Mass Incarceration: An Unacceptable Strategy for Poverty Reduction

One reason that people are so drawn to New Orleans post 2005 is that Hurricane Katrina and our ensuing struggle for reconstruction have laid bare the disparities that arise from social problems like racism and poverty. It’s always interesting to see post-Katrina volunteers making connections between what they observe here and the problems they witness back in their own communities all across the country. One area where this has become particularly clear to me is in our national policy of mass incarceration, which has been carried to an extreme in Louisiana and New Orleans.

According to the Pew Center on the States, the United States incarcerates more people than any country in the world, with approximately one in 100 people behind bars in 2008. Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate in the nation, with 1 in 55 adults currently behind bars. This figure only includes people behind bars, not people on probation or parole. Since 1982, Louisiana’s incarceration rate has risen by 272 percent.

These numbers become even more overwhelming when figures are broken down by factors like race, class, gender, age, and the presence of mental illness. For example, nationally 1 in 15 black men ages 18 or older are behind bars, while the figure for white men ages 18 or older is 1 in 106. One in nine black men ages 20 to 34 are behind bars. Incarceration rates by race in Louisiana reflect a similar disparity. Though incarceration rates for women are lower overall, similar racial disparities persist. Finally, recent data indicates that more than half of all prison and jail inmates have a mental health problem. In New Orleans, since Katrina, the connection between poor mental health and incarceration is particularly acute. Since Hurricane Katrina, the largest mental health facility in the city has been Orleans Parish Prison, and police officers are faced with a dearth of other alternatives when dealing with residents experiencing acute mental health issues. This all occurs in the context of a city whose residents have experienced a massive amount of trauma that has not been addressed in any systemic way.

Mass incarceration policies are expensive and have not yielded a corresponding decrease in crime. Furthermore, there has not been a corresponding enthusiasm in quality re-entry programs, which means that recidivism rates remain extremely high. In one New Orleans neighborhood, it will cost $2 million to incarcerate the 55 residents that were imprisoned in 2007, yet there is virtually no other money being invested in the neighborhood.

With figures like these, it is impossible to not at least consider the notion that incarceration has become our de facto social policy for dealing with issues like poverty, illiteracy, mental illness and the continued oppression of the racial groups that we (usually falsely) associate with these problems.

In New Orleans and in my own life, I’ve watched how incarceration tears families and communities apart. Because of the horrible conditions in our prisons and jails, many formerly incarcerated persons reenter with exacerbated mental health issues. Many people reentering society after the experience of incarceration face extremely unstable or nonexistent housing and employment situations, either because they cannot afford housing or because they can’t gain access to sustainable jobs and housing due to their formerly incarcerated status. Lack of access to housing and jobs then significantly increases recidivism rates.

Professionally, I am familiar with how mass incarceration policies affect people’s access to housing. At my office, we get calls from formerly incarcerated persons who are discriminated against in the pursuit of housing. Criminal background is NOT a protected class under the Fair Housing Act. I understand fears about living around formerly incarcerated persons. But given massive incarceration rates, where do we expect people to live?

Sometimes in New Orleans, people talk about using Katrina as an opportunity to rebuild a better city, or to reconstruct a more just place. Usually, I find this point to be offensive. Occasionally, it at least provides a way forward. On a national level, perhaps the current economic crisis, with as much pain and suffering as it causes, will at least provide us with the opportunity to reconsider oppressive social policies like mass incarceration. Now we might realize that it is too expensive and that we need to adopt other methods of dealing with crime, poverty, illiteracy, and mental health.

(photo by publik15)