As violent crime increases, what happens when countries attempt
to create
law & order by any means necessary?
Crime is up – nearly everywhere. The United Nations reports that assaults worldwide jumped from 150 per every 100,000 people in 1970 to nearly 400 per 100,000 just three decades later. As the world becomes less politically violent, more people are reporting inter-personal aggression like homicide, robbery and sexual violence.
As criminality increases, the world’s prison population swells. In some developing countries, prisons are now 40 percent more crowded than a decade before, the Home Office of the United Kingdom found. The worldwide prison population stands at 8.75 million inmates. A good portion of them reside in the United States (home to two million prisoners), Russia (nearly one million) and China (nearly 1.5 million).
One way to measure the effect of crime on a society is to calculate size of the prisoner population per every 100,000 people. Again, the U.S. leads all categories: 686, followed closely by Russia (638 per 100,000) while some lower-population states slip in, like the Cayman Islands (664) and Belize (459) and the Bahamas (447). Former Soviet states also tend to rank high: Belarus (554), Kazakhstan (522) and Turkmenistan (489).
Yet, crime and punishment has not affected every corner of the globe. More than 60 percent of countries have rates far below 150 prisoners per 100,000 people.
Who walks the line?
With so many incarcerated people worldwide, governments and societies must ask themselves: What will we do with all of them? For the most hardened criminals, the answer in some countries is lockdown. No stranger to convicts, the United States came up with super-lock down, where prisoners are physically separated from the world for 23-hours a day, making it near impossible to speak, let alone interact, with others. Of course, questions linger whether this deprivation may be lead to psychological issues.
What to do with run-of-the-mill prisoners? To answer this, one has to look at how society views crime. Most countries see criminals as anti-social and egocentric rebels bent on undermining the agreed-upon rules of society. For the sake of law and order, these people must be put back in line.
The French philosopher Michel Foucalt argues that beginning in the mid-19th century a new class of person appeared in Europe: The delinquent. These people were blamed for the violence, thievery and embezzlement that used to take place with far a greater rate and impunity. Justice existed prior to this time, but for the most part the punishment for most crimes was often execution. The form of death – hangings, burning at the cross – often took place as a very public spectacle, not only making examples of criminals, but possibly turning them into martyrs. This helped cement the idea that the criminal is a rebel against those who make – and among those chosen to enforce –the rules and laws of society.
After the wave in executions came rehabilitation. The idea emerged that states could somehow repair or remake criminals, give them a chance to better themselves while paying a debt to society. Gone was the physical abuse rife within prisons. What remained, however, was nothing short of psychological and/or mental modification. This has become the fundamental philosophy of today’s prisons throughout most of the world.
How this rehabilitation takes place is another issue. Viewed in a certain light, prisons are merely a reflection of the politics of the times (and place). In 18th century Russia, for example, the idea arose that prisoners –criminals, mentally ill, those awaiting trial – should be watched over by authorities in an attempt to normalize them through psychological coercion. Early prisons were often designed in the round – cells on the circle's circumference surrounding guard towers in the middle – to provide proper surveillance with a minimal number of guards.
Of course, states are more interested in just housing prisoners. Convicts must be taught justice. The argument goes that countries use prisons to let everyone know who is in control and whom is powerless. Others would contend that prisons are merely machines that grind prisoners into submission. No matter how secure and forbidding prisons can be, a sort of very public theatre always goes on – as if society is making and creating examples.
Is cleanliness a human right?
Whatever philosophical ideas underpin prison design and structure, prison officials have to deal with concrete, real-world problems. The world’s most common issue is extreme overcrowding. For various reasons, it seems nearly everywhere the number of prisoners far outnumbers the amount of space governments provide for locking up criminals. Oftentimes this overcrowding becomes so extreme that it greatly undermines standard living conditions. Sanitation and hygiene are difficult to maintain when prisons are overpopulated; so is providing healthy nutrition and proper healthcare. Over-crowded living spaces create a high level of stress and tension. It also lessens the chances that prisoners can benefit from training or schooling and actually be reformed.
The question is why governments allow such overcrowding to take place. I guess, there’s always the hope that crime will fall. Another motive could be financial reasons: Who wants to pay for more prisons? You can also add the fact that most governments – and by default, citizens – understands that justice can be unsightly. Most people don’t want to know what happens behind prison walls.
This following list of sordid prison conditions, almost picked at random, provides an overview. It underscores the argument that no matter what most people say about appalling conditions, most feel prisoners should atone for their crimes. Thus, the state has an obligation to ensure that prison life is difficult.
La Sabaneta prison in Venezuela, originally built for 15,000, but now houses somewhere around 25,000. “Some prisoners are forced to sleep in hammocks strung up in narrow pipe-access corridors, while the corruption of the system allows inmates with more power and money to attain rooms with more space,” writes Ben Dutka in AskMen.com. “Combine this with an understaffed guard detail of about one guard to every 150 inmates, and you have a prison in desperate need of reforming.”
La Sabaneta doesn’t rate nearly as poorly as Carandiru Penitentiary in Brazil,which Dutka termed “hell on earth,” ranking it the worst prison in the world. Nearly one-in-five prisoners in the health wing presently are infected with HIV, and doctors don’t hand out anesthetics for surgical procedures.
In the United States, it is estimated that 4.5 percent of state and federal prisoners are victims of sexual assault. Prisoner rape is also commonplace in Kenya and Zanzibar, with young newcomers being the most popular targets.
In Argentina: “Up to five prisoners sleep on the floor, without mattresses, in four square metre cells,” reports Marcela Velante in Inter-Press Service. “They defecate in plastic bags and urinate in bottles. The corridors, littered with several days' worth of garbage, are often flooded by sewage.”
These horrors are not only wasted on adults. Young people are now experiencing them. In Namibia, a 12-year-old was sentenced to six months in prison for housebreaking and attempted theft. Advocates complain the facility is not equipped to deal with juveniles. More than 6,000 children in Palestine have been arrested since the second Intifada. In 2007 alone, 700 children younger than 18 were arrested, and 30 of them have been held without charge.
In many countries, it's the poor and powerless who make up a majority of prisoners. In Venezuela, the 50-year-old vagrants law, although unconstitutional, helps put “undesirables” behind bars by allowing police to arrest anyone criminally suspect. It’s not only a crime prevention tool, Christina Hoag argues in the New Internationalist, it’s a lucrative method for judges and police officers to earn kickbacks.
As a policy to counter violent radicalization, since Sept. 11, 2001, the French government has forcibly removed 71 foreign residents accused of having terrorist or extremist links. In a country where nearly half the prisoners have never been convicted of a crime, those deported may be the lucky ones. A 2000 expose of La Sante Prison in Paris found that inmates were so depressed they were eating rat poison or drain cleaner. (In 1999, 124 inmates took their lives, which is one of the highest rates in Europe.) Others fought off rats by placing shirts in the walls. They found it was no use fighting lice, which inhabited the mattresses. Inmates who slept four to a cramped cell were allowed only two showers a week. The grime allowed skin diseases to rapidly breed.
In the United States, an unsettling link exists between forced deportations and the growing influence of a Central American gang.
As crime goes up worldwide, societies have attempted to create equilibrium for containing law & order. This recipe seems to contain further seclusion, longer prison sentences and worsening prison conditions. It’s no wonder repeat offender rates continue to rise. The problem is, as societies fail to deal with its bulging prison population, one reality stares us in the face: One day, most prisoners will be getting out.
Brazil prison yard photo by Susanne Jesperson
Photo of Ushuaia Prison Corridor (in Argentina) by lrargerich