Issue #1 Not Heard on Campaign Trail, Criminal Justice Reform

Campaign 2012 has overtaken us. We are awash in messages approved by candidates and flooded with others produced by political action committees that are not. Think about those ads for a moment. Now, consider the news reports you have heard, read and watched about the candidates. Recall the convention speeches in Tampa and Charlotte. If you subtract all of the talk about the economy, jobs, and health care, you will find education gets mentioned occasionally, as do broad-brush issues relating to energy, foreign policy and taxes. Missing is a serious discussion about many of the significant issues standing in the way of America’s future.

To make my point, let’s focus on just one painfully glaring omission from today’s political debate, criminal justice.

It’s easy to understand why campaign staffers hate the subject. Prisons and crime never make the top ten list of hot-button issues as determined by pollsters. For instance, the latest Quinnipiac University/CBS News/New York Times poll indicated the economy, health care, Medicare (how this differs from health care baffles me), the budget deficit, taxes, foreign policy and housing were the issues we the voters care about most. Campaign strategists and special interest insurgents hired to craft messages and make ads won’t touch criminal justice because the gospel according to the polls says the topic doesn’t resonate. It should.

The United States is the most incarcerated country in the world. Our failing criminal justice system is costing billions of dollars and destroying lives. And, to top it off, instead of making our communities safer, our lock ‘em up and lock ‘em out approach may be exacerbating the problem by creating a permanent criminal class of Americans.

According to the Pew Center, one in 31 American adults were in the correction system in 2009. This means just over 3% of Americans were in jail, prison, on probation or under supervision of some sort. This figure has more than doubled over the last 25 years and nearly quadrupled since 1980.

There are some 2.4 million people in jail and prison. Over the past 20 years, the fastest growing part of state budgets after healthcare is criminal justice. State spending on criminal justice has increased more than 300% during this time to an estimated $51.7 billion in 2008. Add in what the federal and local governments spend and that figure is an eye-popping $200 billion a year.

That’s real money and we aren’t getting much in return.

Let’s consider the social cost of our justice policies. Just over 9% of black adults are in the correctional system, as are about 4% of Hispanic adults, and 2% of white adults. The chasm between us grows. Moreover, our system locks offenders away and strips them of their rights while taking few steps to steer these offenders away from a life of crime. The numbers above will not improve unless we change course.

Ponder this; some estimates show it costs $29,000 per year to house an inmate and $9,000 a year to send a student to high school.

If a candidate for office were serious about making a difference, he would be talking about criminal justice reform, not because the issue polls well, but because it is an issue that almost more than any other is significantly limiting our national progress.

Campaign 2012 is full of candidates willing to feed us soundbites they have been told we want to hear. Sadly, this field of candidates is lacking leaders willing to address difficult topics that aren’t popular. If we hope to ever overcome the barriers blocking the way to a better tomorrow, we will need to put people in office more interested in solving problems than winning votes. Let’s start with criminal justice reform.

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Graham Gillette can be reached at grahamgillette@gmail.com 
This entry was first published as a Des Moines Register online essay.