Our Police State, 9-11-2010 to 9-12-2010 (part 8)

 [Continued from Our Police State, 9-11-2010 to 9-12-2010 (part 7). sch 3/26/23.]

Let us remember incarceration has shown little success. The following comes from “Prison Without Walls” published in The Atlantic Monthly for September 2010 (the writer was Graeme Wood):

This might make some sense if crime rates ahd also tripled. But they haven't; rather, even as crime has fallen, the sentences served by criminals have grown, thanks in large part of mandatory minimums and draconian three-strikes rules - politically popular measures that have shown little deterrent effect but have left the prison system overflowing with inmates. The vogue for incarceration might also make sense of prisons repaid society's investment by releasing reformed inmates who behaved better than before they were locked up. But that isn't the case either: half of those released are back in prison within three years. Indeed, research by the economists Jsse Shapiro of the University of Chicago and M. Keith Chen of Yale University indicates that the stated purpose of incarceration, which is to place prisoners under harsh conditions on the assumption that they will be "scared straight" is actively counterproductive. Such conditions - and U.S. prisons are astonishingly harsh, with as many as 20 percent of male inmates facing sexual assault - typically harden criminals, making them more violent and preedatory. Essentially, when we lock up someone today, we are agreeing to pay a large (and growing) sum of money merely to put off dealing with him until he is released in a few years, often as a greater menace to society than when he went in.

Objectively speaking, I am not sure what the country gets from locking me up for 151 months. From what I see of the others here similarly charged, I do not see the profit in locking us up. (Subjectively, incarceration puts off me facing the people I have damaged.) Listening to those returning from prison, I am not sure how the country profited from their long prison terms. What do we call punishment that continues past the point needed for reform?

But you allow such institutions to function in your name. 

But no one questions imprisonment itself. “Prison Without Bars” by asking such questions makes itself a rarity. Its subject is switching people to electronic monitoring. He even visits BI, Incorporated up in Anderson, Indiana. We used electronic monitoring for decades. It is an effective tool. Not perfect, but generally effective. As I understand it, the federal system does not avail itself of electronic monitoring. There incarceration means behind walls and wires.

The article makes a point about politicians similar to what I have been doing here:

Whatever its mnerits, the idea of increasing the number of free-range felons such as Mick is unlikely to make for good politics. Willie Horton still haunts the dreams of every aspiring politician....

You want a change in that kind of thinking, you need to call your federal and state legislators, your state and federal prosecutors, and ask them why electronic monitoring is not being used more.

I do not know why the federal system cannot use electronic monitoring. I will be on supervised release from the end of my imprisonment until my death. I have no idea what that truly entails. I would expect a difference between 2010 and 2022 in how the federal government shall monitor me. After all, today, they could easily monitor my computer use from a different computer. If the computer, why not myself?

sch

[Continued in Our Police State, 9-11-2010 to 9-12-2010 (part 8). sch 3/26/23.]