California's prison population problem

Move them to Mexico?

The state of California has some of the most overcrowded prisons in the US and to combat the problem, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has suggested the state could reduce prison spending by housing undocumented inmates in Mexican jails. However, with American prisons bursting at the seems, is this short term solution really viable?

America's penal statistics are quite shocking; in 2002, one in 142 Americans were in US prisons - that's a penal population of over 2 million. Not just that, but if you add those that were on probation or parole, then 7.2 million American adults were in the US prison system - that's about 2.4 percent of the US adult population or one in every 42 adults. In 2007, US prisons and jails held 2,299,116 - that's one in every 31 American adults, with another 7.3 million in the penal system.

With so many people incarcerated, massive burdens are being placed on the system with California having one of the most overcrowded and underfunded prison systems in the US. This problem literally burst last year when a riot in one prison forced authorities to develop a plan to free 40,000 of the 150,000 inmates being held within two years.

Shipped to Mexico

Speaking at a question and answer session, Governor Schwarzenegger believes he's found a solution, "I think we can do so much better in the prison system alone if we can go and take inmates - for instance, the 20,000 inmates that are illegal immigrants that are here - and get them to Mexico," Mr Schwarzenegger said.

"We pay them to build the prisons down in Mexico. And then we have those undocumented migrants down there in prison. It would half the costs to build the prison and run the prison," he said.

"We could save a billion dollars right there that could go into higher education."

He added that he believed allowing the private sector to become involved in running and managing prisons would also help cut costs.

However, Governor Schwarzenegger is missing something - why are all these people in prison in the first place? Why are approximately one in every 18 men in the United States behind bars or being monitored? And why are a greater percentage of the American population in some form of correctional control even though crime rates have declined by about 25 percent from 1988-2008?

The answer: The War on Drugs.

High costs of getting high

Whilst California might arguably be seen as a 'liberal state' despite having a Republican governor, the result of mandated sentences that came about during the 'war on drugs' has seen the US prison population quadrupling in the past 30 years. In comparison, sentences for offences such as violent crime and property crime have actually declined.

As a result of their drug/prison policy, the the United States has the highest documented per capita rate of incarceration of any country in the world.

A report released in February 2008 indicates that more than 738 per 100,000 adults in the United States are in prison. By comparison, the incarceration rate in England and Wales was 148 persons imprisoned per 100,000 residents; the rate for Norway was 66 inmates per 100,000 and the rate in New Zealand was 186 per 100,000.

With the US prison system costing the country $60 billion a year, with the average cost of incarceration per prisoner costing $23,876 per year, or $65.41 per day, perhaps instead of shipping the problem to Mexico, the state should look at how to reduce those numbers.

Graph from Wikipedia

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