Global Earth Network International Education: Getting Tough on Crime Doesn't Work

creating with the mind, holilstic medicine, wizard school

One copy personal use exception to

BOOKMARK THIS EXCERPT for personal

study or leisure reading.

Getting Tough on Crime Doesn't Work

On Connecticut Public Television (CPTV), “The Rise and Fall of Newgate Prison,” Representative Michael Lawlor, Co-Chairman of the Connecticut Legislative Judiciary Committee, stated that prison is the least effective, most costly way to hold people accountable for their crimes. From 1986 to 1996 alone, the number of inmates in CT prisons went from 6,000 to 16,000, and in that time prison expenditures increased from 100 million to 400 million. Despite these facts, however, the basic crime rate in CT—the percent chance that a CT resident will be victimized by crime—has remained at a constant.

Lawlor went on to say that the inmate population increase is a result of politicians building their careers on “getting tough on crime,” that the ideas and resulting legislation was not based on science. He said that the public doesn't know the 300 or 30 year history of CT prisons, but that they should. Further, that prisons and legislation are not working. Despite this fact, the state spends more on prisons (to warehouse people), than higher education. These facts should be looked at by Connecticut residents. They should be alarming. For all people, regardless of where they live, the facts are telling us that getting tough on crime and putting people in prison doesn't do anything or solve any problem.

When considering a question of punish versus rehabilitation, keep in mind that 20 percent of inmates in CT prisons have mental illness, and that the numbers increase to 50 percent in women's prisons. Other categories include the innocent, the excessively charged, and those who have always had good intentions but had “slipped” due to intoxication, a negative influence, stressor, weakness, conditions, or some combination of these factors.

This leads us to the most important question of all, what is a criminal? Narrowing the question to what matters to us most, we must ask what defines “criminal mentality?” Are they a different “breed” defined by a bad intent? What constitutes a criminal psychological state? Before we decide the punitive versus treatment question, how to treat “the criminal mind,” or consider a completely new type of Criminal Justice System (CJS), we should first know what it is—what kind of “animal” it is, if such an “animal” even exists. It seems that we haven't yet taken that step.

We need to back up and ask the question history never asked. Without knowing the exact values or defining mental factors that lead one to offend, we can't know how the CJS and incarceration impacts—for better or for worse—that condition. Wouldn't you want to know if the CJS was creating rather than curing criminals, and systematically destroying rather than transforming our society? I would think so, because for one, they are putting tens of thousands of previously incarcerated individuals (more than ever) on the streets that your children play on, and charging taxpayers 100's of millions to do so.

California is one step ahead of CT in applying the “get tough on crime approach.” They have built ten new prisons. Regardless of the fact that they have 50 prisons, overcrowding has led to federal emergency orders to release inmates. EN hopes that other states and countries will not make the same mistake. In fact, we have an alternative of a remarkable and revolutionary nature which is explored in a series of articles. We believe that the new paradigm/ideal will do more than change our approach to the criminal, but will provide solutions for almost all our personal and global problems, transforming our world from the inside out.