What is California’s most important resource? Human beings, of course. Yet each year, the revolving door of the criminal justice system sends thousands of nonviolent young men and women to prison, principally based on the continuing inane belief that we are making our streets “safer” and that we can lower our crime rates through incarceration. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard it said, “Well, that’s one person who won’t be committing crimes for a while.”
The reality is that statistics bear out a different truth. Incarceration does not prevent crime. The recidivism rate is huge, and committing crimes becomes a nearly guaranteed way of life when we pool offenders together in massive warehouses, thereby ensuring continuing failure as new prisoners learn criminal sophistication from their older peers, who, of course, learned it from their older peers. When does it stop?
Complaining about the problem isn’t the answer. But neither is continuing to support the insanity of incarceration. It’s not rocket science, folks. Creative and productive people are more likely to succeed in life than people seeped in despair and hopelessness. Rather than treating offenders as “them,” we need to see them as part of “us.”
Offenders can be a great source of productive public work, possibly at reduced wages. How many needed projects go neglected for alleged lack of “resources”? Government buildings and roads go unrepaired, unpainted, and dirty while offenders sit it out in overcrowded cells. For you number crunchers, compare the cost of supervision versus the cost of incarceration. And this doesn’t even factor in the restorative value of an offender being provided a realistic means to pay restitution to victims and pay down fines while learning the value
of a day’s work.
It really comes down to recognizing that offenders are people, too. Everybody needs hope. Do we want responsible people? If so, we need to give people a way to become responsible. Yes, justice has to be retributive. But in the process, let us not forget to be restorative, redemptive, and just plain good about how we administer justice to our offenders.
David Bixby is a Santa Maria-based criminal defense attorney. Send comments to the executive editor at rmiller@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jan 28 – Feb 4, 2010.