From www.wsws.org
WSWS : News Analysis : North America : The Brutal Society
Prisons: a booming industry in the US and Europe
By Joseph Delius
5 June 2000
Back to screen version
For some years now, within the economically advanced countries two parallel
developments have been proceeding at an increasing pace, and in reverse
proportion to each other: the dismantling of social welfare systems and the
expansion of the prison system. The customary justification for the billions of
dollars being spent on the construction of new prisons, increases in the scope
and severity of criminal justice and the introduction of new forms of
punishment is that all this "serves to protect the public from violent crime".
Yet most crime statistics show conclusively that the violent crime rate has
declined, or at least stagnated, over the past few years. As opposed to this,
the number of prison inmates who committed offences in no way violent, but
intrinsically linked to poverty and social inequality, has increased
dramatically. Government plans and "prison reforms" are all based on the
assumption that this development will continue at an even greater pace and
become a permanent feature of society. Thus, preparations are being made to
accommodate a growing percentage of the population that will, at least
temporarily, find itself behind prison bars.
This process is becoming more and more apparent in Europe. For instance, in
Germany 2.5 billion marks ($US1.25 billion) have just been allocated for the
expansion of the prison system, for construction work alone (i.e., not
including overhead, administrative, personnel or other operational costs). The
objective is to increase prison capacity by up to 50 percent in the eastern
German states, and by about 25 percent in several of the western German states.
The same trend is evident in other European countries as well, particularly in
Britain where current planning will require the construction of at least two
dozen new prisons over the next 10 years. In France the Minister of Justice
recently announced that seven new prisons will be built, and five of the
largest existing prisons modernized at a total construction cost of 5.5 billion
francs ($US800 million).
Noteworthy as these figures are, the growth of the prison systems in Europe is
still far behind that of the "world leader" in incarceration, the United
States, where approximately two million people are now in prison. In other
words, a country whose population makes up only 5 percent of the world's
population now accounts for one quarter of all prison inmates worldwide. The
prison population of the US has increased by 61 percent over the past 10 years,
and is still growing.
Some US states are already spending considerably more on their prison systems
than on higher education. California has the highest incarceration rate in the
world with over 626 prison inmates per 100,000 state residents. (By comparison,
the incarceration rate in Indonesia is 21 per 100,000 inhabitants; Germany, 81;
France, 84; and Britain, 94). Recent official statistics and independent
studies show that California spends a total of roughly $5.6 billion dollars per
year (all costs included) on its prison system, but only $4.3 billion on its
schools and universities.
Not that this ominous "model" has damped the fervor with which European
governments and established parties are pursuing their "get tough on crime"
policies. On the contrary: The competition for recognition as the harshest
propagator of repressive criminal law is being fought out among them with the
same intensity as their vying for acclaim as the best representative of big
business interests.
Crime and society
In an article published May 4 in the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung,
journalist Heribert Prantl asked Christian Pfeiffer, the director of the KFN (
Kriminologisches Forschungsinstitut Niedersachsen) crime research institute,
what he saw as the underlying reasons for the expansion of the prison system in
Germany. Pfeiffer's conclusions are in striking contrast to official
justifications.
The criminologist stated that the increase in the number of prison inmates had
nothing to do with an increase in crime, but was rather a result of changes in
criminal law practice. He pointed out four essential aspects of this: To begin
with, the law courts had taken a much tougher approach in the second half of
the 1990s. Secondly, more and more people were being incarcerated because they
were not able to pay fines. This was due to the fact that courts were taking
less and less account of people's financial situation, sending out court orders
after the most superficial inquiries, instead of arranging for oral hearings to
establish offenders' personal circumstances.
The judicial system is truly blind in this respect, said Pfeiffer, only
noticing when it's too late that "they've ordered an unemployed person to pay a
four thousand mark fine". The third aspect Pfeiffer sees is that not only is
