Most Prison Sentences Are Way Too Long
Even short stints in prison constitute heavy punishment. We fetishize decades long sentences that don't make the public any safer.
How many times have you heard the media refer to some defendant in a high profile criminal case who gets 2, or 3, or 4 years in prison as getting “a slap on the wrist”? Going to a “country club prison”? To “Club Fed”? This rhetoric reflects the average American’s complete disconnection with the way prison actually works and how horrible it is.
Actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, among the other well off people involved in the Operation Varsity Blues college admissions scandal, reportedly pushed hard for deals with no prison time, even when the amount of time on the table was a few weeks. That ought to show you how bad prison really is. Even 14 days of it is a horrible experience for someone who is used to living on the outside.
In prison, you are constantly led around by people with guns, your movements are restricted, your fellow inmates include a lot of bad and even violent people, not enough is done to protect you, the food is bad, you often/usually can’t have sex or even masturbate, you can’t watch TV when you want to, and you can’t access the Internet. Your visitors are limited, you can’t spend time with your family or friends, and your mail and phone calls are snooped on. Prison is simply awful. Even for a short period of time.
So why the “slap on the wrist” rhetoric? A Marxist might point out that there’s an axis of private prisons, contractors, prison guards’ unions, and even towns dependent on prisons for economic growth, all of which gets allied in favor of longer prison sentences (which keep the prisons opened and the money flowing). But it’s not just that. I think human beings, and especially Americans, like to think of themselves as “tough” and get a sadistic thrill from punishing people. Our prison system, with its outlandish sentences and restrictions on inmates, is a lawful mechanism for satiating that desire.
Prisons are costly. American taxpayers pay about $80 billion a year to fund them. They are also full of people who have aged out of crime, because the sentences are so long. Drug sentences get all the attention- obviously, a 10 or 20 year mandatory minimum for drug dealing is particularly ridiculous, considering drug dealers aren’t even all that dangerous to society and a lot of people think that drug dealing, in some form, ought to be legalized. But most people in prison are in for violent offenses, and while politicians are afraid to touch this third rail, the reality is that we are spending a lot of money to house a lot of people who aren’t very dangerous anymore, because the sentences are so long.
Further, as I pointed out in my article on the bail system and pretrial detention, it’s 2021. We have technology. We can parole people and monitor them with ankle bracelets and smartphone apps. Heck, we could even make some classes of offenders wear a body camera when they are outside their homes, like police officers now do. The point is, how many people do we really need to have languishing inside walls for decades on end?
But, you might reply, it’s punishment. But this is where a lack of understanding of prison comes in- ANY jail or prison time is punishment. I know people who have spent a couple of days in jail for a DUI and never want to go back. A few months in prison is no slap on the wrist- it’s a horrible experience that a rational person will endeavor not to repeat. Of course, those few repeated recidivists should be given longer terms, to incapacitate them, but even then, we can parole them after a time and monitor them with modern technology.
Only a very few people need to be incapacitated for life or even for decades. Terrorist leaders and mafia dons, for instance, present a good argument for life imprisonment (and, indeed, for severe restrictions even within prison, so they cannot continue to run their enterprises). Child molesters who cannot control themselves and have assaulted children, may need to be held until they are very old and can no longer function sexually. Very violent recidivists, such as serial killers, may simply have to be put away.
But the vast majority of people currently imprisoned should be in for shorter sentences. Other than the incorrigibly dangerous, nobody should be growing old behind bars. Much of that $80 billion per year is wasted money. Spending that much doesn’t make us tough- it makes us dumb.