A Reply to P-E Gobry - Why Abolish Prison?

Today, the excellent writer Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry writes in "The Week" an article opening:

Prison is just about the most astonishingly stupid and inhuman way to punish crime. It is inexplicable that it is the main crime punishment tool we use. 

He engages in a variety of interesting arguments on behalf of abolishing prison, which I shall sum up as the following:

1. Impossibility of rehabilitation - Mr. Gobry notes that prisoners often learn more criminal ways in prison than outside. He calls it "graduate school for crime."
2. Prison Rape Epidemic - Mr. Gobry says that this is a natural result of locking "up a bunch of men in tight quarters, without access to females..[who are] violent, over-testosteroned, and dysfunctional."
3. Impossibility of reform - None of the above two will change because prisoners do not command the sympathy of enough of the democracy to receive funding or (so to speak) due process.
4. Problems of liberty and control - Citing Foucault, prison is a development of the modern state's desire to control it's citizens' lives more fully; this is an enemy of liberty.

Alternatively, Mr. Gobry suggests the following:

1. For petty crime, community service of some sort. Graffiti artists clean graffiti, for example, in a reparations-based regime.
2. For more serious crimes, ankle bracelets. Mr. Gobry states: "you should spend six years working minimum wage in a tedious job, your wages garnished, stuck at home with no internet or TV, with only a single night out allowed once in a while."
3. For the most serious, Mr. Gobry allows: "I tend to think that prison might be acceptable for a very small percentage of crimes. If we have five percent the number of prisoners we currently have, I would be very happy."

I think Mr. Gobry's argument needs unpacking; I think needs a great deal more support.

First, I doubt that Foucault is correct that prisons developed in modern times alone. Wikipedia (not always the most reliable source of information, granted) finds evidence for the use  of prisons among the Greeks and Romans, and established in medieval castles, etc. (Perhaps the anecdotes of being thrown in the dungeon were not quite simply anecdotal?) Occasionally, prisons apparently replaced the lex talionis and other more hideous punishments in operation - perhaps an improvement, perhaps not. (See, for example, Cultures of Confinement, A History of the Prison in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, Dikotter & Brown, Cornell, 2007.) But this is an aside and quibble, really.

More seriously, Mr. Gobry suggests that, were we to impose the type of sentences he suggests (community service and ankle bracelets) would drop the numbers of prisoners we currently have to 5% of the current population. I think that claim needs to be substantiated, and more carefully than Mr. Gobry has done so here.

Going forward, let's use this website, admittedly not an "official site" so to speak, but apparently well-supported for statistics in the 2012 range. The statistics for 2012 population (just using state jurisdiction here) of inmates overall stand as follows:

Offense                   2012

Violent                   707,500 (53.8%)

Property                 247,100 (18.8%)

Drug                       210,200 (16.0%)

Public-order           140,200 (10.7%)

Other/unspecified   10,000 (0.8%)

Each of these is defined as such:

• Violent -          Includes murder, manslaughter, non-negligent manslaughter, rape, other sexual assault, robbery, assault, and other violent crimes.
• Property -        Includes burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, fraud, and other property crimes.
• Public-Order - Includes weapons, drunk driving, court offenses, commercialized vice, morals and decency offenses, liquor law violations, and other public-order offenses.
• Other -             Includes juvenile and other unspecified offense categories.

I am going to assume, perhaps without warrant, that Mr. Gobry's sole justification for use of prison is not based in any way upon retribution, but a combination of retribution (used as a measurement of time) and public order. So, therefore, we can assume that ankle bracelets and fines would be usable for most property offenses and at least some drug offenses, and many public order offenses and other offenses.

So, let us say that any drug offenses not related to trafficking and distribution. I exclude the latter two because ankle bracelets and fines simply will not stop distribution, and high-level traffickers can continue to be cogs in the wheel for trafficking. Perhaps Mr. Gobry can suggest alternatives to imprisonment,  but let us say that we eliminate drug-related imprisonment entirely (and classify prisoners with violent drug habits as deranged and place them in treatment), though I would argue that those who are active dealers and traffickers should be separated from the population via imprisonment. This reduces the total number by 210,000, or about 20%.

Of the 80% remaining, let us say we we can deal similarly with property, public-order, and other crimes, dropping us to about 54%, comprising violent crimes. I would argue that there are still some who should be imprisoned, but we're at decent point of agreement here.

Now, this is a decent reduction, and I concede some of Mr. Gobry's point so far. And in fact, Texas and other states are taking these steps already. However, we're still at nearly 55% of the population - the violent ones.  And, borrowing from the Bureau of Justice Statistics report on violent crime, the breakdown of these inmates is as follows:

Crime                                    2012 Total
Violent                                  707,500

Murder                                   166,800
Manslaughter                         17,700
Rape/sexual assault                160,900
Robbery                                 179,500
Assault                                   140,100
Other violent                          42,500

I think Mr. Gobry has more work to do, and more alternatives to suggest. I would not go out on a limb and suggest there are no alternatives to imprisonment, although California recently tried experiments with paroling more prisoners convicted of violent crimes, with nearly predictable results. Rather, I am interested in Mr. Grobry's thoughts as to what one does with the rapists and murderers, with those for whom house arrest will not work (because they have no house), and for whom a minimum-wage job would present danger to the other workers. It seems to me that 55% is still a great number of people, even taking the bipartisan issues of drug-inmate reform and other similar reforms and putting them on the table, as is already happening in many places.

I think more could be said for questions about prison, liberty, and the modern state, but that is perhaps for another post.