Report details failure of U.S. prison system

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Americans spend $60 billion a year to imprison 2.2 million people — exceeding any other nation — but receive a dismal return on the investment, according to a report to be released today by a commission urging greater public scrutiny of what goes on behind bars.

The report, "Confronting Confinement," says legislators passing get-tough laws have packed the nation's jails and prisons to overflowing with convicts, most poor and uneducated, but have done little to help them emerge as better citizens upon release.

The consequences of that failure include continuing financial strain on states, public-health threats from parolees with communicable diseases and a cycle of crime and victimization driven by a recidivism rate of more than 60 percent, the report says.

"If these were public schools or publicly traded corporations, we'd shut them down," said Alex Busansky, executive director of the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons, established by a private think tank in New York.

With 20 members representing diverse perspectives, the bipartisan panel urges Americans to ignore the costs of incarceration no longer.

Among the findings in the 126-page report that the commission will deliver to a Senate subcommittee today:

• Violence remains a serious problem in prisons and jails, with gang assaults, rapes, riots and, in Florida, beatings by "goon squads" of officers.

Information

To read the report:

www.prisoncommission.org

• High rates of disease in prison, coupled with inadequate funding for health care, endanger inmates, staff and the public, with staph infections, tuberculosis, hepatitis C and HIV among the biggest threats.

• The rising use of high-security segregation units is counterproductive, often causing violence in prisons and contributing to recidivism upon release.

The commission includes members who run correctional systems and those who litigate on behalf of prisoners, as well as lawmakers and others from the criminal-justice field.

All 20 members unanimously supported the report's findings, concluding that "we should be astonished by the size of the prisoner population, troubled by the disproportionate incarceration of African Americans and Latinos and saddened by the waste of human potential."