problem in language. Our penal policy seems made up of soundbites and social metaphors. We find ourselves drawn to confident-sounding phrases, such as a thug in jail cant shoot your sister, or dont do the crime if you cant do the time. And we seem ever to be building laws that resonate with other spheres of social activity, for instance sports (three strikes youre out) and war (as in, war on drugs). This problem in the capacity of our language interferes with our ability to develop sound crime policy, since once we become enamored of the metaphor, we lose track of the meaning.

Sensible talk about crime policy requires more reflection than a soundbite and more depth than a metaphor. If we are to ever become wise in crime policy we must be willing to think about it, and to think critically about our most cherished assumptions. Let me provide an example of what I mean.

A great deal has been made recently of truth in sentencing. The idea behind this simple phrase is that when a sentence is announced by the judge in court, the offender ought to serve itor at least in todays version of the truth serve at least 85% of itand that such truth will be an improvement in justice. The idea is undeniably appealing; who can argue against the truth? But if we look behind the soundbite, we find much that might trouble us. The most obvious question would be: Who can say that any sentence imposed by a judge is the correct sentence? Take the situation, for example, of two offenders standing before two judges, each convicted of the sale of an illegal drug. One gets a sentence of 10 years, the other a sentence of 2 years. Under truth in sentencing, the first will serve 120 months, the second more than 20 months. Which sentence is true, in any meaningful sense of the word true? If we require that justice be true, how can such disparate sentences be just? How, then, can they both be true?

In fact, when we think about such a sentence, what truth is it trying to communicate? The amount of time a person will eventually serve is such a limited and insignificant portion of the truth at the time of the sentence, it is as though we all want to participate in a fiction and call it the truth when it is only a part of the story. A judge, required to tell the whole truth at the time of a sentence, might need to say something like this:

For the crime of drug selling, I sentence you to 10 years in prison. I am doing so even though we know that this sentence will not prevent any more drugs from being sold, and that it will probably even result in someone not now involved in the drug trade being recruited to take your place while you are locked up. I impose this sentence knowing that the main reason you have been caught and convicted is that we have concentrated our police presence in the community where you live, and that had you lived where I live, your drug use and sales would most probably have gone undetected. I impose this sentence knowing that it will cost taxpayers over a quarter of a million dollars to carry it out, money we desperately need for the schools and health care in the area where you live, but instead it will go into the pockets of corrections officers and prison builders who live miles away from here and have no interest in the quality of life in your neighborhood. I impose this sentence knowing that it will most likely make you a worse citizen, not a better one, leaving you embittered toward the law and damaged by your years spent behind bars. You think you have trouble making it now? Wait until after you have served a decade of your life wasting in a prison cell. And I impose this sentence knowing that it will make your children, your cousins, and your nephews have even less respect for the law, since they will come to see you as having been singled out for this special punishment, largely due to the color of your skin and the amount of money in your pocket. I impose this sentence knowing that its only purpose is to respond to an angry public and a few rhetorically excited politicians, even though I know that this sentence will not calm either of them down in the slightest. This is the truth of my sentence.