What do prisons accomplish?

There's been quite a few reasons bandied about as to why we lock folks up. And the United States, by and large, locks up a hell of a lot more people than anyone else. Mostly due to our irrational, puritanical, and ridiculous drug laws; but that's a blog post for another time.

Let's discuss the various rationales given, and the one big, elephant-in-the-room explanation that no one ever, ever, ever discusses -- UNTIL NOW!!!

Rehabilitation

Don't make me laugh. This has actually been written out of the California legislative materials on incarceration. GED programs, study at home courses, and vocational training do a wonderful job of helping a very, very small percentage of inmates. It goes without saying that people are who are going to be locked up through their productive years probably don't take advantage of this opportunity, and for good reason; it's probably a waste of time (in economic, not personal, terms). If we could do an intelligent study on rehabilitation efforts, I'd bet that the recidivist rate amongst those who participate would be exactly the same even if such programs weren't offered. Meaning that the offender, who likely has a fairly short jail term and has no intention of returning, probably learned his lesson and wouldn't have committed another crime anyway. Does rehabilitation benefit society and make our prison system more productive? By and large, I'd say no. We pay it lip service, but that's about as far as it goes. Given that most people are anti-social miscreants due to genetic predisposition and/or a terrible upbringing (don't pretend that in most cases it's exclusively one or the other), a few GED courses aren't going to accomplish miracles.

Punishment

An "eye for an eye", and all that. Punishment used to a socially acceptable reason. Now, if it's used at all, it's mentioned with distaste. People say "make him serve his time" rather than "lock him up and throw away the key." Given our shameful acceptance of prison rape as both a fact of life, and a source of endless "don't drop the soap" punchlines, I think the vast majority of the American population just want to see these inmates suffer. And for some of them, I agree. But does punishing inmates benefit society? Well, it probably makes people think twice about committing crimes. But, apparently not enough people, since we still have catastrophically high crime rates, particularly in the inner city. Generally, people who commit serious crimes are morons, so they either don't appreciate the likelihood that they get caught, or aren't imaginative enough to realize what it will mean. Intelligent people who commit serious crimes are typically white collar criminals (which have far shorter prison terms as compared to the harms they cause) or they don't get caught.

I'm guessing that fear of punishment generally keeps in line those who would have behaved anyway. Sure it's emotionally satisfying to punish "evil-doers", but the mere fact that they are being punished doesn't really benefit us very much. If we wanted to prevent crimes, we'd randomly execute one in every hundred people who were convicted of a misdemeanor or a felony, regardless of the chrage. If that didn't get the job done, drop it to one in twenty. Eventually, only the severely deranged or the most recalcitrant hoodlum would still be engaging in crime.

Of course, mass executions would be socially unacceptable.

Removal

Aha! Now we're getting somewhere. When we talk about criminalizing behavior through jail-time being a source of lower crime rates, I don't think it's because bad folks decide not to do bad things to prevent incarceration. I think it's because we remove bad people from society for years on end. All those folks who would have committed crimes are literally unable to continue victimizing the community at large. Wonderful! Now we're getting somewhere. Suddenly, lengthy prison sentences make sense. The greatest predictor of future criminal behavior is past criminal behavior (odd that past criminal records is normally considered "irrelevant" in civil or criminal trials, isn't it?). If you're locking up criminals, you're almost certainly preventing future crimes. Delightful.

But, this "removal" has a hidden feature that's even important, though also appalling to discuss as touches upon the most taboo subject in modern society: eugenics.

Breeding

If you haven't read Freakonomics (do so!!), the most controversial chapter links Roe v. Wade to a precipitious drop in crime fifteen to eighteen years later. To wit, the children who are most likely to be aborted are also the most likely to commit crimes. This simple conclusion horrified people. The authors did a marvelous job pointing out that increased policing, the warehousing of inmates, and education spending were all illusions; the people who would have been genetically and environmentally predisposed to a life of crime were just less plentiful.

No one has yet extended this reasoning to the prison system, but since I'm an anonymous blogger, I will. Every year that a female between the ages of 15 and about 45 is locked up, is one less year they are capable of reproduction. For males, clearly the dynamic is different, but the philosophy remains in the same. Over generations this is likely to make a significant impact. There's some evidence that it already has. Despite the media frenzy surrounding violent crime, other than a few urban areas crime in the United States has gone down (particularly violent crime) over the last thirty years or so, particularly amongst the non-immigrant population.

Of course, genetic culling isn't an explicit goal of incarceration, nor am I saying it should be. However, in the long run we would be better off if we sterilized prisoners and let them out after a token sentence, then if we kept people locked up for moderately long jail sentences that allowed them at least a portion of their reproductive years. From a mathematical point of view, this makes perfect sense; from a humanist's point of view, it's a nightmare scenario. But, let's not pretend that it isn't a very real effect of our prison system, whether we want to admit it or not. Admittedly an inefficient effect (because it's not an outcome we're attempting to produce), but a real one, nonetheless.