Jobs, not jails

The day Northwest Academy of Law hosted its annual Peace Summit, the apparent homicide of an inmate at the U.S. penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, was reported. The victim was found unresponsive in his cell just one day after arriving at the prison. He died days later at a hospital in Kansas City.

Jeremy Nemerov, who was sentenced to 6 ½ years for conspiracy to possess pseudoephedrine with intent to manufacture methamphetamine, was the son of the late Howard Nemerov, a former U.S. poet laureate who was also a distinguished professor at Washington University. He was white and entitled to all the rights and privileges pertaining thereto. But when it comes to profiteering and prisons, white privilege only gets you so much.

Nemerov’s death warns us that no one is safe from a  burgeoning system that would rather make money incarcerating its own than exhibit standards of ethics or deliver care for those in need.

No doubt, we’re all tired of crime. But until we grow tired of doing the same thing and getting the same results, we’ll continue to have more crime. We’ll continue to expend our scant public revenues to expand its jails and prisons, and we’ll continue to get the same results.

Statistics unequivocally prove that we cannot incarcerate ourselves to safety. If we could we’d be safer in our homes, our schools and on our streets today than we were before the rates of incarceration in the U.S. increased from 330,000 in the 1960s to 2.3 million today. If we could, the $70 billion spent each year to house our sons and daughters in cages would decrease, rather than grow. 

In St. Louis, as across the country, there’s talk of expanding our jail and prosecuting more crimes. Addressing overcrowded jails by providing more jobs or prosecuting fewer non-violent and victimless crimes is seldom considered.

It makes no sense that we continue to allow our legislators to spend our hard-earned money to expand prisons and jails and find more ways to line the pockets of profiteers. We condone unfettered corporate crime while over-incarcerating those in need of no more than meaningful jobs, social parity or drug or mental health treatment.

If our tax dollars are going to be spent to reduce crime, they should be spent on effective results. They should be spent to build up the community and to enhance the talents and intellect of those most at risk of offending. Whether $70,000 or $70 billion, that’s a lot to spend on something that doesn’t work. If we’re going to spend tax dollars to reduce crime, we need jobs not jails.

Christi Griffin is founder and president of The Ethics Project.