By John Wetzel and Kevin Ring
Nearly two million people are incarcerated in America’s prisons and jails. Another 400,000 people work as correctional officers in these facilities. Yet most people who write and enforce our nation’s sentencing and prison policies – lawmakers, judges, and prosecutors – have never even visited a prison.
There are no analogs for this. Prisons and jails make up a large portion of every state’s budget, yet are often the least transparent, and rarely toured from those very policymakers.
Community activists organized a protest at Dauphin County Prison to bring attention to unaddressed problems at the prison, June 13, 2022. Vicki Vellios Briner | Special to PennLiveVicki Vellios Briner | Special to PennLive
That needs to change.
As the former head of Pennsylvania’s Department of Corrections and the head of a national criminal justice reform organization, we’ve seen and heard the wide range of issues facing prison systems across the country.
Our nation’s prisons and jails are in crisis. Staff shortages and other chronic problems have resulted in prisons that are unsafe to live and work in for prisoners and correctional officers alike.
Violent crime rates have risen in many parts of the country recently, leaving more people worried about their safety. But if people prison systems do nothing to address the issues that led people to incarceration, they are often unprepared to be successful upon release. This is unacceptable.
The challenges our justice system faces today require that our elected leaders address a host of questions:
If prisons are overcrowded and understaffed, how do we ensure that we are reserving prison space for the people who need to be there? How can we make sure that the 94 percent of people who are going to eventually leave prison return to society better than they left and ready to contribute as family members and citizens? How can we make sure both prisoners and correctional officers are healthy and safe? And, more fundamentally, isn’t it our responsibility to do so?
While there’s plenty of data and research that can help policymakers answer these questions, to fully understand what’s happening, leaders at all levels of government should visit a prison or jail in their region and meet and talk to the people who work and live there.
As in many aspects of life, there is no substitute for meeting with people on the ground and learning from their experiences.
Based on our experiences, here are a few things we think policymakers will learn from visiting prisons.
They will meet many people that do not need to be there. Yes, there are some dangerous people behind bars, but there are many others who no longer need to be incarcerated, either because they have been rehabilitated, were sentenced too harshly initially or because they’ve grown old or sick. By 2030, one-third of people in prison will be aged 55 and older — a population of more than 400,000.
There are many people who simply no longer pose a threat to public safety and whose continued incarceration is wasting money that could be used on programs or personnel to reduce crime.
Allowing our prisons to turn into nursing homes isn’t tough on crime, it’s stupid, expensive — and it also makes us less safe, wasting resources that can be used on more effective crime reduction measures.
Policymakers who take the time to visit prisons and talk to people on the ground will see that the system is being stretched dangerously thin. A nationwide shortage of correctional officers is making prisons less safe and putting officers and prisoners at risk.
Retaining officers is always difficult, but in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, federal and state officials have said the problem is worse than they’ve ever experienced. The consequences are many and harmful.
When staff leave, remaining staff are asked to do more with less, including longer shifts, more overtime and more stress. Staff shortages result in more frequent lockdowns, depriving prisoners of rehabilitative programming and recreation, and families the chance to visit their loved ones.
Staff shortages can also lead to more lethal and sexual violence in prisons, as the U.S. Justice Department uncovered most recently in Mississippi. Many of these problems are the result of years of unchecked neglect and a lack of transparency.
If more policymakers made it a regular habit to visit prisons or jails in their region, providing oversight and resources as needed, many of today’s crises could have been prevented. Too few elected leaders have ever visited a prison or jail, and their failure to do so is making us less safe.
There simply is no way they can tackle the challenges our justice system is facing – rising violent crime and a crisis in our jails and prisons – without fully understanding these problems. They need to know, but they can’t know if they don’t go.
Kevin Ring is president of FAMM, a national criminal justice reform organization. John Wetzel is the former secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections.