WHY IS CANADA FOLLOWING FAILED U.S. PRISON POLICIES? And What It Could Learn from NAACP's "Misplaced Priorities" Report

PREAMBLE: Canada’s Conservative government is copying failed US prison policies even as its favoured role model, the US Republican Party, repudiates them: policies that lead the US to having the highest incarceration rates in the world.

In Canada, a $2-billion prison-building bonanza is about to spawn more than two dozen new prisons as Conservative candidates make pre-election announcements on 8 prisons in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Quebec, while in Ontario 3 minimum-security prisons will each get 50 new cells, and Quebec’s medium-security Cowansville Institution a 96 cell addition, in addition to new cells at another Quebec prison.[1]

The motivations behind Prime Minister Harper’s prison obsession appear ideologically driven and politically motivated. There is no evidence of increasing crime in Canada (the overall trend is actually down), nor is there good scientific evidence that incarceration is an effective solution to most of the crime that does occur. Nonetheless, Canada is now scrambling to expand the penitentiary system to house a surging inmate population due to legislative changes that were not properly costed in the first instance. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, abolition of the 2-for-1 pre-trial custody credit will add 4,000 more inmates over the next 5 years, and other proposals including tightened parole rules and more mandatory minimum sentences will have similar effects. These ill considered legislative measures are creating a level of overcrowding that contravenes international standards on treatment of prisoners. It does nothing for rehabilitation, even as it displaces resources away from measures that could prevent crime in the first place.

It is difficult to imagine that any political party now so far into the throes of an election campaign could reverse its own “tough on crime” platform. However, we live in hope, and for this reason offer the following review of the just released and already much acclaimed NAACP policy report from the USA.

We have taken the liberty of minor paraphrasing, so as to focus on what is most relevant to Canada. However, the full report should be required reading by federal politicians of all stripes. Let us learn from this report which documents how Harperian “tough on crime” policies have already been shown to fail south of the border. QUESTION FOR THE ELECTION: Why copy failure?

References
1. Robb Tripp. Harper Government to announce more prison expansion. iPolitics.ca Postmedia News. January 10, 2010. http://ipolitics.ca/2011/01/10/harper-government-to-announce-more-prison-expansions/
2. NAACP. Misplaced Priorities: Over Incarcerate, Under Educate. April, 2011. http://naacp.3cdn.net/01d6f368edbe135234_bq0m68x5h.pdf Accessed April 13, 2011.


MISPLACED PRIORITIES – The Report
Misplaced Priorities, released by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), America’s leading Civil Rights group, focuses on the over-funding of prisons and under-funding of education in the USA (reference 2 above). The Report reveals how that nation is wasting financial resources on over-incarceration while depriving schools of resources that would help children in distressed communities - who, without adequate education, are at greatest risk of becoming the next generation of prisoners.

Misplaced Priorities examines research and analysis from leading experts on crime, public safety, and education policy, and analyzes new information gathered at neighborhood level to provide a unique local perspective on the national incarceration crisis in the USA. It was released in the context of a Smart and Safe policy framework that ensures public safety as a civil and human right for all communities, especially for the many communities in crisis. Instead of calling for “lock ‘em' up" practices to solve social problems, Smart and Safe was developed to meet public safety goals by meeting community needs and more effectively addressing violent crimes.

Misplaced Priorities: Over Incarcerate, Under Educate
The report’s key conclusion is that excessive spending on incarceration undermines educational opportunity and public safety in communities. States are thereby urged to lock away fewer prisoners for drug offenses, and to redirect some of the massive amount of money that goes to jails to schools.

The report has been endorsed by some politically unexpected allies: former GOP Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist, conservative founder of Americans for Tax Reform. "You have Tea Party activists and NAACP activists pushing the same bills," NAACP president Ben Jealous said during a PBS NewsHour report, referencing the prison reform movement in Texas.

Executive Summary – Selected Extracts
In Misplaced Priorities: Over Incarcerate, Under Educate, NAACP researchers assembled data from leading research organizations and profiled 6 cities to show how escalating investments in incarceration over the past 30 years have undermined educational opportunities. Misplaced Priorities is a call to action for public officials, policymakers, and local NAACP units and members by providing a framework to implement a policy agenda that will financially prioritize investments in education over incarceration, provide equal protection under the law, eliminate sentencing policies responsible for over incarceration, and advance public safety strategies that effectively increase healthy community development.

Misplaced Priorities echoes existing research on the impact excessive prison spending has on education budgets. Over the last two decades, as the criminal justice system came to assume a larger proportion of state discretionary dollars nationwide, state spending on prisons grew at six times the rate of state spending on higher education. In 2009, as the nation plummeted into the deepest recession in 30 years, funding for K–12 and higher education declined; however, in that same year, 33 states spent a larger proportion of their discretionary dollars on prisons than they had the year before.

Other Important Findings from Misplaced Priorities:
1. Over incarceration impacts vulnerable populations and destabilizes communities.
• The majority of the 2.3 million people incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails are people of color, people with mental health issues and drug addiction, people with low levels of educational attainment, and people with a history of unemployment or underemployment.
[Ed: In Canada, the situation is similar: for example, under current legal frameworks and practices, aboriginals are 7 times more likely to be incarcerated than non-aboriginals. Nothing in the Conservative “tough on crime” platform addresses these inequities.]
• The (USA) nation’s reliance on incarceration to respond to social and behavioral health issues is evidenced by the large numbers of people who are incarcerated for drug offenses. Among people in federal prisons, people in local jails, and young people held in the nation’s detention centers and local secure facilities, more than 500,000 people—nearly a quarter of all those incarcerated—are incarcerated as the result of a drug conviction.
• During the last two decades, as the criminal justice system came to assume a larger proportion of state discretionary dollars, state spending on prisons grew at six times the rate of state spending on higher education.

2. In the six cities profiled in the report, the NAACP research team found stark disparities. Approximately each year:
• In Texas, taxpayers will spend more than $175 million to imprison residents sentenced in 2008 from just 10 of Houston’s 75 neighborhoods (by zip code). These neighborhoods are home to only about 10 percent of the city’s population but account for more than one-third of the state’s $500 million in prison spending.
• In Pennsylvania, taxpayers will spend nearly $290 million to imprison residents sentenced in 2008 from just 11 of Philadelphia’s neighborhoods (by zip code). These neighborhoods are home to just over a quarter of the city’s population but account for more than half of the state’s roughly $500 million in prison spending.
• In New York, taxpayers will spend more than half a billion dollars ($539million) to imprison residents sentenced in 2008 from 24 of New York City’s approximately 200 neighborhoods (by zip code). These areas are home to only about 16 percent of the city’s population but account for nearly half of the state’s $1.1 billion in prison spending.

3. Incarceration impacts educational performance at the local level.
• For three cities—Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Houston—the research team examined the spatial relationship between “high-incarceration communities” and “low-performing schools” (as measured by mathematics proficiency). By grouping five different ranges of incarceration from the two lowest to the two highest, the authors have shown where high- and low-performing schools tend to be clustered:
◦◦In Los Angeles, 69 of the 90 low-performing schools (67 percent) are in neighborhoods with the highest incarceration rates;
◦◦In Philadelphia, 23 of the 35 low-performing schools (66 percent) are clustered in or very near neighborhoods with the highest rates of incarceration; and
◦◦In Houston, 5 of the 6 low-performing schools (83 percent) are in neighborhoods with the highest rates of incarceration.

Call to Action & Recommendations
Among a growing number of states that are finding better ways to manage their corrections systems, four states—Kansas, Michigan, New Jersey, and New York—have seen significant declines in their prison population as a result of policy changes that seek to re¬verse the trend of overspending on incarceration. However, the relative successes in these states have yet to spread across the nation or result in increased investments in education.

It is critical that all states prioritize education over incarceration. The NAACP calls for the downsizing of prisons and the shifting of financial resources from secure corrections budgets to education budgets. This can be accomplished if states accept the following recommendations:

1. Study the problem: Support federal, state, and local efforts to create a blue-ribbon commission that will conduct a thorough evaluation of the criminal justice system and offer recommendations for reform in a range of areas, including: sentencing policy, rates of incarceration, law enforcement, crime prevention, substance abuse and mental health treatment, corrections, and reentry.
2. Create reinvestment commissions: Support commissions charged with identifying legislative and policy avenues to downsize prison populations and shift savings from prison closures to education budgets.
3. Eliminate disparities in drug laws: Support efforts to eliminate disparities in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine at the state and federal level.
4. Increase earned time: Support reforms that would allow prisoners to earn an earlier release by participating in educational and vocational programming as well as drug and mental health treatment.
5. Support youth violence reduction programs: Support programs and policies to develop a comprehensive plan for implementing evidence-based prevention and intervention strategies for at-risk youth to prevent gang activity and criminal justice involvement.
6. Reform sentencing and drug policies: Eliminate mandatory minimum sentencing for drug offenses that help fuel drug imprisonment.
7. Use diversion for drug-involved individuals: Reform prosecutorial guidelines to divert people to treatment who would otherwise serve a mandatory prison term.
8. Shorten prison terms: Send young offenders who would otherwise receive mandatory sentences to structured programs to help them earn their GED and shave time off their prison sentences.
9. Increase parole release rates: Improve parole boards’ ability to use evidence-based strategies when making decisions to parole prisoners, thus improving parolees’ chances for success and increasing parole approval rates.
10. Reduce revocations of people under community supervision: Develop alternative-to-incarceration programs that will reduce the number of people sent to prison for technical violations.
11. Support reentry and the sealing of records: Support legislation that will close criminal records of certain offenders after they have not committed another crime within a certain number of years.

Reference: NAACP. Misplaced Priorities: Over Incarcerate, Under Educate. April, 2011. http://naacp.3cdn.net/01d6f368edbe135234_bq0m68x5h.pdf Accessed April 13, 2011.

OUR COMMENT
Given this backdrop of serious reexamination of failed US prison policies, and the sane response to the ensuing recommendations not only by Democrats but also Republicans, surely it is time that our own Conservative Party of Canada did some serious homework, and cleaned up its own misguided policies on crime? The current divergence between Canadian and US conservative thinking is odd indeed, especially given their otherwise close ideological bonds and operational ties. If a US Republican Party Epiphany was possible, then all is not lost here in Canada: how about a Conservative Epiphany? Alternatively why not throw the blighters out, or at least consider this as yet one more reason to continue to deny them a majority in parliament?