SECTION: News Pg. 3 Eugene Kane

LENGTH: 1259 words

HEADLINE: Opening a new prison is cause for tears, not cheers

BYLINE: EUGENE KANE

BODY:
"Beginning with a prison population of just under 200,000 in 1972, the number of inmates in U.S. prisons has increased by nearly one million, rising to almost 1.2 million by 1997.

"Along with the more than half-million inmates in local jails either awaiting trial or serving short sentences, a remarkable total of 1.7 million Americans are now behind bars." -- "Race to Incarcerate" by Marc Mauer (1999).

When they threw an open house for the new maximum-security prison in Boscobel a month ago, it was like a county fair came to town.

There were public tours of the facility, T-shirts with the prison's name sold as souvenirs, an almost carnival atmosphere as the rural Wisconsin community celebrated the arrival of a valued new neighbor. It was just one indication of the way some folks feel about prisons. Good places to have around, and a nice way to make money.

Marc Mauer doesn't see it that way. He regards prisons as vastly overrated ways to curb crime as well as ineffective repositories for vast numbers of minorities who probably wouldn't be behind bars if not for the color of their skin.

But Mauer, author of a new book about America's fascination with prisons, does understand why prisons are popular.

"This society has come to use incarceration as a method of dealing with social problems instead of meeting the problems head-on in a proactive fashion," said Mauer, assistant director of The Sentencing Project in Washington, D.C., and author of "Race to Incarcerate" from The New Press.

For 25 years, Mauer has led a movement to rethink U.S. incarceration policy, which he believes is basically nothing but the warehousing of large numbers of non-violent offenders, many of them poor minorities convicted of drug charges and other crimes tied to either poverty or addiction.

What he calls "America's great experiment in incarceration" has had a devastating effect on African-American and Latino communities by stealing away young males who represent future leaders, husbands and fathers and keeping them locked up through most of their prime years.

In many states (not Wisconsin), convicted felons lose the right to vote, which further depletes the political power of some minority communities. ("Ex-felons" in Wisconsin lose the right to vote while on probation and parole.)

Mauer understands that few people have much sympathy for inmates, and he doesn't argue about the need for punishment. "The vast majority of prisoners deserve to be punished; individual actions need to have consequences," Mauer said.

"But there has been an 'out of balance' response to the crime problem. The question that needs to be answered as a community, whether we want to take $1 million to build a prison, or use it for drug-treatment problems, good schools, Head Start programs.

"It's about whether we want to spend more money on the front end instead of the back end."

In his role as assistant director of The Sentencing Project, a non-profit group that promotes reform of the criminal justice system, Mauer's research discovered some revealing facts, most of which he included in "Race to Incarcerate."

He found the much ballyhooed "war on drugs" during the last two decades to be an expensive sham that did nothing to stop the flow of drugs, mainly imprisoning lower-level dealers in poor black and Latino neighborhoods even though many studies show approximately 70% of all illegal drugs are used by whites.

He examined the enormous racial disparity within the criminal justice system, demonstrated by a troubling statistic: An astounding 29% of black males born today can expect to be imprisoned at some time in their lifetime.

In many cases, their crimes will be no more serious than that of white counterparts who live in the suburbs, but law enforcement simply doesn't target young white males for arrest and prosecution.

He questioned why a rich and powerful nation like the U.S. rushed to imprison non-violent offenders at great cost instead of opting to fund needed drug treatment programs or create the kind of social institutions that could prevent many potential criminals from turning to crime in the first place.

Mauer understands prisons represent a financial windfall for communities, but he's more concerned with the growing trend by some states such as Wisconsin to ship inmates out of state to privately run prisons.

In "Race to Incarcerate," Mauer writes of receiving a phone call from someone asking for research assistance.

"My caller wanted to know how many inmates were in the prison systems of a number of different nations in order to determine the total size of the 'market.'

"The caller turned out to be a researcher for an investment firm, and the 'market' represented the potential for global investment and expansion of privately built and operated prisons."

In an interview last week at his D.C. office, Mauer expanded on the main ideas in "Race to Incarcerate."

"What I'm asking, what is the size of the group that truly needs to be locked up for the rest of us to feel safe? Because nobody fools themselves into thinking prisons rehabilitate anyone. Even among the most hard-line critics, you don't find anyone with a lot of faith that prison is going to turn anyone around for the better."

He calls for a reconsideration of drug policies that disproportionately target poor minorities for the kind of violations commonly found in the suburbs.

"If one of my kids (two teenage boys) had a drug problem, I wouldn't call the police or a prison warden to help him. I would find the best treatment possible, and if it didn't work, I'd find another one. That's the way it's done in the suburbs."

Low-income people with drug problems often have trouble finding suitable drug treatment facilities, Mauer said. "Many times, they can't get the help before their drug problem turns into a crime problem."

Mauer finds many of the measures adopted by politicians, such as "truth in sentencing" and "three strikes and you're out" legislation, politically safe ways to appease voters, but with little actual effect on reducing crime.

Voters would support finding more alternatives to incarceration, if presented with facts. "People are more receptive than politicians think," he said.

Having interviewed Mauer for stories in the past, I've always been impressed how this white criminal justice expert never hesitates to acknowledge the racial component of the way this country locks up people convicted of crime.

Negative stereotypes that plague blacks and Latinos will never be eliminated as long as white Americans can point to the prison population as confirmation of long-held beliefs that minorities commit more crimes than anyone else.

Mauer -- and I -- take an opposite view. As long as this country keeps building and making money off prisons, more and more black and brown prisoners will be sentenced to fill them up.

Supply and demand, if you will.

"Since 1980, no policy has contributed more to the incarceration of African-Americans than the 'war on drugs,' " Mauer wrote in "Race to Incarcerate." "To say this is not to deny the reality of drug abuse and the toll it has taken on African-American and other communities; but as a national policy, the drug war has exacerbated racial disparities in incarceration while failing to have any sustained impact on the drug problem."

When you consider what he's saying, what becomes clear is the opening of a new prison -- anywhere -- shouldn't be an excuse to hold a party.



LOAD-DATE: October 11, 1999