NY Gubernatorial Candidate: Throw the Poor in Prison

It has long been said that, in the US, we criminalize poverty. Rare is the city that does not have an ordinance on the books prohibiting people from sleeping outside, loitering, or panhandling. Mostly, this is an advocate's position, but sometimes it sneaks into mainstream discourse. Usually, it is decried. Almost universally, it is a metaphor. It is not poverty itself that is being criminalized, it's just all the activities that you need to engage in for survival while poor.

For us criminal justice concerned folks, the phrase is just a useful shorthand we employ to talk about the overreach the criminal justice system, and the illogic of some criminal statutes. But every so often, the 'criminalization of poverty' transcends metaphor and becomes something more literal.

And so it was last week, when NY gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino suggested that some of New York's welfare recipients be housed in converted prison dormitories, where the state could teach them “hygiene.” Prison guards, he said, could be retained, and retrained as counselors for the former prison's new residents.

Challenged about his remarks, Paladino quickly noted that the program would, of course, be voluntary. And he dubbed it, “The Dignity Corps.”

So, poverty is not being criminalized, but if you're poor and you want to go to prison—Carl Paladino wants to make that as easy as possible.

And he intends to make no apology for his policy suggestion. In fact, he fired back at critics, saying that “[prisons are] beautiful properties with basketball courts, bathroom facilities, toilet facilities. Many young people would love to get the hell out of cities.”

Where to even begin...

This being the Criminal Justice blog, and not “Poverty in America,” I think I should start by pointing out that prisons are not, in fact, beautiful properties. They are, by and large, cement behemoths ringed by line after line of razor wire. They are labyrinths, designed in such a way that all activity is directed toward the center of the complex, so that inhabitants feel dominated by their surroundings and are unable to find their way out.

And, that it is dangerous to conflate the purpose of prisons with the condition of being in poverty. Prison, ostensibly, is for people who have failed to live up to the social compact, while poverty is the state of having been failed by society. We do ourselves great disservice by tossing around the idea of placing poor people into prison, as if they belong there. Converted facility or not, I don't care. It's not an idea to be toyed with.

Photo credit: Divine in the Daily