A Growing Crisis Behind Bars

By Michael S. Serrill

Tough justice is causing the nation's prisons to bulge

The California state prison at San Quentin is a grim and foreboding symbol of the American way of punishment. The vast maximum-security prison is so old (parts of it date back to 1852) that it is a maze of outdated plumbing, frayed wiring and inadequate sanitation. It is so huge, and so many dangerous criminals are crowded into its antiquated facilities, that it is difficult for the guards to protect inmates from one another. As a result, hundreds of prisoners have been killed and wounded in a decade of violence. State prison officials have long wanted to tear San Quentin down. Instead, they have built a 1,000-bed tent city in a former playing field.

In addition to 800 prisoners now housed in the large wood-and-canvas tents, 350 are doubled up in 11-ft. by 4 1/2-ft. cells designed for one person. The prison, which has a rated capacity of 2,700, is so overcrowded that Warden Reginald Pulley has confined many of its 3,900 prisoners to their cells, allowing them to emerge only for meals and showers. What's more, their work and education programs have been suspended. Says Pulley of his institution: "It's a monster to run. It's a time bomb."

On the other side of the country, another potential time bomb, New York's Attica Correctional Facility, is ticking again. The state, strapped for prison space, has allowed Attica's population to rise above the 1,758 limit set after the 1971 riot in which 43 guards and inmates were killed. By this fall, Attica had 2,100 prisoners, which overwhelmed employment and education programs; for 500 there is no work at all. In September most of the inmates went on a two-week protest strike.

San Quentin and Attica are but two examples of the nation's dangerously overcrowded prisons. Across the nation, institutions are glutted with inmates who continue to pour into cell blocks at an unprecedented rate. The state and federal prison population, currently 432,000, has doubled in the past ten years and sets a record every time new federal figures are published. In just the past two years, the population has increased by more than 80,000 inmates, even though the national crime rate is in decline.

The major reason for the bulging prison cells: a criminal-justice system that has become very punitive very fast. The rate of incarceration in this country was 93 per 100,000 population in 1972; it is now 177 per 100,000, the highest since the Government began keeping records in 1925. New prisons cannot be built quickly enough to accommodate all of the new inmates; in any case, state legislatures have little inclination to spend the huge sums of money required. M. Kay Harris, a professor of criminal justice at Temple University, estimates that to build and operate prisons containing 100,000 new beds will cost taxpayers a total of $70 billion over the next 30 years, in addition to the more than $6 billion it costs annually to run the existing system. The construction bill alone is enormous: about $4.7 billion in prison and jail construction is planned across the country over the coming decade, including $1.2 billion for 16,500 new cells in California and $700 million for 8,800 in New York.

Texas and California have been neck and neck for the lead in state prison populations for the past few years. However, California, with more than 37,000 prisoners, pulled slightly ahead this year; it had only 21,260 on Jan. 1, 1980. Although Texas topped 38,000 earlier this year, the population had dropped below 37,000 by June 30. New York and Florida rank third and fourth, with about 30,000 and 28,000 inmates, respectively.

Many smaller states top those four in percentage increases. From the end of 1981 to the end of 1982, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, North Dakota increased its prison population by 28%; Alaska, 28%; Nevada, 25%; New Mexico, 23%; Oklahoma, 21%; and Hawaii, 18%. Arizona has doubled its prison population since 1980.

This spectacular increase has created appalling living conditions for many inmates, who are sleeping in gymnasiums, day rooms, corridors, tents, trailers and other forms of makeshift housing. Until early November, 170 prisoners were sleeping on the floor of a gymnasium at Illinois' Centralia Correctional Center. And Maryland, with one of the country's most grossly crowded systems, is bunking prisoners in basements, recreation areas, temporary buildings and "anywhere they'll fit," according to an official. Says Lawrence Kurlander, chief criminal justice adviser to New York Governor Mario Cuomo: "It is absolutely critical that we provide more space immediately or we are facing immediate disaster; it is that crucial."

More than ever, the courts are stepping in: individual prisons or entire prison systems in 39 states, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and the District of Columbia are either under court order to improve conditions or are the subject of litigation. In August, for example, a California judge ruled that conditions at San Quentin constituted cruel and unusual punishment. She ordered improvements in plumbing and electrical and sanitary facilities and an end to double celling. The department of corrections has responded with a proposal to transfer 350 inmates and spend $1 million on repairs.

The nation's tough mood toward offenders has also been felt in local jails, most notably in New York City, where the population of inmates awaiting trial and sentencing had increased from 7,500 on an average day in 1980 to well over 10,000 by October of this year. This was despite several federal court orders, going back three years, establishing minimum standards for living conditions and setting limits on the jail population. U.S. District

Judge Morris Lasker reached the end of his patience and on Oct. 31 ordered the city to find some way to remove at least 341 inmates from the jails immediately. The city then proceeded to release 610 inmates, many with long criminal records. A political furor resulted when one was rearrested within two days on a charge of rape. The October reopening of the renovated Manhattan House of Detention, better known as the Tombs, will not help much, because officials plan to limit its population to one prisoner for each of its relatively luxurious 421 cells. Judge Lasker closed the jail in 1974 after declaring it unfit for human habitation.

To avoid the drastic remedy imposed in New York City, at least eight states, most recently Texas, Florida and South Carolina, have passed "emergency powers" laws that are triggered every time state prisons become overcrowded: the parole eligibility dates of offenders convicted of nonviolent crimes are then brought forward by between 30 to 90 days, allowing officials to release enough inmates to bring the population down. Patterned on a 1980 Michigan statute, the laws are easier for legislators to accept because they affect only the tail end of a prisoner's sentence. Michigan's law has been invoked six times, resulting in the early release of about 2,000 inmates. But it cannot be used too often. "It's becoming increasingly less effective," says Michigan Director of Corrections Perry Johnson. "If we can just wait a year between emergencies, then it works fine."

There are several reasons cited for the prison-population surge, but rising crime is not one of them. The national crime rate began dropping two years ago, and last year it fell by 3% from the previous year. In many sections of the country there has been an even sharper decline over the past two years. One possible explanation for the overcrowded cells, criminologists say, is a time warp in the criminal careers of the baby-boom generation: only in the past few years have the criminal records of offenders born in the decade after World War II grown long enough to warrant prison terms.

This is only part of the answer, says Carnegie-Mellon University Professor Alfred Blumstein. The full explanation, he says, is "demographics plus toughness." Many criminal-justice experts are disturbed by the rigid form that the new toughness has taken. Since the mid-1970s nearly all states have passed some form of mandatory sentencing legislation--that is, laws stipulating that offenders convicted of certain crimes, or of a succession of crimes, must go to prison. In New York, for instance, the prisoner explosion is partly the result of a 1978 law requiring judges to imprison all violent-felony offenders.

At the same time, many legislatures have doubled and tripled the length of minimum prison sentences. Between 1970 and 1980, the number of inmates serving minimum terms of six years or more at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Walpole rose from 28% to 60%. In addition, about ten states (most recently Florida in October) have effectively abolished parole and adopted what is known as "determinate" sentencing, under which an offender's term is based on the seriousness of his crime and the nature of his past record. At the same time, parole boards in more than a dozen other states have adopted severe new release rules. All of these laws, criminologists say, have had the effect of making the criminal-justice system less flexible by limiting judges' power to award probation and by inhibiting corrections officials' right to grant parole. In many states, judges and correctional officials are no longer permitted to evaluate an offender according to his capacity for rehabilitation.

Criminologist Edith Flynn of Northeastern University considers this new emphasis on punishment "absurd." Says she: "We need to be more selective about who should be in and who should not."

The result of this unrelenting public attitude to prisoners, says Martin Magnusson, warden of the Maine State Prison, is that "you have people who know they are going to be here for the next 30 or 40 years. We also have people who know that they are always going to be here."

He adds: "This is becoming a potentially very desperate population here." For many Americans, the plight of prisoners elicits little sympathy.

"Overcrowding in prison leaves the average citizen totally unmoved," says Harvard Professor of Government James Q. Wilson. "The hue and cry out there is 'Fine, crowd 'em some more. They deserve it.' " But humane public officials and the federal courts are increasingly unwilling to let prison conditions deteriorate too far before taking action. The message to citizens, says William Leeke, longtime commissioner of corrections in South Carolina, is that they "will have to put their money where their mouth is. If they are not willing to pay the steep construction and operating costs for more prisons, they will have to live with programs that get some prisoners back out on the street." Some states, such as Texas, Georgia and Florida, are turning to alternatives to incarceration, such as community service and work-release programs. "Prison space is like oil," says Barry Krisberg, senior vice president of the reformist National Council on Crime and Delinquency.

"It is available in finite quantities and is expensive. You cannot treat it as an unlimited resource." --By Michael S. Serrill. Reported by William R. Doemer/San Francisco, with other bureaus

With reporting by William R. Doemer This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.