Prisoners - Legal Information Access Centre - NSW Government

On 30 June 2007, 2.3 million prisoners were held in
US federal or state prisons or in local jails. 48 In 2004,
nearly 7 million people were on probation, in jail or
prison, or on parole – 3.2% of all US adult residents or
one in every 31 adults. 49 As with the over-representation
of Aborigines in Australia (discussed previously) there is
a striking racial imbalance in the US prison population.
Black males are imprisoned at six times and Hispanic
males nearly three times the rate of white males. In the
25-29 years age group, 8.4% of black males were in State
or federal prison, compared with 2.5% of Hispanic males
and 1.2% of white. 50 The Sentencing Project calculated
that one in nine African-American males aged 20-29 are
in prison at any one point in time and one in three are
either in prison or on probation or parole.
Mass imprisonment?
Such statistics have resulted in leading criminologists
analysing the US situation as one of ‘mass imprisonment’,
defined as when imprisonment ‘is markedly above the
historical and comparative norm for societies of this
type’ and ‘ceases to be the incarceration of individual
offenders and becomes the systematic imprisonment
of whole groups of the population’. 51 In this situation
imprisonment:
becomes part of the socialisation process. every
family, every household, every individual in these
neighbourhoods has direct personal knowledge of
the prison – through a spouse, a child, a parent,
a neighbour, a friend. imprisonment ceases to be
the fate of a few criminal individuals and becomes
a shaping institution for whole sectors of the
population.
The social and financial costs of mass imprisonment
are acute:
Reduced state budgets for other spending; the
alienation of whole sectors of the population; the
normalisation of the prison experience and the
transfer of prison culture into the community;
the criminogenic* consequences of custody for
inmates and their families and their children; and
the disenfranchisement of whole sectors of the
community.
*Criminogenic = crime-producing
From 1925 to 1975 the US imprisonment rate was around
110 per 100,000 population, increasing suddenly with
the ‘war on drugs’, ‘three strikes’ laws and mandatory
minimum sentences. 52 Between 1970 and 2005 there
was a 628% increase in the US prison population. 53
scAndinAviAn cOunTries
The Scandinavian countries of northern Europe: Sweden,
Norway, Denmark and Finland are a group of countries
which historically have enjoyed low imprisonment rates.
According to a study by John Pratt, the origins of low
imprisonment rates and exceptional prison conditions
can be found in cultures with a history of equality. The
welfare state was particularly strong in the Scandinavian
countries, institutionalising high levels of trust and
solidarity through the provision of state-guaranteed
security. Pratt identifies the following characteristics of
low imprisoning countries:
> strong state bureaucracies with significant autonomy
and independence from political interference;
> mass media largely controlled by public neo-corporate
organisations rather than market forces … providing
its already well informed public with objective rather
than sensationalised crime knowledge;
> traditions of social welfarism which reduced
criminogenic tendencies and led to a less severe
punishment mentality;
> high levels of social capital;
> and the power and influence of expertise. 54
Pratt sees these characteristics as coming under threat
through welfare restructuring, immigration, declining
levels of security and solidarity, and the ‘growth of
intolerance and punitiveness against outsider groups’. 55
Nevertheless such comparisons ‘tell us that there are
other choices available to us in how to respond to crime
and how to manage prisons’. 56
48. US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prison Statistics, http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm accessed 18/9/2008.
49. US Bureau of Justice Statistics, Bulletin October 2005 1-2.
50. J Walker (see Note 37).
51. David Garland, ‘The meaning of mass imprisonment’, (2001) 3(1) Punishment and Society 5-6.
52. Christopher Shea, ‘Life Sentence: How Prison is Reshaping the USA’ (2007) The Boston Globe 24 September.
53. D Steman, Vera Institute of Justice, New York, Reconsidering Incarceration (2007) 1; available at http://www.vera.org/publication_
pdf/379_727.pdf
54. As above at p 135.
55. John Pratt, ‘Scandinavian Exceptionalism in an Era of Penal Excess’, Part 11: Does Scandinavian Exceptionalism Have A Future?’ British
Journal of Criminology (2008) 48, 275-292 at 288.
56. As above at p 290.
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