Imagine this scenario: A neighbor breaks into your house and steals some of your treasured belongings, and you know that he did the same thing to someone down the block a few years ago. Of course you’re boiling mad and happy to testify against him. You’re delighted when he’s found guilty, and again when the judge, noting his record, gives him five years in the crossbars hotel.
Then the judge turns to you and says "That will be $120,000, please."
Whoa! You didn’t do anything wrong. Why the whopping fine? It’s not a fine, it’s the typical cost of incarcerating one prisoner for five years.
In this case, the bill wouldn’t go just to you, it would go to all taxpayers, of course, but you’re getting the bill for incarcerating people who broke into other homes. And for the life sentences handed out to someone busted for a third shoplifting offense under a "three strikes and you’re out" law. And for a parolee sent back to prison for missing an appointment.
You may immediately think "Well, if that’s what it takes to keep us safe, so be it!" Sure, we need law enforcement, and courts, and prisons. But unless Americans are the most morally corrupt, the most savage, people on earth, we should be able to be safe without having one out of every hundred Americans behind bars, without spending some $55 billion a year just for incarceration in state and federal prisons, without having 1/37 of our population in prison, in jail, waiting for trial, on probation, or on parole.
For decades, politicians have promised to "get tough" on crime, and in the process have heightened our fears of being crime victims beyond all reason. We came to think of all "ex-convicts" as ax-murderers just itching for a chance to do it again. Sentences got longer, parole became rarer, offenses that had been misdemeanors became felonies, more prisons were built. In the cynical belief that anyone who had committed a crime was evil to the core and could never change, more and more barriers were erected to keep former offenders from building respectable lives.
Ironically, some of the people who think that paying any tax is a gross injustice are the same ones who advocate the "lock them up and throw away the key" policy. Tell them they’re going to pay somewhere between $500 and $2000 a year to house the homeless, and they may scream "socialism!" but don’t stop to think that’s how much they’re paying, depending on where they live, for incarceration.
And it’s not necessary. The most expensive lie ever told to the American people is "Rehabilitation Doesn’t Work."
Given my own criminal record from a half century ago, you might think I’d just like to throw open all the cell doors and do away with prisons and jails entirely. Not at all true! As an expert witness, I more often testified for the prosecution than for the defense. I do not favor pampering criminals, and I do not think that it was unfair for the federal government to lock me up for four years back in 1955.
But as a behavioral scientist, and having seen the criminal justice system from all angles, including from the cold floor of a solitary cell, I know that our system is wasteful and self-defeating. At last, there are some steps being taken in the right direction. But we can and should do more, faster. At this point in our national life, there are better things to do with our money!
I’ll go further with this soon. I hope you’re interested. If you pay taxes, if you care about public safety, you should be.