Myth: Prisons deter crime in two ways: They deter would-be criminals who decide not to take the risk. They discourage prisoners from criminal activity after their release.
Reality: The assumption that prisons deter crime at all is highly suspect Prisons might deter a very small percentage of those who have done time but they encourage post-release crime in a far greater number of ex-prisoners.
Deterrence and punishment are replacing rehabilitation as the stated rationale for incarceration. Since deterrence was always an implicit goal of rehabilitation, this policy shift is a slight one. A policy of deterrence merely cloaks the continuation of punishment motivated to some degree by the desire for retribution.
Despite its paramount importance in penal policy, the success of deterrence is never really examined for fear that it may prove to be a fantasy. In the same way, retribution is never really examined for fear it may be a fact.
Little statistical data supports the deterrent assumption and little has been sought, in spite of an expanding literature from psychologists who generally believe that rewarding desired behavior is more effective than punishing undesired behavior. Why, then, does the public maintain “a childish faith” in punishment as a crime deterrent? The longest prison sentences are reserved for those least likely to repeat their crimes, revealing intentions other than deterrence. That “childish faith” should be scrutinized for other motives.
Those who have examined the prison/deterrence relationship seem to agree on one point: “[C]ertainty and swiftness, not severity of punishment, have the greatest deterrent effect.” Not only is this thesis unproven, but it remains unworkable since both certainty and swiftness are not possible in the criminal (in)justice systems.
Difficulty in grading deterrence
In addition to the dearth of data on deterrence, other difficulties in evaluating deterrence include:
- Measuring deterrence by comparing the number of lawbreakers to the number of people who obey the law due to fear of penal sanctions. It is impossible to measure the latter and unreliable to count the former since the majority of law breakers within the population are unapprehended.
- Failing to account for other forces of socialization besides penal sanctions which encourage or discourage conformity with noncriminal behavior.
- Basing “evidence” on deterrence mostly on parole recidivism rates, a method which is now under serious challenge.
- Sorting out the factors relevant to crime deterrence is overwhelmingly complex. These include the economic, social, and psychological factors and individual responses to actual or threatened punishments, as well as:
“[T]he type of crime, the extent of the knowledge that the conduct is a crime, the incentive to commit the crime, the severity of the threatened punishment and the extent to which the penalty is known, and the likelihood that the offender will be caught and punished. The variety and complexity of these variables, the difficulty of isolating for study a class of potential future violators, and the problem of how to vary the severity and probability of punishment in order to determine the relative effectiveness for different policies, pose such formidable research problems that it is unlikely we will gain definitive data, at least for a very long time.”
— Struggle for Justice, pp. 56-57
Theories of deterrence
“Punishment is not a deterrent. The system taught me to function inside of the walls. The deterrent against my going back to prison is not the punishment but the fact that for the first time in my life I have met people who have indicated that there is goodness in me … the deterrent is that I would he so totally ashamed of committing a crime because people love me and I would have let them down. Most important, though, I would have let myself down.”
– Chuck Bergansky, Fortune News, April 1975
There are two theories of deterrence: special and general. The theory of special (or specific) deterrence contends that some form of punishment will teach the individual a lesson. In terms of penal sanctions it holds that an individual is unable to commit crimes against the public while incapacitated in prison; and that upon release from prison, the individual is deterred from committing new crimes, because of his/her unpleasant prison experience.
General deterrence theory applies to society at large: it assumes that crime is prevented by the threat of unpleasant consequences and repeatedly reinforces that threat by subjecting certain criminals to imprisonment. General deterrence is assumed to exert the stronger deterrent effect over mass behavior.
Theoretically, the effect of a prison sentence given to one burglar, for example, could be both special (to discourage him/her from post release burglary) and general, (to discourage potential burglars from taking the risk).
Problems with special deterrence
It seems obvious that prisoners are prevented from committing street crimes while warehoused, but it is far from obvious that prisoners are deterred from committing future crimes upon release. For the few that get caught and imprisoned, the prison experience probably encourages crime rather than deterring it:
“[T]he recidivist rate is so large, with the repeat crime often progressively more serious than the original one, that for some imprisonment seems an encouraging rather than a deterring factor.”
– Willard Gaylin, Partial Justice, p. 20
“No study that I have ever seen, and there are many, provides any assurance that the prison reduces crime, while there is ample evidence that the fact of imprisonment is a heavy contributor to post-release criminal activity.”
— William Nagel, The New Red Barn, p. 149
These statements are confirmed by many studies including a comprehensive study on probation completed in 1970, which concluded:
“[A]lmost two-thirds of those offenders placed on probation had, one year later, no known subsequent arrest, while less than one-half of those sent to prison had been equally successful. These differences in ’‘success” persisted even when one took into account the sex, age, race, offense, and prior record of the offender.”
Problems with general deterrence
It is extremely risky to draw conclusions about general deterrence. Most people remember at least one time when they decided not to commit a crime only because they feared getting caught. The decision to commit the crime of highway speeding often depends on the perceived likelihood of being apprehended. But speeding is uniquely simple. The driver can usually determine whether a law enforcement officer is near, s/he knows both the penalties and benefits of the act and has the opportunity to weigh the risks.
Most decisions to commit crimes are far more complex. Among the many factors are the need or greed for money and the spontaneous or compulsive acting out of violent feelings. Murder, for example, is considered among the least deterrable of crimes, regardless of the penalty, because most murders occur without premeditation between spouses, friends and acquaintances.
Most decisions to commit crimes lie between the extremes of speeding and murder. Deterrence theory “assumes a marginal class of people for whom the punishment will be a factor, consciously or unconsciously, in influencing their conduct, directing them toward or away from a crime.”
Surveys of punishment in Europe concluded that “[T]he policy of punishment and its variations have no effective influence on the rate of crime.“ Thorsten Sellin, emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, found in his study of capital punishment that crude homicide rates appear the same regardless of a statutory death penalty; that the rates did not change significantly in states which abolished or restored it; and that homicide rates remained stable in cities where “executions occurred and were presumed to have been publicized.” One student traced a rise in the murder rate in California preceding executions, just as one political assassination attempt seems to spur others.
In 1961, California greatly increased penalties for attacking police. Yet according to a follow-up study by the California Assembly Committee on Criminal Procedure, by 1966 police were almost twice as likely to be attacked. More recently, severe drug laws adopted in New York have failed to reduce drug related crime, tho they succeeded thru increased judicial burdens in undermining “the efficiency and functioning of the criminal justice system.”
In addition to strong doubts about the practical efficiency of general deterrence, there is a serious moral question involved. Does society have the right to punish one person in order to deter another? We believe that the answer is no.
It is clear that imprisonment fails to reduce the rates of crimes most feared by the public. Severe penal policies reflect public fears but they do not reduce crime. Penalties cannot counterbalance the deeper causes of so-called criminal behavior.
As long as prison punishment and control are equated with crime deterrence, it will be the task of abolitionists to disprove this myth. Society’s energies are better focused on deterring crime at its cultural and structural sources.
‘Pay to stay’: Inmates across U.S. charged for their own incarceration
Nearly every state lets prisons and jails charge inmates for their own incarceration — room, board, clothing, and doctor’s visits — in a phenomenon called “pay to stay.”
We don’t know exactly how many prisons and jails take advantage of “pay to stay.” The latest survey, in 2005, found that 90 percent of jails surveyed charged inmates fees of one kind of another. In an era of tight budgets, the practice is probably even more widespread today.
The Brennan Center for Justice, a criminal justice reform think tank, put together an analysisof what pay-to-stay laws are on the books in every state. If you’re interested in what your state’s laws are, you can check out this nifty interactive map on their website. But spoiler alert: your state almost certainly has pay-to-stay.
Pay-to-stay piles on a second punishment to the sentence that’s been handed down by a judge. That creates lasting, detrimental effects on inmates and their families — and society as a whole. It doubles the strain on inmates’ families: in addition to losing a household income, they have to pay to support their incarcerated family member. And it makes it even harder for inmates to get back on their own two feet financially after they’re released from prison.
It’s estimated that about 10 million Americans owe about $50 billion in debt because of fees and fines they’ve gotten through the criminal justice system — and thanks to pay-to-stay, some of that debt comes from prisoners having to pay for their own incarceration.
Almost every state practices pay-to-stay
43 states allow inmates to get charged for “room and board” — the cost of their own imprisonment. 35 states charge inmates for at least some medical expenses. Taken together, at least 49 states have a law on the books that authorizes at least one of the two. (Hawaii, as well as DC, don’t have statutes that explicitly address pay-to-stay.)
In many of the statutes the Brennan Center analyzed, states only charge room and board to inmates who are on work release or have a prison job, on the logic that they’re the only ones making money while in prison. (It seems possible that some inmates might be dissuaded from taking prison jobs if they know some of their wages are going to be garnished.) Others take the money out of inmates’ commissary accounts — which are usually filled by family members on the outside — or bank accounts.
That’s particularly worrisome when inmates are being charged for their own medical care — especially when, as many states do, prisoners get charged a fee for every doctor’s visit they request. Most states set that fee pretty low, around $5, but Texas charges a $100 annual fee for any inmate who asks to see a doctor.
As the Brennan Center points out, some inmates are afraid to ask to see a doctor if they know their families will get hit with a fee for it — which increases the risk that an inmate won’t get treated for a contagious disease that will spread throughout the facility.
Three states allow at least some inmates to get charged for clothing. Missouri allows clothing fees for prison and jail inmates; Louisiana allows it for jail inmates; and Nevada allows inmates on work release to get charged for the clothing they need for their jobs.
In Michigan, an inmate is charged $12 when he enters jail. But if he hasn’t paid the fee by the time he’s released — for example, if he can’t afford it — he owes the state $100.
Pay-to-stay doesn’t even save states much money
Many states make fees dependent on inmates’ ability to pay. But some states are willing to put people (or their families) in debt for the cost of their own incarceration. In at least eight states, ex-prisoners are liable to pay back any debt they owe even after they’re released from prison — and many jurisdictions hire collections agencies to get that money back. And in at least two states — Florida and Wisconsin — the law says that after an ex-prisoner dies, his or her estate can be on the hook for any unpaid debt.
All of this would at least be explicable if the fees that got charged were actually recouped. But they’re not. Even when a collections agency gets called in, governments often don’t see much of the money they’re owed. At least one county (in Minnesota) had to overhaul its pay-to-stay program because it wasn’t making as much as it cost to run.
The premise of pay-to-stay is that it’s more important for governments to save money than for inmates to be as financially stable as possible when they leave prison. That’s a risky tradeoff to begin with, since financial instability could make it harder for people to stay out of prison for good. So if pay-to-stay isn’t even saving states money, what’s the reason to keep these laws on the books?
To learn more on prison abolition, I recommend Abolition Journal and Prison Culture as great resources.
Tiny population of sex offenders? Hmmm not really!
Compared to the rest of the population yeah. There’s not nearly as many rapists and pedophiles in prison as there are people with addiction problems and people that are homeless/impoverished. I WISH prisons were filled with violent people but they’re simply not.
I meant that in the world there is not a tiny population of sex offenders like the op is implying, there is a massive population of sex offenders/rapists/pedophiles and they all need to either be in prison or dead, as currently rapists are never held accountable for their crimes.
Hmmm, I apologize if what I said was insensitive. This issue is incredibly difficult to discuss when faced with the trauma of sexual violence, and I want to acknowledge that. Please correct me if I am wrong, but I’ve understood sexual violence, especially against women and non-normative genders, as a function of heteropatriarchy. And while this is rampant (not a small number, as you point out), prison culture is usually hyper-patriarchal and reinforces sexual violence. This sexual violence is often prisoner on prisoner, but it is also frequently the cager violating the caged. This in mind, it is unclear to me how imprisoning offenders helps us dismantle heteropatriarchy. Rather, it reinforces it. I think also we should be careful not to see prison abolition as the total rejection of community mandated restraint where it becomes necessary in the interim of developing processes of restorative justice. It becomes necessary for us to scrutinize the idea of accountability as always punishment. If we are not intentional in how we frame this conversation “What about serial killers” rapidly becomes “What about sex offenders.” As far as capital punishment is concerned, I draw a very distinctive line between communities electing to use it after restorative alternatives fail and the state wielding it as another form of repression.
