"And the Answer is... Prison! What Was the Question?" An Interview with Judy Greene
August 31, 2005 - 1:18pm
We took some time to talk about “special prisons” with Judy Greene. Judy Greene is a principal researcher with Justice Strategies, based in New York. Judy has 35 years of experience researching crime and the corrections industry. She agreed to talk with us by phone from her office in New York about prison expansion around the country, and how these new “special prisons” fit in.
Justice Matters: One of the reasons we wanted to speak with you is your knowledge about how privatization has affected corrections policy. Private prisons are of course, disturbing, but privatization has changed the way prisons operate, period. Is there a connection between privatization and this move to promote new “special prisons?”
J Greene: Well, one of the ways that private prisons have damaged this country is that now there is an entrepreneurial spirit – a marketing culture – connected to prison management where there was not before. So now even public prison managers are running their prisons with a for-profit model, comparing themselves to private companies. They’re asking questions like: Who can run this the cheapest? What’s the next market need? What problem is there that prison can solve? How can we sell our correctional services?
JM: And so we see situations like in Montana right now, where the Department of Corrections is accepting bids for “a special prison” with everything up for grabs – including who will be confined there, how many people, and what will make it “special.”
J Greene: Yes, in Montana, the process they’re using is like the way you play that game show, Jeopardy. Someone gives you the answer and you say what the question is. They’re saying, “Well, the answer is prison. Tell us what the problem is.” Another strategy is to identify a crisis and then present prison as the solution, which is more common.
JM: Right, in Montana, we don’t know for sure what kind of proposals they’re going to get, but it’s possible that methamphetamine will figure in. Meth isn’t new, but it’s being presented as a crisis… And drug addiction is a real problem. So, is a “special meth prison” preferable to community-based treatment? Can we argue for one over the other?
J Greene: Well, there is not enough research being done to compare treatment in prison with addiction treatment provided in the community. There are various types of treatment that work, we know that. And there is research showing that treatment in prison therapeutic communities here in New York has been effective. But the research on effectiveness goes on as if these two situations are not related. Now, there are ways the treatment picture is brighter on the outside…
A major aspect of drug treatment is the behavioral changes that people are making. People learn how to better manage the things that trigger their addiction in the real world. And they can practice that more effectively in the community. Drugs aren’t available in prison in the same way they are on the outside. Not to mention that in a security-oriented environment like prison, some interventions are not available or appropriate. We know that treatment in the community makes more sense.
But, one of the reasons that judges still sentence people with addictions to prison is the idea that it’s the only place to get them into treatment. We’ve done some research in Wisconsin in which we asked judges what they were seeing and doing. Some said that they were sentencing people to longer prison terms because – with long waiting lists for prison programs – they believed it was the best way to make sure that they would get treatment. They overestimate how much addiction treatment is available in prison. But they were supportive of wrap-around services that can be offered in the community, and they emphasized that people need to be prepared for gainful employment.
JM: Here at WPP we support community-based options: solving problems in the community instead of just making people disappear by sending them to prison. Is the call for special prisons showing that people are so used to prisons now they want every “flavor” imaginable, or this is a way to make prison construction seem like it’s something new because there’s a fatigue with plain-old prisons?
J Greene: Yes, it really does seem that a lot of people are tired of the idea ‘we need more prisons because the problem is crime.’ After all, they can see that there is still crime, or that their neighbors in the next state have seen the same changes in crime without prison expansion.
Prison expansion takes on a life of its own… including political pressures. It’s not just the Corrections Departments pushing. People say ‘well, that county got one – what about us?’ because prisons offer the lure of jobs. You’ve got governors who want to throw a prison at every county they can find and promote it as an economic boom.
Once you build the prison machine the wheels keep turning… what’s turning the wheels of prison expansion are financial interests. Before the corrections officers’ union is even thinking about more members, (which means more dues), you’ve got bankers, bond lawyers, architects, construction companies and their subcontractors. And all the services you can “outsource” to vendors once a prison is operating: companies that sell medical services, sell the food, supply the canteen products.
JM: Speaking of financial interests, for years the financial crisis in many states was part of the call to slow down prison expansion. As fewer states are in a budget crisis, are we going to hear more about these special prisons? Where do you think prison expansion is headed?
J Greene: Well, yes, there are some states that are now in less of a budget crisis. Florida, for example, which is experiencing a home construction boom and steady state revenue from all those construction workers paying taxes. Florida has authorized thousands of new prison beds, both public and private, and has even funded a private sex offender facility (another type of ‘special prison’) to keep people locked up after their prison sentences have been served.
Even once a budget crisis has passed, if you’re spending on new prisons, something else is taking a cut. All these years, during the crises, other parts of state budgets had to take deep cuts…. there’s a big question about whether we’re ever going to undo the damage done by budget cuts. I mean, who really needs the money? If we spend it on prisons, who’s not going to be getting it who needs it?
And we also need to come back to some of the basic problems with prisons – the racial injustice of the system. In Connecticut there’s a growing statewide army of grassroots people opposed to prison expansion, and they’re picking up speed. With Connecticut ranked number one for racial disparity in state incarceration rates, state officials have begun to see that sentencing policy reform is a critical issue for those working for racial justice. And it’s working: a state that was at the top of the prison population growth list just three years ago is now “downsizing,” with thousands fewer people in prison.
The state budget crisis has caused a lot of people around the country to question the idea that we can just keep on expanding the prison system. The most important work now is to challenge the notion that prisons are the answer to all our social and economic problems.
