Crisis Behind Bars: Building More Jails a Poor Solution to the Crime Problem

The problem of prison crowding is like the national debt and foreign policy. Everybody has an opinion on the subject, but sound solutions are not implemented.

For more than a decade, overcrowded jails and prisons have haunted us. Nationwide, prison populations began to rise dramatically in 1972. There are more than a half-million Americans in prison; and at least again that many Americans in local jails. Our state and national rates of imprisonment have doubled in the last decade. San Diego’s jail population has tripled in that period.

Jail cells can cost $50,000 or more to build for each bed. The cost of the custody of an inmate can range from $12,000 to $30,000 annually. Still, the construction of new prison and jail beds proceeds as the principal remedy for overcrowding.

For the last decade, San Diego has had one of the most active new jail construction programs of any county in California. All the while, San Diego’s jail overcrowding is among the worst in the nation. It is estimated that nearly $1,000 in taxes per typical American family would need to be spent to build enough prisons just to house those already incarcerated in overcrowded conditions. We are getting very little for all the millions of dollars we are spending each year on new construction. It seems that instead of curing the cancer, we are putting Band-Aids on each new wound.

Since the overcrowding is so severe, our County Board of Supervisors needs to spend much of it energy and much of our taxes responding to the overcrowding crisis with new construction. These large expenditures are not popular. They cut into other public benefit expenditures: parks, hospitals, education and the like. So, San Diegans are asked to vote for bond issues and tax increases. Yet, for all of the money spent on five new jails in the last 10 years, the overcrowding situation is worsening.

Public leaders are known for conflicting messages. On the one hand they want you to believe you are unsafe, so that you will spend more for public safety programs. On the other hand, they want you to believe you are safer because you went along with their last budget hike.

The same is true in the politics of incarceration. Community leaders milk the crisis situation to get the budget they want; moreover, they ask for far more than they think they can get, so that they can live with what they do get. The bureaucracy continues to expand. In this background, community leaders cannot ask for alternatives to incarceration. They want more jails, so they dare not risk interference with the momentum toward more construction.

San Diegans are led to believe that if an inmate is released for lack of jail space, he will commit another crime. For years, politicians have deceived the public by saying that more jails and prisons will make their communities safer. What leaders don’t say is that alternatives can be as safe as jails, while far cheaper to build and operate.

Three years ago, a consulting firm that studied San Diego’s overcrowding recommended a detailed study of the risks posed by our prisoners. Who is in our jails? How can inmates be classified according to risk and individual needs? The study has never been done. Many of our jails’ beds are taken up by non-dangerous offenders and the mentally ill. And the sheriff does not know, from day to day, who can or should be released to alternative facilities or programs. All the while, there is no impetus to carry out plans for such alternatives.

Among alternative programs, some clearly emerge as in need of expansion:

* Work release. Defendants are sentenced to jail, but spend eight hours providing public service work in lieu of a day of custody. These defendants are seen cleaning our freeways and parks, building beds for our detention facilities, and performing other jobs which save the county money.

* Work furlough. Defendants pay for their own custody at night while they continue to work at their own jobs by day. These defendants’ families may be kept off welfare as their principal breadwinner continues to support them. Rural honor camp overcrowding can be reduced by having inmates serve the last part of their sentence in work furlough centers, reintegrating these inmates into society. However, county work furlough centers are limited to about 130 beds and are usually full.

* Volunteer work. Here, defendants volunteer their work to social service agencies, hospitals or other charitable organizations. Their services help the community without taking up valuable bed space.

* Job Training and referral. Our local criminal justice system has nowhere near the job training or placement programs called for by the numbers of people that could use those services. Restitution to the victim of a crime is not possible unless a defendant is employed.

* Residential Alcohol and Drug Programs. These programs give defendants strong support systems in an alcohol and drug-free environment. After a period of abstinence and counseling, the defendants are eased back into the community to begin employment. Conservatively, two-thirds of all jail inmates have a substance abuse problem.

Residence drug and alcohol programs have waiting lists. The downtown detoxification center (for alcoholics) is always full. There is no detox center in North County.

* Residence facilities for the mentally ill. As poverty is on the rise, so too are the incarceration rates of the mentally ill and homeless. The mentally ill are mixed in with the offender populations. Mental health professionals cannot adequately treat these people in jails. Board-and-care homes can be increased to accommodate this population.

Our county planners can be more creative in solving our overcrowding problem. For example, more inmates can be screened and released, with close supervision, from our jails or work furlough centers, with the use of electronic surveillance devices.

We are not saying that the dangerous be released. We are saying that our taste for punishment can be moderated.

Our mind-set on locking up more and more people for longer terms is an expensive and abysmal failure. In the long run, the underlying causes of crime must be addressed. But for now, the punitive warehousing of defendants serves us poorly. We can more fully utilize cost-effective alternatives to incarceration. We should demand the use of alternative as an integral part of expansion of our local corrections system.