Prisons are unnecessary, yet we continue to fund them. They are supposed to change the criminals that are sent there into contributing citizens – yet everyone in a cell is just getting a kick in the ass from society. Prisons aren’t helping these people become better individuals or helping them change their ways. In fact, most inmates become more corrupt while in prison, and even see it as a rite of passage. Prison allows criminals to share different ways to commit crimes. Some even join gangs while in prison. So what happens when these inmates are still children?
As soon as we hit the age of sixteen, we can be tried as adults in New York State. To me, sitting a seventeen-year-old kid next to a man serving three life sentences isn’t going to help him become a better person. It is instilling in him contempt for the system, and also chipping away at any hope he might have for the American Dream of self-sufficiency. According to the Correctional Association, a non-profit criminal justice policy and advocacy organization, juvenile offenders who are tried as adults are more likely to recidivate, whereas those tried as juveniles are more likely to stay out of jail.
If teens incarcerated in adult prisons are committing more serious offenses when on the outside, then obviously the system isn’t working.
What other choices do we have? There are many different programs that can be used as alternatives to incarceration. Alternatives to incarceration (ATIs) give youthful offenders a second chance to contribute to society and better themselves. One example of an ATI is the Center for Alternative Sentencing and Employment Services (CASES). This rewarding program works with adult as well as youth offenders. It offers them internships, helps them earn GEDs, and offers productive ways to pay debts to society, like community service. When I visited CASES, I learned that youthful offenders are 70% more likely to recidivate if they have been jailed, as compared with 30% of those sentenced to an ATI. If we allocated more funding into programs like this, we would reduce recidivism among youthful offenders.
There has been a lot of funding diverted to state prisons that could be used in other ways. In 2001, the average annual costs for one youth in secure detention was $130,670 while the average annual cost per pupil in a New York City public school was $9,739. If it costs more to keep a kid behind bars than it does to keep a kid in school, why are we spending our tax dollars to lock them up? What does it say about our society if we are putting more money into building and maintaining of prisons than into the building and maintaining of schools? We need to write letters, protest, and rally together to demand that our elected officials give money to educational programs that help prevent youth from committing crimes in the first place.
I know some people just don’t want to let go of prisons. Prisons keep ‘them’ away from ‘us.’ We should fund ATIs and education, but also improve prisons by turning them into rehabilitation centers. We need to solve the problem, not just lock people up and throw away the key. Prisons need to help people be the best they can be. People sent to prison because of crimes related to problems they may have, like an addiction, should be helped in prison to overcome such issues. If we had drug treatment and educational programs in prisons I feel we could definitely have fewer repeat offenders. We need to come together and take care of our own, not as men or women, not as black, brown, or white, but as people.
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Dynamic Magazine
