Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On A Country Called P

CSPAN2 Book Discussion On A Country Called Prison November 1, 2015

Good evening and welcome to st. Thomas moore university church. Our program tonight will be a presentation and discussion of a new book entitled a country called prison. This is being recorded by cspan for later broadcast on booktv, so we ask that you take this moment to silence your cell phones. When we get to the questions and comments portion of the program, please wait for the microphone so that you may be heard and recorded. Following the presentation, there will be book sales and signing in the atrium of our chapel, and a wine and cheese reception will also follow. Our authors tonight are dr. John carl, and dr. Mary looman. Dr. Contractor is assistant professor at the university of oklahoma, where he teaches a variety of courses, including criminology, and criminal justice. His social Work Experience includes the prison context, and a variety of medical settings. He is the author of, think, sociology, think social problems, and, a short introduction to the u. S. Census. Dr. Looman is a psychologist and works with the Oklahoma Department of corrections at the reception center, and is an adjunct professor at the university of oklahoma, where she teaches courses with a masters in criminal justice program. She has worked in the field of corrections for over 25 years. In both juvenile and adult settings, as well as with atrisk families in the Mental Health settingment to you to our authors and i turn the program over to them. Thank you, father jim, and thank you to the community for allowing mary and i to be here tonight to talk about something that is near and dear to our hearts, our new book that we just published, a country called prison. One thing i think most americans are aware of but maybe not aware of to the great extent to which it actually exists, is the reality that the prison system in the United States is one of the largest in the world, and we have spent an inordinate empty of our tax dollars trying to deal with the problem what to do with people who do stuff we dont like. One of the realities of social life is that we have always had people who do things that we wish they wouldnt. You always had the miscreant who while do things the rest of society doesnt like. An interesting question for us as a people is to wonder, is thereaten people who do things we dont like and are mad at and people who do thing wed dont like that were afraid of. One of the things we noticed in the Corrections System in the United States, in particular is we have not drawn that line very clearly between those who we are afraid of and those who we may be mad at. Now, we have always tried to deal with this throughout humorousth history, right . Banished people. Sent them to penal colonies. We have enslaved them. We have tried to kill them. We put them in stocks and lock them in the town square and made them ware a scarlet a, and yet none of this stuff has seemed to solved much in the event of eliminating the possibility of people doing what we dont want them to do. So we kind of settled on prisons. And one of the things as a christianology that criminologist, did we settle on presses because its better or because we couldnt think of anything else. One thing that is interesting to me is this massive amount of people that we have decided in this country to incarcerate. Bureau of justice statistics estimate that five off another 100, five percent of the american population, either have been or will be in prison during their lifetime. Now, just to give you a context of what that number means, with over 300 million americans thats approximately 16 Million People. When you think about 16 Million People in prison, half of them ex46 roughly, are in prison for nonviolent offenses, frequently drug offenses. So, one of the questions mary and i had when we came witch the book, is there a difference perspective with what you do with that half that essentially your mad at and dont like them being stoned on the corner, dont like them driving under the influence of addictive substance, unless its alcohol just a joke we dont want them running around in our communities versus the people that were really afraid of, the people who would molest your child or might kill you, rape you. If you look at the real violent offenses, this is a rather minority of who were choosing to incarcerate. And yet, in this country, we tend to kind of throw them all in the same pot, the same hat. If you look at data about this group, half of this group are also parents. The thing about the 16 million, half of those people that we choose to incarcerate have children, and one thing we know about incarcerating a parent is simply this. You increase the odd their child will in fact also be incarcerated if you incarcerate the parents and thats by 25 more likely. So if you increase the dramatically the odds that this is going to become a familial event, dad went to prison, my turn, soon my kid goes to prison, and the next thing you know you developed this thing that mary and i say looks a whole lot like a country. We didnt always do this. Thats really fascinating. We didnt always incarcerate at high rates in this country. For example, just in our own state, it took approximately 85 years for us to incarcerate a total of 90,000 people. But since 1980, we have incarcerated a total number of over 700,000 people in the state of oklahoma. This is a 700 increase in about a 35year period. And at one question you might want to ask yourself, are you anymore safe now than oyou were in 1980 . Has this been effective . A decision that has warmed your tax dollar heart . If you look at the incarceration in oklahoma, it mirrors the nation. You can kind of look at prison populations and you get to 1980 and, boom, up goes the number, and you have this massive mountain of people that we decided to incarcerate as a solution because theyve done things that we wish they hadnt done. Now, as you compare us to other countries around the world, were kind of unique in this. The United States comes in second in the world in its rate of incarceration. We incarcerate approximately 707 people for every 100,000 folks walking around. Just in a tone of norman, oklahoma, 120,000 people, 700 of us will be incar rated. Put that in context. Number one is a small Little Island of in middle of micronia shat incarcerate slightly higher but modern democracies, countries you go do on vacation, you see different numbers. For example, france incarcerates about 149 people out of every 100,000. Great britain incarcerates 102 people for every hundred thousand. If we look at japan, its 14 times lower than ours. So, somebody who is interested in the social world, you may ask, whats up with this . Why are we doing this . Whats the 16 million . Just give you another context, why we kind of came up with the title a country called prison. The fact of the matter are this, our prisons, 16 million, we seem to ignore their children, theyre likely to be included in that. Approximately a population twice the size of israel. Just slightly smaller than the country of the netherlandses. This is a massive number of people. And if it was a state, it would be the fourth largest state in the country. Just right below florida. Bigger than illinois. Just imagine if prison was a state, where the politicians would be going to try get the votes. Right . So this is a large number of people who significantly are some of whom we should be afraid of. Mary and i have no doubt there are people in prison who need to be there. One of the other things that is really fascinating is if i look at the federal prison system, get a drug offender rate of about 50 of the people in federal prison are drug offenders. Drug offenders. Look at state prison, i guess about 41 of the prison population for those states being roughly nonviolent offenders. Slash this in half, if we stopped incarcerating high rate of nonviolent point offenders we could cut our prison population in half, which would have substantial tax benefits. One question you might think about when i was talking about International Crime rates was, okay, we incarcerate at lower rates in Great Britain but maybe thats because they have less crime. No. Not necessarily. For example, if i look at the assault rates in brian, its higher than the rate in the United States. Of course if you have ever been to a soccer match in Great Britain, maybe you understand why. If i look at the theft rate in the uk, its higher. As it is in france. But the one thing that is fascinating about our crime rates compared to most other modern industrial democracy wes lead the world in one category of criminality we incarcerate and thats drug offenders. So just a couple of numbers. We incarcerate 560 people out of every 100,000 on a drug offense. Right . Every 100,000 we have 560. By connection, france is 176. So what are they doing were not doing . Well, talk more about that, but the book talks about this to some degree. They tend to treat drug addiction like a disease. May in fact be somebody in this room who has recovered from alcoholism, and when you did, you were told it was a disease. And you went and got treatment, and then you came out and went to meet examination we said were going to cure you from this disease and thats because it was alcohol. Had you one addicted to methamphetamine, likely would have been put in prison and tried to punish away your addiction. Mary is the sol gist but the social worker in me ive never heard you can punish away addiction. And yet thats what theyre trying to do. How did this happen . The 1980s we get to reagan and nancy reagan and the just say no campaign, and start the war on drugs before they came into office but they ramped it up and were going to stop drug addiction in americaing are right . We figured if we just increase the punishment, make them longer, harsher, we he can get this people off the street and cleanse our country of this pariah of crack cocaine of whatever you want to fill in the blank with. You also get much more harsh punishments. You get states like california that create three strikes youre out law. States like oklahoma that create truth in sentencing laws. I youre a violent offender, you have 85 . Until last spring we in this state had a third strike Marijuana Law which would lead you on thunder third offense to life on your third offense with toe life without the possibility of parole on a marijuana charge. We decreased that 20 years this last spring. So states across the nation, not just in oklahoma. Decided, not only are we going to create this war on drugs, were going to make longer prison sentences, and so part of what drives up our prison population is we just keep these people in jail for longer periods of time. Finally, at the same time that this is happening, were packing the prisons full of people so were not really increasing the budgets of prisons through systems, the number of folks theyre supposed to feed, house and take care of so all of a sudden a lot of the efforts made in the 70s and 60s and early 8s to try, to quote, rehabilitate or able stat having budget crises so we get fewer and fewer people with an opportunity to get, say, High School Diploma while theyre in prison, and then they get out of prison and we have high rates of what we call parole revocation. Get out of prison, go out in the community, and cant find a job, smoke a joint, go have a urinalysis, and the next thing you know im back in prison. Approximately half of the people that we send out of prison will probably end up back in prison within a three to five year period, and of that half of those people that go back, most of them are parole rev craigs. Refer indications. The dont commit a crime but they didnt show up for a parole meeting or didnt get in the job in time or failed to go to parenting class wed require them to do. Always these thing wes call technical violation violations in the lingo of criminal violation. So this leads to the creation of this incarceration mountain. That would be fine if we actually thought this might stop criminality. Right . What usually happen is someone commits a crime, and then we punish them, and then they go into this box. Especially youre in a medium security prison, in you might be in with serious offenders, odds are you have the possibility of being locked up with somebody you didnt choose for 23 hours a day for a period of time if something is going on in the prison and they lock you all down. And this leads to significant numbers of problems with riots and rapes and assaults that happen in prison on a fairly regular basis. And you have seen probably lockup shows, if you watch shows about what prison life is like and you see this reality that prisons have become in fact, since then 1970s, more and more violent places. The prisons of america have become more violent, not less. They have become more crowded, note less, ask our recidivism rate have continued to get worse. Im not a real smart guy but one thing i always tried tomorrow if you try something and it doesnt work, maybe you have to try something else. But instead, what we tend to do is keep trying the same thing over and over and over, and again, you know, dont want to call out the people who have been in aa in the room but they call that insanity. Right . Try the same thing over the same way and expect a different result. Keeps happening. So, we send these people out into the community, and they have been discharged in what mary and i like to call legal aliens. A legal illen is somebody who was born in this country, they speak english, theyre citizens, this they committed a felony and now theyre precluded from all kinds of other activities in the community, like frequently employment. There are many jobs that convicted felons cannot even get, like, for example in our state, if youre a convict felon, you cannot work in a nursing home, period. You cant even be the janitor. You cant cook the food for people ump cant by anywhere near senior citizens. This is really interesting. So you could be in on a marijuana charge and were not going to let you work with let alone violent offenders. We create this separate status of these people, and one of the thing wes know about this population and mary will tell you more about near a little bit this, population is almost always from disadvantaged backgrounds. The vast majority of americans who go to prison come from the lower classes, generally poor, poorly educated, and when we release them from prison, and we stigmatize them with this stamp on their head that says excon, they can never get out from under, are we surprises they reoffend . Surprised we get this cycle back . One thing i think is personally i says the toy in students and say it to you. Im not a guy who likes to pay taxes. Im a good oklahoman, dont like to pay tacks. If theyre going to take my money id really like them to use it wisely. One thing that i have come to the conclusion, after 20 years of look act this stuff and talking to people and reading about this stuff, my own personal bias, theres not a lot of good that happens in prison. May be a Necessary Evil for some but just kind of whole sail mass incarceration is an exceptionally expensive process. In this country alone we spend over 50 billion with a b dollars every year on incarcerating our citizens. This is a massive number. And when i think about kind of what that means to you and i, every time you incarcerate somebody, every time, you take them from a taxpayer and turn them into a tax user. Even if im cooking meth in the backyard and not reporting to the irs any of my income, im still going to the Grocery Store and big something and pay sales tax. Still renting an apartment where theres some property tax associated with that process. Im still contributing to the community at some level, even if its an illegal economy. But as soon as you take them off the street and lock them in a box, you turn them into a tax user. And again, im not saying we dont want to do that for some people. I hope california never lets out charles manson, right . But the reality is most people we put in prison aint charles manson. Half of them certainly arent. And the other thing that is interesting about costs here is that states and the federal government, in my opinion, never report the full cost of what it takes to incarcerate somebody. You go to department of creeks web site they tell you, costs 18,000 a year in a million security, 14,000 a year in a community facility, 24,000 in a medium, 80,000 for death row. You can look at these numbers. What do the numbers mean . Generally mean this. What does it cost for guards and bars and food. Thats a real costly incarceration. What about the lost wages of this individual that we now have taken off the street . What about the lost tax revenue of this person . What about the 25 increase in likely hood that now his children are going to become tax user. What about the reality that we have high rates of people who we incars race whose families drop into poverty and we give them food stamps and provide them with section 8 housing. All those are potential costs of incarceration, are they not . And yet, those arent reported anywhere. They get passed to some other Government Agency and department of corrections gets to report a number, and honestly im not saying the department of corrections is filled with bad people. Theyre just doing their budget. But as a taxpayer, somebody who is interested in this no matter what state youre in you she Pay Attention to reality that whatever is being reported to youve ills not the real cost. Because the true cost is the loss of income that is longterm. A loss of human potential, the loss of children. Not to mention all the other expenses that go along with this. Like now were going to provide section 8 housing in the family. In oklahoma, we lead the nation as you probably know in the incarceration rate of women. Something the University Never puts anywhere brochures. Youre more likely to go to prison if you show up in oklahoma. I thought it was fun er than heck, too. When you think about this, over 70 of those women that we incarcerate are the sole custodian of their children. What happens to their kids when we put mom in prison . The number one thing we incarcerate women in the state of oklahoma for . The number one things . Drug possession. Not distribution. Not driving down the highway with a winnebago full of crack cocaine. Possession. Who pays for that . We do. We take taxpayers and turn them into tax users. So this creates this massive mountain of people, and so mary and i kind of looked at this and said this is a mountain of folks. Turn this over to her and get an idea about what makes those folks in

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