Journal of Humanitarian Affairs: Growing prison population creates long-term problems for families

The Pew report several years ago called
"Collateral Costs: Incarceration's Effect on Economic Mobility" revealed the permanent impact on former prisoners that impairs them economically and socially and the rest of America.

Have things changed?

The rest of America is affected because there are so many people behind bars, and the population is growing, even for victimless crimes. For example, using spice is now a felony criminal offense in Mississippi that can get users a prison term.

And in Louisiana a couple years ago 600 new laws were put on the books, many of which bring about penalties if violated.

What the Pew report www.pewtrusts.org told us those few years ago is that 1 in every 28 children in America has a parent behind bars, which is up from 1 in 125 just 25 years ago.

"People who break the law need to be held accountable and pay their debt to society," said Adam Gelb,director of the Public Safety Performance Project of the Pew Center on
the States. "At the same time, the collateral costs of locking up 2.3 million people are piling higher and higher. Corrections is the second fastest growing state budget category, and state leaders from both parties are now finding that there are research-based strategies for
low-risk offenders that can reduce crime at far less cost than prison."

The report authored by Pew's Economic Policy Group and the Pew Center on the States revealed that:

Before being incarcerated, two-thirds of male inmates were employed and more
than half were the primary source of financial support for their
children.

After release, former male inmates work nine fewer weeks annually and take home 40 percent less in annual earnings, making $23,500 instead of $39,100. That amounts to an expected earnings loss of nearly $179,000 through age 48 for men who have been incarcerated.

Of former inmates who were in the bottom of the earnings distribution in
1986, two-thirds remained there in 2006, twice the number of
non-incarcerated men.

Incarceration's long-term economic repercussions are felt by increasing numbers of

families and communities now that 2.3 million Americans are behind bars,equaling 1 in 100 adults. Up from 500,000 in 1980, this marks more than a 300 percent increase in the United States' incarcerated population.

Collateral Costs detailed the concentration of incarceration among men, the young, the
uneducated and African Americans. One in 87 working-aged white men is in prison or jail compared with 1 in 36 Hispanic men and 1 in 12 African American men. Today, more African American men aged 20 to 34 without a high school diploma or GED are behind bars (37 percent) than are employed (26 percent).

The report also shows more than 2.7 million minor children at the time had a parent behind bars, or 1 in every 28. For African American children the number was 1 in 9, a rate that has more than quadrupled in the past 25 years.

And the solutions. Experts have said the following should be undertaken toward rehabilitation and reducing the prison rates:

Reconnecting former inmates to the labor market through education and training, job
search and placement support, and follow-up services;

Making work pay by capping the percent of an offenders' income subject to deductions for court-ordered fines and fees;

Funding incentives for corrections agencies and programs that succeed in reducing crime and increasing employment;

Offering earned-time credits to offenders who complete educational, vocational, or rehabilitation programs behind bars; and

Using swift and certain sanctions to deter probation and parole violations and reduce the cost of incarceration. For example, Hawaii's
successful HOPE probation program uses short but immediate jail stays
to punish drug use and other probation violations, imposing them on
weekends so working offenders don't lose their jobs.