Posted on: Sunday, December 8, 2002

Prisons fail at job of preventing crime

By Lorenn Walker

While The Advertiser reports that "Politics, little money and a 'not in my back yard' attitude stopped efforts to build a new correctional facility in Hawai'i," the best reason for not building a new prison is that it will do little to prevent crime.

We all agree that our objective is to reduce crime. So we should invest our scarce public resources in programs that are shown to be effective.

While some may argue that the purpose of prison is to punish criminals and not to rehabilitate them, certainly most would agree that the aim of the punishment should be at least to prevent future crimes.

Indeed, calling a prison a correctional facility assumes that criminal behavior is going to be corrected by prison.

But if this were true, criminals would not continue committing crimes after being in prison, and we would not have the terrible problem that we do of recidivism.

Today, we have a lot of information that tells us how ineffective prison is at preventing crime.

One important U.S. Department of Justice study released this year tracked 271,111 former prisoners for three years after their release. It found a whopping 67.5 percent of them were rearrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within three years of leaving prison.

Maybe not all of those arrested committed a crime, but 51.8 percent of the former prisoners tracked were convicted and in prison again within three years of their release. That means our prisons do not prevent even half the prisoners from returning in three years.

This is very bad news. Prisons cost a lot of money, and crime causes us a lot of grief and heartache.

Why should we waste our money building more housing for criminals when half of them will commit more crimes, hurt more of us, then be in prison again in three years?

And what about the money we spend on sending them back to prison?

It is thoughtless to continue wasting money on more prisons when we know they do not prevent crime.

We know what can prevent crime from all the studies on resiliency, including our own Kaua'i Study, which tracked all the people born on that island in 1955 for 40 years.

Resiliency research teaches us that thinking skills, a relationship with another person who provides unconditional love, and participation in activities outside the home can protect a child from a criminal and problematic adult life, in spite of the most horrendous childhood.

Today, our schools and other services for children at risk of criminal activity are hurting. We need to put our money into what works to prevent crime (education); not what we know does not work (prisons).

There is no question that we have too many people in prison with drug problems that go untreated.

These people are in prison because they committed crimes to get money to buy drugs, or were high on drugs when they committed crimes.

Do not assume that because we send drug addicts to prison they will be forced to quit using drugs. Unfortunately, drugs are often just as available in prison as they are on the streets.

Drug addicts are going to keep on doing whatever it takes to get drugs, including committing crimes, and they will keep on using drugs until they get into recovery.

Most of them need drug treatment to recover, and most addicts need several chances at treatment before they succeed.

The average drug addict will relapse three times before maintaining sobriety.

We know there is a shortage of drug treatment facilities in Hawai'i. What is the rationale for another prison without adequate drug treatment?

We should be wise when it comes to crime prevention. We need to invest in developing resiliency opportunities for our youth, and we need drug treatment for the adults who are not resilient.

Not building a new prison is a smart decision, not a political one. Linda Lingle and Duke Aiona, a former judge who saw firsthand how drugs relate to crime in our state, are right: Another prison will not solve our crime problems.

Lorenn Walker, J.D., M.P.H., is a health educator working in violence prevention. She teaches administration of justice at Honolulu Community College.