Local jails in US states impact more people than previously thought and are in desperate need of reform, reveals new study
Democratic candidate Joe Biden remarked at his party’s presidential election debate recently that nobody should be in jail for a non-violent crime. The former vice-president, who was once a staunch pro-jail voice, has taken a complete U-turn in recent years to suggest reforms in criminal justice and his statement re-opened the debate. The US has the world’s highest jail population, and with its rate of incarceration not going down, criminal justice reforms have become a major subject of debate in recent years.
However, even as debates continue on over criminal justice reforms, they tend to ignore the local jails—in counties and cities.
Prison Policy Initiative (PPI), a non-profit body which debates issues like mass criminalization and strives for a just society, recently came up with a new report that shows how local (county and city) jails impact more people than it was previously believed.
PPI cited another report to say that even though local jails are called “mass incarceration’s front door”, they do not get as much attention in terms of reforms since the conventional way of measuring the impact of jails attaches less significance to people who get directly affected by the local confinements.
PPI said since people typically remain behind bars for only a few days, weeks or months, the daily jail population comes to represent a small part of the people who go there over a year. That leaves the actual statistics reflecting how many people are going to jail less accessible.
'Arrest, release, repeat'
In August, PPI came up with a national report named ‘Arrest, Release, Repeat’ which gave an estimated number of people in each of the states who land up in the local jails every year. The state of Mississippi, for instance, sees 2,814 unique jail admissions per 100,000 state residents. The number is only 934 for California. Texas, on the other hand, sees the number of unique jail admissions in a year at 505,000. In California, it is 368,000.
PPI also took a look at the results that the National Survey on Drug Use and Health came up. The survey is mainly concerned with health trends and gives a fair data about arrested individuals. The national report prepared by PPI also offers a demographic breakdown of people who go to jail, including those who go to jail a number of times.
According to PPI, there are some advantages in knowing the actual number of people who are directly affected by local jails. One, it compels the policy-makers to ask whether jailing so many people is of any necessity. Secondly, knowing the number of people who are affected by the jail laws helps the policymakers to assess the jail policies and their impact better.
PPI’s national report said people who land up in county and city jails can have substance use disorder, suffering from mental illness and lack of health insurance disproportionately. It also said that such people are more likely to be jobless and lack a school degree. “States and counties should not be using incarceration to address these serious problems of public health and economic inequality,” the PPI's latest report said as a matter of suggestion.
Jails and public safety
PPI also cited a research report from Vera Institute to prove that putting people in jails doesn’t necessarily improve public safety. It said of the arrests made, fewer than five percent are for violent offenses. PPI’s national report, too, cited that as high as 88 percent of people arrested several times a year do not pose any serious threat to public safety.
Jailing vulnerable people is considered only a waste of public funds, according to the PPI report. It said by putting people’s lives in disarray in jails in terms of finance, family and medications, nothing was being achieved as social welfare.