South Carolina Criminal Defense Blog

The Loeben prison in Austria is an experiment in corrections that deserves attention. It is a prison, with barbed wire and locked gates like any other, full of criminals who are serving time, and yet within are painted walls, rooms with kitchens and balconies, all of the amenities of home. Beneath the concrete on the razor wire in the yard is carved "a line from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (which the United States signed and ratified) that reads: 'All persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person.'"

Everybody says this, or something like it: I guess crime does pay, after all. Or, That’s bigger than my apartment. (New Yorkers, in particular, tend to take this route.) Or, Maybe I should move to Austria and rob a couple of banks. It’s a reflex, and perfectly understandable, though it’s also foolish and untrue — about as sensible as looking at a new hospital wing and saying, Gee, I wish I had cancer.

Contrast this with a recent news story of a woman's death in Arizona, where she was placed in an outside holding pen with a chain-link-fence-roof in 108 degree heat. She was charged with prostitution, and received a death sentence.

In the United States, which has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world, we do not coddle criminals. Our jails and prisons are designed to make their inhabitants suffer and there is no question about it. Inmates in our local jail in Horry County sleep sometimes 8 to a cell, on the floor with a thin mattress. In our jails and prisons you will not see private toilets or showers, and the motif is steel bars and concrete blocks. Spider bites and resulting infections have been a problem in several South Carolina jails. Treating inmates with dignity is not an objective of most guards.

Some will say that the purpose for the abysmal conditions of our jails and prisons is deterrence - certainly, people do not want to go to them, therefore they will be less likely to commit crimes, right? Except this reasoning makes no logical sense - most people who commit crimes are not stopping to consider the consequences at the moment the crime is committed. Most crimes are not planned with careful forethought. As noted in the above article, crimes are committed most often 1) by persons in the heat of the moment who do not and perhaps cannot stop to consider the consequences; and 2) by persons who, even if they do stop and consider, do not care what the consequence may be.

Forcing convicted criminals to live in squalor, to suffer daily, and treating them like animals does not encourage them to live a better life when they are released from prison. It hardens a person, it can change a person, and, rather than decreasing recidivism, it encourages recidivism because once the person is released this is all that they know and what they are used to.

Is it possible that the punishment that is meted out in our prisons and the demeaning attitude of many guards is the result of a desire to be cruel to people? By nature, many people have a piece of themselves that is cruel and that enjoys hurting others - it is not only criminals with this trait, but politicians, prosecutors, attorneys, police, mothers, school teachers, and prison guards. Is it possible that, like some criminals, some people in positions of power enjoy hurting others, but they have learned how to do it legally?

If our current system of punishment does not have any measurable effect on deterrence or recidivism, why do we continue to build more prisons and do more of the same?