Prisons and after prison.

• Author: Geraghty, Thomas F.

JOHN H. LAUB & ROBERT J. SAMPSON, SHARED BEGINNINGS, DIVERGENT LIVES: DELINQUENT BOYS TO AGE 70 (Harvard University Press, 2003). 338 PP.

LORNA A. RHODES, TOTAL CONFINEMENT, MADNESS AND REASON IN THE MAXIMUM SECURITY PRISON (University of California Press, 2004). 315 PP.

PRISONERS ONCE REMOVED: THE IMPACT OF INCARCERATION AND REENTRY ON CHILDREN, FAMILIES, AND COMMUNITIES (Jeremy Travis & Michael Waul, eds., 2003). 396 PP.

ALAN ELSNER, GATES OF INJUSTICE: THE CRISIS OF AMERICA'S PRISONS (Prentice Hall, 2004). 264 PP.

INTRODUCTION

I was in court the other day, waiting for my client's case to be called, when a middle-aged man was brought out from the lock-up to face the judge. I took notice because of the fact that he was older than the usual pretrial detainee in the Cook County Jail. His lawyer began to argue for a reduction in bail. During the course of the hearing before the judge, it was revealed that this man allegedly committed three armed robberies in 1990. After being released on bail in 1990, he failed to return to court, probably because he was facing a minimum six years in the penitentiary for his crimes (and probably longer because judges in Cook County do not always impose minimum sentences for crimes of violence). Instead, he lived in his neighborhood, got married, had children, had a series of good jobs, and was never again arrested. The warrant issued in 1990 "caught" him the day before his court appearance when he was picked up for speeding. I wondered to myself--and out loud to the student who was with me--what would this man's life course have been had he been incarcerated at age nineteen, when the crimes that brought him to court were committed? If he had been imprisoned and released after spending six years in the penitentiary, would he have married? Would he have had children? Would he have been able to stay out of trouble? If incarcerated at age nineteen, how much would his incarceration in 1990, and his probable succeeding incarcerations have cost the taxpayer? Would this man have been peaceful or dangerous had he spent time in prison?

The books reviewed in this essay suggest that society and the middle aged man I saw in court are both better off because he avoided prison. This does not mean that I condone armed robbery or bail jumping--I do not. People who commit crimes deserve punishment commensurate with their culpability. But the conditions and effects of incarceration in our country's prison system, presented clearly and forcefully in the books reviewed in this essay, demonstrates that a young man sent to a prison in the United States has a poor prognosis for becoming a productive member of society upon release. This is because prisons are overcrowded as a result of the war on drugs and increasingly lengthy sentences. They are brutal places where conditions of confinement and inmate on inmate violence inflict lasting and debilitating psychological damage. Finally, we ignore the fact that the vast majority of prisoners will eventually be released and that, instead of preparing them for release, we send them back impaired and to neighborhoods and communities ill-prepared or equipped to meet their needs.

These are not new or original observations. The evidence and the arguments against our nation's policy of mass incarceration have been in the forefront of news and policy debates for years. Virtually no one argues that we should be satisfied with the conditions or the performance of our prison system or that the inhumane conditions described by prisoners, journalists, and researchers do not exist. Yet conditions within prisons that shock us all (overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, inmate on inmate violence and sexual assault, guard on inmate violence, inmate on guard violence) continue to exist, virtually unchallenged, leaving prisoners, prison administrators and staff, and parolees to sort it out with meager resources and with little support or commitment from the politicians or from the citizens who have led the charge for increasingly high rates of incarceration.

Legislators and courts have made it increasingly difficult to challenge the conditions that virtually all would agree are inhumane. (1) Those who seek to challenge conditions of confinement in court are thwarted by the interpretations of the Fourteenth and the Eighth amendments which make few practices or actions of prison officials actionable. (2) The courts' "hands off" policies regarding the "day-to-day" administration of prisons reflect judges' understandable unwillingness to become prison administrators. Only the most egregious incidents and practices--particularly those found in "supermax" institutions--are the subject of judicial review and constraint, (3) although there is growing legislative and judicial awareness and concern about sexual assault in prisons, particularly as this pervasive and pernicious phenomenon affects vulnerable young prisoners who face not only incarceration, but assault, and, very likely infection with AIDS. (4)

How do we move forward if there is little political will to seek and to impose solutions that will result in more rational and humane prison policy? A partial answer to this question is found in the books reviewed in this essay. Each of them makes a substantial contribution to the understanding of the challenges we face in designing a justice system that punishes and deters, but also reintegrates and protects in the long term.

THE BOOKS

In their book, Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives. Delinquent Boys to Age 70, John Laub and Robert Sampson attempt to answer the question, "why some offenders stop committing crimes when they do, while others continue over large proportions of the life course." (5) Laub and Sampson note that, "[t]he limited literature focusing directly on desistence from crimes indicates that there are multiple pathways, including attachment to a conventional person such as a spouse, stable employment, transformation of personal identity, and the aging process," (6) which contribute to desistance. Following up on the lives of the young men studied in the classic 1950 work on juvenile delinquency, Unravelling Juvenile Delinquency by Charles and Eleanor Glueck, (7) Laub and Sampson attempt to identify the factors that influenced the lives of these men. They conclude that "life-history narratives are especially valuable in uncovering issues overlooked in more traditional quantitative approaches in criminology," (8) such as developmental accounts or rational choice accounts. Laub and Sampson argue for a "life-course perspective" based on analysis of the lives of individuals focusing on the context and developmental impact of events such as marriage, military service, institutionalization, and human agency. (9)

To the non-sociologist criminal defense lawyer, the conclusions Laub and Sampson reach regarding the factors that lead to desistence from crime are consistent with my accumulated anecdotal experience. Marriage and family make a difference. A person who is able to establish and maintain long-term relationships during and after incarceration has a better chance of staying out of trouble than someone who does not have these attachments. The nature of the offender's interaction with the justice system is also a factor in predicting future life course. Despite the fact that the institutions in which the subjects of Laub and Sampson's study were brutal, some of the interviewees credited their experience in corrections as putting them on the right path. (10) Military service was also identified as a turning point. Interestingly, however, the interviewees viewed the criminal justice system as a "game" in which "no one was concerned about justice, truth, helping offenders, or even exacting punishment for crimes committed. Everybody was out to get 'the best deal,' and the...