COLUMN: Breaking the Chains

From Peter Morrison's "Think For Your," Fall '95 From Peter Morrison's "Think For Your," Fall '95Early this year, the departments of corrections in both Alabama and Arizona revived the chain gang, which had been extinct for more than three decades. On the chain gang inmates are chained around the ankles in groups of five. In today's political climate, constituents want systems that are tough on crime and easy on their wallets. Come down harshly on law violators, but don't spend the tax payers money. Some prison officials and politicians believe that chain gangs and other forms of harsh treatment are the answer. They are not. The only thing that harsh treatment does to prisoners is make them more angry at the system that they have violated. They become hardened and without feeling. By treating prisoners like animals, chaining them up, prison administrators are removing their dignity. And after their dignity is gone, there is no chance for rehabilitation. Yes, I said rehabilitation. Most people would believe that rehabilitating a criminal is impossible. The system should lock them up and throw away the key. They are murderers and rapists and they deserve no dignity or respect. But what you don't know or want to recognize is that more than three-fourths of prisoners will one day rejoin society. Do you want to ride the bus with an ex-convict who has worked on a chain gang breaking rocks for five years, or someone who has learned how to read and write, someone who has learned a job skill, someone who has kicked his drug addiction? The fact is that a majority of inmates cannot read or write and most enter into incarceration with a substance abuse problem. Beating up law violators after they are behind bars will not solve the problems that got them there. But developing programs to root out the fundamental problems leading to crime may make a difference. Statistics prove it. According to the American Correctional Association (the group representing the prisons), prisoners who leave prisons with their General Equivilency Degree have a return to prison rate of about 10 percent, while all other inmates have a recidivism rate of about 60 percent. Academics, including the University's own Marvin Wolfgang, say that extremely harsh treatment is, in fact, counterproductive to corrections. Punitive treatment only frustrates inmates and helps them build anger toward society, so that they may leave prison more irate and imbalanced than when they arrived. Furthermore, academics say that sending the message to inmates that they are not capable of becoming productive citizens becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. You label prisoners as hopeless, and that's what they will believe. The inmates who actually work on chain gangs are also of interest. You may think that the most evil of criminals would be banished to toil on the chain gang. But this is not so. Mostly medium security, not maximum security, inmates work on chain gangs. Prison administrators say it is too dangerous to let more dangerous criminals out of the prison to work 12-hour shifts in 100-degree weather. It is normal that citizens are fed up with crime. I am too. (Although statistics show that crime rates are dropping.) And it is OK that prisoners work and pay a debt to society. But we must realize that inmates today do not get up at noon and sit in a Lay-Z-Boy all day with the clicker watching Spice, as some politicians would like us to believe. Inmates get up at dawn to stare at small crowded concrete cells with big iron bars in front of them that restrict the freedom with which they were born. Do not be misled by the rhetoric of politicians who claim they are getting tough on crime. Beating up on prisoners who are already incarcerated does not stop the violence that goes on in the streets. It does not help potential law violators find shelter or learn how to survive an addiction. Politicians who advocate austere punishment are naive. They are not trying to solve find solutions to the root of crime, they are trying to win political points at the expense of finding appropriate ways to protect the public. Rather than chaining prisoners up and having them break rocks meaninglessly for hours a day, train them in a job skill and then put them to work to better society. Let them toil in the hot sun rebuilding infrastructure, or erecting public housing. Now, that type of work is productive, can teach inmates work ethic, and at the same time can benefit society at a minimal cost. Let politicians find a way to fund education and drug counseling for offenders. Give them a chance to re-enter society and function rather than re-enter society angry and lost. Politicians will tell you that such rehabilitation programs are too expensive and unnecessary. But a system that does not educate or assist will be self-perpetuating. Criminals will enter prison and leave the same way -- individuals who only know crime and nothing else will commit crime again when they return to society. Inmates should not be coddled. That is not what I am advocating. Inmates should be punished and their freedom should be taken from them. They should be made to work and should have limited activities. The victims, not the criminals, should be protected and feel safe. But for a corrections system to work, inmates must be treated as human beings, not animals, and they should do work that will benefit society not simply pass hours in the day. That way, when they re-enter society they will not need to commit crime again.