Reeducation, Addiction Treatment, And Alternative Sentencing Should Have Been Tried Before Mass Incarceration.

Incarceration should never have been the only answer to dealing with criminality in America. The changes that have started in the country are actually overdue. Unfortunately, anything long overdue and being done to fit political reelection goals will work out poorly. While change is needed, and I've believed this for years, it should be tempered with wisdom. Wisdom, knowledge, and a clear-cut plan of action are the only way to find ourselves with a better system than we had before.

I worked around law enforcement, primarily in corrections, in one capacity or another. For twenty-three years, I was a deputy sheriff. For many of those years, perhaps all of them, I was conflicted. Never understanding the why's of it all, I found it hard to "tow the line", sometimes. I questioned the integrity of the system as I watched events unfolding in my area of the world. I got to know officers and officials from all levels of the law enforcement field. Some of them were good, upstanding men and women. Unfortunately, I knew a few bad apples along the way.

I first found the conflict when I made my first appearance in court as an officer. The prosecutor had me read the report over before court, then I noticed that they had "thrown the book at him" when they charged him in court. I asked him about the four-count indictment, and how they came to that number. He did, in fact, kick me in the hand once. Being a rookie, in my first year, he assured me it was normal. My confliction didn't disappear, only waning at times, as I tried to do my job in a way I could live with myself.

One of the many things that I often wondered about, the use of our system of incarceration. In the 90s, there were bills passed that created what we now refer to as a system of mass incarceration. Prison has a purpose. Murder, rape, and child sex crimes are arguably the most heinous crimes perpetrated on innocents every year. For these crimes, I don't think that it would be easy to find anyone that argues against prison as a punishment. These aren't the crimes of all of the 2million people incarcerated in the American prison system.

Not that anybody in corrections has a "quote" favorite inmate, but I remember a discussion with one inmate that I'll never forget. He always seemed like he was intelligent and capable, just misguided from living in an environment that believed drugs were the answer to a better life. Sure, maybe in some instances, people have made fortunes running cocaine, heroin, and marijuana. However, in midwestern Illinois, that's not the case. Chatting one day, I told him he needed to get out while the getting was still good. Unfortunately for him, he didn't listen. The very next time I saw him, he was in federal lockup, looking at life without parole. LWOP, as it's called to federal arrestees, is typically a guarantee of forty years and even if you turn into a cooperative informant for the government, you're still likely to end up doing double-digit years behind bars.

In the spring of this year, I received a subpoena to appear in federal court, to testify as a witness against a defendant in a meth case. Living in the same city or area for the past twenty years, when he wasn't away in prison, I knew him well enough. When he was arrested and brought to jail he was in possession of a quarter of a pound of methamphetamines. We weren't talking about a criminal mastermind as much as a guy moving some weight to make some money. In my hometown, for many less fortunate types, it's the lure of easy money that gets them caught. He was just sentenced the other day, and from what I read in the paper, was sentenced to twenty years in federal prison. For anyone that is wondering, at the mandatory 85%, that equals to 17yrs in prison.

The system is chalked full of inequalities when it comes to the drug game. One man, guilty of possessing a quarter of a pound of meth, goes to prison for seventeen years. Another, guilty of possessing an eighth of rock cocaine and a pistol, is going to prison for forty years. A man guilty of shooting a man in a park went to prison for half the time of the man with the rock cocaine and the gun in the car when he was stopped. It really doesn't make sense.

America, some might say -- is a nation of drug users, not including marijuana. As long as there are drug users, there will always be drug suppliers. It's the law of supply and demand. Some might call it black market capitalism. Whatever we want to call it, we send them to prison facilities with multi-million dollar budgets and expect when they come out they'll be functional, upstanding, citizens. That, my friends, is just not reality.

The price of incarceration is staggering both as taxpayers and to those that lose a loved one to incarceration. In the United States, when we should have been paying attention to prison populations, a burgeoning drug problem, and what it was doing to our children as a generation was about to grow up in a system of imprisoned fathers, we were listening to politicians scream and yell about harsher penalties. Remember the Clinton- era crime bill that created the system and Joe Biden's impassioned speeches in support of said bill?

The Marshall Project, at the end of 2019, published a story with the fact that prison costs taxpayers $80 billion dollars a year. That's the cost of caring for and keeping security on those in custody, and even though it's lower today, is still 2 million-plus people. What about the cost to the families, as sons and daughters grow up without their fathers at home, or their mothers?

The trauma on the children is great enough but what happens to the children's futures when those that they look up to are sent away. You might say it's the parents' fault what happens to their kids. This is true, they committed the crimes. Addicts go to prison around the country, never fully receiving the treatment for their addiction that they deserve. Now, imagine living in a country that treats drug addiction as a disease. Imagine living in a country that treats drug addiction before considering prison sentences. In America, going back as far as I was old enough to form an intelligent debate, I've wondered why is it so easy to form new prisons, but not as easy to treat the source of the problem? I still have no answers for this but have started seeing the shift, finally in the past decade.

Alternative sentencing is a thing, although not used nearly enough. Right now, there are people in state prison, serving time for driving without a valid license. Petty thieves and people who aren't allowed to operate a vehicle are not violent criminals, they're nuisances. As much as murder, rape, narcotics-related crimes, and crimes against people were a part of the job as a corrections officer, they are the ones that belong serving time in a prison setting.

Prisons are violent and dangerous places. Of that, there can be no doubt. So, it is with great hope that the trends now continue, tempered by intelligence, patience, and justice as the goal. Only violent offenders, people who are a danger to society or the safety of the communities, should absolutely be sent to prison. That is, after all, the intention behind prisons.

Laws are what keep us from degenerating into anarchy and chaos. But, some of our laws are long past being looked at and hopefully updated. Our practices haven't kept pace with the society that they serve. For things to get to where they need to be, our understanding of our brothers and sisters must grow. This is true, if for no other reason than because at any given time, you or I could find ourselves desperate, angry, on the wrong side of the bars, because our lives got out of control.

Thanks for your time as I've shared my opinion on the current shift in the system. With each period of reformation, the changes have opened up the doorways to new eras in law enforcement. This period is long overdue.