If there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that US prison populations in the last decade have reached astonishing proportions, and Alaska is no exception. Most of this is due to the insane, ill-conceived "war on drugs", which restricts privacy and personal freedom, and penalizes millions of people every year for victimless crimes.New provisions such as the "three strikes" law, will accelerate this process beyond reasonable proportions. Judges familiar with the specifics of a case are supposed to hand down sentences - mandatory minimums and three strikes provisions serve only to increase our prison populations and get politicians elected at the expense of the public welfare.
Ending these "tough on crime" initiatives and stopping the drug war are the best ways to reduce crime and prison populations. Current projections indicate that by the second decade of the 21st century, most of us will be in prison. Will Alaska wake up before half the state's population is incarcerated?
From the looks of things right now: no. The best prison proposal has come from Governor Knowles, who has proposed a cost-effective method of making more bed space available while keeping the prisons run by the state. While it doesn't attack the root of the problem, it does begin to solve our overcrowding problem, which Alaska has been court-ordered to rectify.
Two other proposals recently brought forward threaten to make Alaska a living crime/prison hell. It seems we're following California's repressive, ill-conceived lead on these issues. How long until we pass up our paranoid, isolationist brethren Outside?
Removing TV, weightlifting and other privileges (Donley)
Saying that prison is no place to be having fun, Senator Donley has recommended that we remove privileges from the incarcerated. Corrections experts have almost unanimously declared this proposal destructive, since small privileges like computers and television are the only positive behavior modification tools available to the prison industry.
True, prisons are a punitive measure, but isn't stripping these people of their freedom enough without taking away the only tools that will let them succeed on the Outside when they get out? This proposal is guaranteed to generate even more behavior problems in our prisons, increase recidivism, and reduce an already-low rehabilitation rate.
Privatizing the Prison System (Mulder)
This one is clearly the worst. Private prison corporations have lobbied nationally for tougher sentencing and more private prisons. They skimp on services that are vital to returning our convicts to society, and they are clearly interested in perpetuating the trend of more people in prison.
Blinded by their quest for financial gain, these politically-active corporations are busily ensuring that more crime and overcrowded prisons will be the name of the game at the turn of the century. When will they let us off this nauseating roller coaster?
The Knowles Proposal
While it doesn't address the central issue of crime control, at least Knowles' proposal will improve conditions in state prisons that have been declared too crowded by the feds. Furthermore, it leaves hope for a forward-thinking approach to crime control that places a reduction of prison populations at the top of its list.
We're not talking about releasing thousands of dangerous criminals, here. The goal is to identify nonviolent prisoners who could make valuable contributions to society, and either shorten their sentences or provide middle-ground solutions (like house arrest, parole and half-way houses).
But really, if we're to reduce prison overcrowding over the long term, we need to slow the rapidly rising trend of incarceration through modifying the penal code. These modifications must include legalizing drugs and declaring them a crisis to public health instead of a criminal menace. This will remove the pressure to traffic in drugs, and give chronic users a way out through enhanced prevention and intervention tools. And we must return sentencing power to the judges.
Less than a decade ago, America became the top-rated 'advanced culture' in terms of jailing its citizens. Not even the most powerful communist regimes are jailing dissidents as rapidly as we're locking up our ethnic minorities. This is a bad sign. If freedom and participation in society are so valued in America, how come we have the worst record on the planet - with no sign of a turnaround? It's time to direct our most powerful social technologies against crime, instead of relying on our overly simplistic strategy of revenge.