NEWS & LETTERS, September-October 2010
Voices from the inside out
'Rehabilitative' exploitation
by Robert Taliaferro
On the surface one would think that a rehabilitative concept would be a good thing as opposed to the prison-building fad of the 1980s and 1990s and the subsequent demonization of people of color.
With the red ink still wet from this prison expansion, the largest contributor to state budgetary deficits in this country's history, the Prison Industrial Complex (PrInCom) was left to find new ways to manipulate the community in order to justify their continued existence.
The answer was rehabilitative programming.
We eventually found that the majority of prisoners aren't the crazed Black, Brown, Red and Yellow killers that investors of PrInCom paraded in front of a fearful public. The majority of prisoners were small-time drug users and hustlers, deadbeat parents, and other petty criminals who--due to three strike laws--often ended up with more time than the crime warranted.
We found that if you were a person of color with a small piece of crack cocaine, you could lose your soul to long-term incarceration, while a white convict who sold a kilo of powder cocaine would be out in a few years.
People who owed a couple thousand dollars of child support--in some states--spend up to 10 years in prison at a cumulative cost of $260,000 to $300,000, while corporate and government thieves who bilked taxpayers out of billions get a trip to Club Fed.
It took 100 years for the U.S. prison population to reach its first million, and a decade to reach its second. Over $60 billion a year is spent on PrInCom budgets, more than is spent on health, education, or natural resources.
In the midst of hiring freezes and prison building moratoriums, PrInCom reinvented itself to pacify angry cash-strapped taxpayers who were seeing prisons for what they were: financial black holes that had no real return on the massive investment that was made.
PrInCom patronizes the communities they once terrorized with fear-mongering, by instituting programs of "social rehabilitation." This is where correctional dollars are now being spent. Unfortunately, several recent studies have suggested that mandated institutional rehabilitative programs may actually increase rather than deter criminality. Additionally, few if any states actually regulate rehabilitative programs.
In states like Wisconsin, the biggest issue becomes duplication of services. This is where prisoners are required to enter a program while in prison as a requirement for release, and then required to attend that very same program in the community once they are released--in essence double-tapping the money available for such programs. Failure to attend the program in the community generally results in a return to prison.
One of the new "rehabilitative and community reintegration initiatives" in Wisconsin requires prisoners, their families and supporters to contribute to a release account by placing 10% of all incoming funds into that account until it reaches $5,000.
On its face, that would seem like a great idea until it is recognized that the department itself--in public records--noted that it would take about 75 years for that to happen with the average prisoner.
As prisoners are not allowed to buy bonds or make other investments with that particular account, the so-called "rehabilitative initiative" amounts to nothing more than a perpetual prison tax initiated by PrInCom and its banking partner U.S. Bank in Minnesota, which benefits from the multi-million dollar cash account that they can use or invest--a perpetual stimulus package courtesy of Wisconsin's prisoners, families and friends.
The line between social change and socialized theft is very thin, especially when programs receive money for the bodies that they place in the programs, rather than based on the programs' completion rates.
Mario Puzo once wrote, "...a lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than 100 men with guns...." This is particularly true if they represent PrInCom and their state correctional supporters.
If rehabilitation initiatives are to be a valuable tool to change the direction of corrections in this country, then the first rehabilitative changes to be made, must begin with the rehabilitation of the state.
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