Lisa Hickey, on why the prison system in America just doesn’t add up.
I answered the phone, and it was among the worst kind of news you can get. “Are you the family of Joy Hickey?” “Yes.” She was my mother-in-law. “I’m sorry to be telling you this. But it really doesn’t look like she will be alive too much longer. You should probably get down to the hospital as soon as possible.”
I tracked down my then-husband, and we drove. “I don’t understand it,” he kept saying. “We were just there. She seemed ok.” Joy had been in and out of hospitals for a few months, with congestive heart failure. We visited her daily; she was always alert and conscious. She made jokes with us, chatted up the nurses, smiled whenever we walked in the room, as she did again when we arrived back in the hospital.
We tracked down her doctor and asked him to explain. “She doesn’t seem any different,” we implored. “How can you tell?” The doctor tried to explain as compassionately as possible. “It’s her numbers,” he said levelly. “Every number we measure is in decline. It means her entire system is shutting down. That’s how we know. That’s the only way we know. We look at the numbers.” Mark and I were still in disbelief, still telling Joy stories and watching her eyes light up at our stupid jokes, when the monitors went off, her blood pressure plummeted, and she slipped peaceably into death.
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The numbers.
Everyone knows the financial health of a business is measured in the numbers, the reports to the stockholders, the complex series of analytics that determine how long it can stay alive. In some ways, we digitize everything; we step on scales and measure blood pressure in supermarkets. Our students are measured in SAT scores and schools themselves are given numerical rankings with state-wide tests to try to understand the strength of the heartbeat of our educational system. Numbers affect everything we do—what we eat and what we wear, from the size of a pair of pants to calories-per-ounce in a baked potato. The batting averages, our age, and the number of minutes that tick past us in a day. Numbers are such part of our life that we don’t even realize we are measuring when we are measuring.
Understanding how the system of numbers works is our guide to how to navigate the world.
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So when it comes to looking at the state of our prison system, I want to look at the numbers. And surely, somewhere in there is the answer to this question: “How do we, as a society, measure bad-ness?”
Why are we not able to measure wrongdoing in the same way we measure intelligence? Why aren’t we better at quantifying it? And why, why, when we dole out punishments, are the numbers so blatantly inconsistent? For the same crime, you might get 30 days, you might get 10 years, you might get executed, or you might walk off scot-free. Why does our otherwise precise system of measurement suddenly fail us, where, it might be argued, it matters most? If numbers can tell us whether someone is going to live or die, pass or fail, be rich or poor, why can’t they give us a fair and equitable measurement of how a person will be punished when he or she commits a crime?
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I spent most of my life in Boston, where, on any given street, the pedestrians, cars, and bicycles have a free-for-all. People would jaywalk, pay no attention to walk signs, and cross whenever there was an opening in traffic.
On a visit to California, my tendency was to do the same thing. On a street corner with no cars are coming, I took a step down from the curb. “Wait” my friend says, pulling me back onto the sidewalk. “It’s not a walk light.” Suddenly I am aware that there’s a whole group of people also waiting on the curb, although it’s obvious the coast is clear. I glance at the “Don’t Walk” sign, the crowd on the sidewalk, and my friend. “How did you get the entire state of California to obey the walk signal?” I asked in awe.
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Anyone who has spent a decade or more in New York City has seen a similar phenomenon with the “Don’t Block The Box” campaign. When I was growing up just outside the city, gridlock was rampant. I remember seeing commercial after commercial on the television, a public service campaign—overhead shots of the city streets completely clogged, an ambulance unable to get through. From the television set came the sound of a heart monitor fading out, as if the patient had died because the ambulance couldn’t get through an intersection.
“What if the person in the ambulance was your son, your daughter, your mother, your father? You?”
But empathy didn’t do nearly as much to solve the problem of gridlock on the streets of NYC as did a couple of buckets of white paint and a few signs that said “Don’t block the box. FINE + 2 points.” Suddenly, wherever you went, it became crystal clear what you couldn’t do, and exactly what would happen if you did. When I came back to NYC for the first time after a few years, it appeared as if the gridlock problem had been magically solved.
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The way that New York City and Los Angeles got people to obey the law was to make the math crystal clear. You block the box, you get a ticket. Two points on your insurance plus $110. There’s no appealing to a jury. There’s no difference in the ticket amount if you are black, white, rich, poor, driving a Dodge or a Cadillac. The math is clear. You calculate the risk of breaking the law, and you instantaneously decide it’s not worth it.
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Nobody has asked me to solve the prison problem in America, and if asked, I’d be just as daunted by the prospect as the next person. But if asked how I would think about it, I would do this: I would start by making sure that punishments are fair, just, and equal. I would look at how we use numbers to measure everything — and figure out why we can’t really quantify anything from what a crime really is to how long someone should be locked up for committing one. And I would look at how you can get large groups of people to change their behavior.
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One of the reasons I joined the throngs of people who were so upset by the “Too Pretty for Math” t-shirts was not just because of the implication that girls weren’t smart enough for math. It was because of the implication that if you were pretty enough, you didn’t need to understand the omnipresent systems of numbers that we all use to navigate the world.
Math is important not just as a system of measurement. It allows you to turn complicated situations and problems into clear, simple, and logical steps. It’s not a class you need to take in school that you’ll never use again. It’s a way to break down information in a way that’s uniform, consistent and systematic.
Maybe the real outrage over the “Too Pretty For Math” shouldn’t be in the gender wars department. The real outrage should be that there’s a whole group of people in our society that ends up being “Too Poor For Math.” Where are those t-shirts? Where is that protest?
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To change our prison system, we should start with two things: 1) Consistent, mathematically sound ways of sentencing so the consequences of illegal actions are clear and fair. 2) A way for people at the lowest ends of our economic spectrum to see that the math can actually work for them also.
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Let’s go back to New York City for a second.
If you look at the numbers behind income disparity, you’ll find that the “1%ers”, the ones who took over 40% of the income in New York, are comprised of about 34,000 households. On the other end of that spectrum are those classified by the federal government as living in “deep poverty”—a 4-person family with an income of $10,500 or less. The number of people in New York City living at that level is 900,000, almost 11% of the population.
For just one minute, put yourself in the place of someone who is one of those 900,000. You are a man, a boy, a young adult or a teenager. You’re a provider, you’re helpful, you care about your family. You look at your neighborhood and you can easily count—count the hundreds of people around you, who every day are struggling for the very essence of survival. If you are a child in school, you follow the ongoing subtraction of fellow students as they drop out one by one. You understand intuitively, or maybe you were told, that almost 30% will drop out of high school. The chances of you or one of your friends going to college is less than 8%. You know enough math to get those odds. You sit on a swing set and calculate the time you would need to run from the playground to a safe place if violence broke out. What would be the speed needed to outrun a bullet? You measure the hours, or maybe it’s days, or months, or years until your father comes home. You do a countdown of your siblings, calculate how much they would need just for food or clothing, and wonder just what is that numerical figure that would allow you to take care of them? How much would be enough? Who calculates that poverty line and where exactly are you on that line dance?
Then you do the math on the opposite end of the spectrum. There are the really rich—the inaccessible ones, the ones staring at you on the glossy pages of the magazine. You know your chances of becoming one of them are astronomical. Astronomical odds: a mathematical concept you can understand. But then there are the people in your neighborhood—the guys with the fancy cars and nice clothes and a swagger in their walk—who have what looks like a good job. You calculate the odds of getting there. There’s a position for drug runner open. Your sister is hungry.
And so you sit there and do the math.
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Photo by flickingerbrad / flickr
About Lisa Hickey
Lisa, so true. There has always been an inverse relationship between desperation and standards. The same can be seen in college students doing sex work to pay off loans or avoid taking them. They do the math. What a mess so many of us are in. Of course there are many, many factors at play, but I must say this: Thank you, Wall Street.
Lisa, you are incredibly on-point. The failure to teach math concepts adequately in our school systems has many implications, especially among the lower income areas of our society. So if you ever get a campaign started against ‘Too Poor for Math’, you can count me in!
Lisa,
What you’re asking is impossible. And frankly, I’m glad it’s impossible.
Every circumstance is different. No two murders are the same. And thankfully our legal system takes that into account. A hit-and-run driver who had no idea he/she hit anyone might get a lesser sentence because it wasn’t malicious. Just as premeditation carries a heavier sentence. You could have two people committing the same crime (in this case the killing of another human being), and by your rationale their punishments should be mathematically the same? That’s just not right.
Now I’ll grant you, sometimes the system fails us.
Case in point, I covered a hit-and-run death where the woman driving struck and killed a teenager on New Year’s Eve. It was on a back road and no one was around, so she left. The police said she had been drinking at an establishment earlier, but we’ll never know if she was legally drunk. During the investigation, her mother allegedly lied to a grand jury and was indicted for doing so. The crazy part is, the mother faces a maximum sentence of 20 years for lying to the grand jury, but the woman who may have knowingly killed a teenager can only get a maximum of 10 years if convicted.
So I understand, it’s not perfect. But what other legal system in the world would you rather live under? I can’t think of one. And I’d much rather have a system that takes mitigating factors into consideration instead of offering up automatic sentences for crimes.
I get what you’re saying, but I still think “mitigating circumstances” should be standardized. There are complex algorithmic equations for everything. Why should we count on “the luck of the draw” — i.e. depending on what judge, jury or lawyer we have — that could give a potential swing of years of imprisonment? That could make the difference in actually rehabilitating someone or breaking them forever. And guaranteed the “mitigating circumstances” are doled out based, at least in part, on race and gender.
The problem with trying to fit everything into an algorithm is that there are too many unknowns as of yet in society. Also, we have to account for why the person is committing the crime as well as when they’ll commit them. Are these people committing the crime because of desperation, or are they habitual criminals? There are correlates related to crime, who how and why it’s committed. However, there are still as many holes as there are solid answers. Hell, competing theories on who will commit crime or who will be repeat offenders exist with scientific backing for both.
Getting to your end point: Gender and race play a major role in who gets sentenced for what. I agree that we need to take a good hard look at how people are punished and why. However, if we fail to see the context of the action, we fail to see the action at all.
Complex algebra doesn’t cut it. Each crime and criminal isn’t a recombination of known factors, they’re unique. Unique instances can’t be standardised.
I think everyone agrees that theres major issues with some people being given higher sentences when they should have recieved lower and some lower when they should have recieved higher. But removing judgement and oversight from the equation wouldn’t correct injustices, it’d exacerbate them.
I see the system fail all the time. I am a sober addict (I now work counseling other addicts) so I know dozens of people in prison for drug related crimes (possession and sales). Let me also add that every dealer I’ve ever known (probably at least 100 people) were not rich or even well off- they were dealing to support their habit, not buy a mercedes. It still doesn’t make it right, but many people automatically think dealers live these lavish lifestyles.
Rapists and child molesters regularly get less than a year in jail in my state. Someone with a first time drug sales charge (of even one solitary pill) gets and automatic 2-5 years, minimum. WTF? That makes no sense to me. It has also been proven that sending these people to jail ends up making them worse. The so-called “rehab” programs within the jail are a joke. You can’t be open to therapy if you’re constantly worried about someone beating the ever living shit out of you.
Sending drug offenders to rehab instead of jail saves a boat load of money and reduces the rate of offending again. Plain and simple. Yet most states are not doing this. It makes no sense to me. Wait, it does- our prisons are becoming corporate entities. Less prisoners means less money. The whole situation pisses me off beyond belief. Oh, also- a woman drunk driving killed two of my friends by running a stop sign. She served 8 months.
I think the justice system in the Netherlands is much better.
http://vorige.nrc.nl/international/article2246821.ece/Netherlands_to_close_prisons_for_lack_of_criminals
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/28/netherlands-prisons-closi_n_208561.html
I like that you’re drawing attention to some of the way the justice system is broke (bahaha, pun intended, I’m so witty) – for example, how those living in poverty end up getting caught up in prisons more than the rich. However, the cost/benefit analysis that you are suggesting is an old idea (19thc) and we’ve learned that making judicial policy on economic theory is limited at best. What I mean is, the principle of deterrence is based on this – if we have just enough punishment than we’ll specifically scare the individual offender and society in general from committing future offences. Doesn’t work. An inverse rel’p has been discovered — ie. states like California, which have harsh penalties (ie. death) have more violent communities.
Further, I agree with the comment above that it is not helpful to quantify sentences: to make a sentencing chart that a judge looks at and doles out “equal” sentences based upon. I prefer to take mitigating factors into account – otherwise the system won’t be fair.
I do want more numbers discussions though. Ones oriented around spending less on prisons and more on rehabilitative, preventive and restorative justice options.
But, that’s just my 2 cents from here in Canada, where the gov’t seems bent on getting tough on crime.
cheers.
Am totally with you on “spending less on prisons and more on rehabilitative, preventive and restorative justice options.” That is fodder for another post. Please feel free to write a post and contribute further to the discussion if you’d like.
Sure! I’ll give this some thought. cheers.
I wrote a whole paper on rehab vs. prison. It’s something I feel passionately about, being an addict. The whole thing angers me. We spend 50 billion a year on the War on Drugs yet only 2% of that goes to rehabilitative services. No wonder this so called war is failing. We are not doing a single thing to fix the problem. Most addicts need help and most addicts cannot afford help, outside of AA and NA, which have their own issues.
Sending drug offenders to rehab instead of prison is cheaper and it lowers the re-offense rate. It seems like a no brainer.
Well this is a bit of a tangent…but my father was a state narcotics officer for something like 10 years, and he’ll tell you he thinks the “War on Drugs” is a complete waste. It’s why he changed jobs. He felt like he wasn’t doing anything but arresting the same people and raiding the same meth labs/pot gardens/etc.
The same could be said for a lot of criminal behavior. Take gangs, for example…it’s the same people getting arrested over and over. And all the harsher punishment for gang-related-crimes doesn’t fix anything…it just exacerbates the problem.
I don’t think bringing it all back around to the numbers will fix everything. Like a few people have pointed out, crimes and criminals are all unique in some way. I definitely agree that it needs to be redone so that it’s a lot fairer (especially with regards to ethnicity and gender). We’re using a very out of date system.
“The real outrage should be that there’s a whole group of people in our society that ends up being “Too Poor For Math.” Where are those t-shirts? Where is that protest?”
Exactly. Let us focus on those who are in real need, regardless of gender or race. Our society is as strong as its weakest link(s). Pull up the bottom and the entire foundation is strengthened.
The weakness of the family unit, economic hopelessness and desperation are inextricably linked. Every urban boy living in poverty without a solid, stable father in the home has a higher probability of ending up yet another statistic.
Social stability and economic opportunity (which is closely tied to education; hence the need to help boys especially) are two of the keys. To be very un-PC, the further people get away from any sense of moral values, the worse social problems become. It’s not PC to talk about morals, but the absence of them is part of the problem at the root of this and many other social ills.
@Daddy Files, @Judeh,
I believe you are missing the point. Also, the fact that our system isn’t as bad in comparison discounts the fact it is often unfair, out of balance, and that we all deserve better.
Did you ever see the tv series “numb3rs”? Math genius helps big brother in the FBI solve super complex cases. The stories were fictional ,though often based on real events, but the math is real.
It is a statistical reality that the same crime committed in the same place often yields a different sentence. This difference is predictable along clearly definable levels of economic status and certainly follows unscientific (read:social biased) notions of race.
For instance, it is well known that the death penalty: has had no measurable statistical impact on homicide rates, has been proven to execute the innocent, is far more expensive to prosecute than no-parole life sentences, and is applied disproportionately against historically marginalized populations. By every logical measurable standard it is a global policy disaster that persists solely through irrational notions of revenge and deterrence.
The way I understand, Lisa is arguing for the application of a more fluid quantitative analysis that attenuates arbitrary judgments based solely on qualitative (read: mitigating) factors that are applied unequally. No one is suggesting that mitigating factors be ignored in favor of this analysis. I think this also assumes, correctly, that our judicial system is an intractable, antiquated and overwhelmed system.
Mitigating factors, In fact, can easily be cast in statistical trends that would help define and quantify the differences so that an objective weight could be applied across demographics and venue. Offenses could be scored, like the law itself, by precedent and within the smallest similarities. This is not a chart of mandatory minimums that has historically tied the hands of justices and blatantly targeted minorities (re: crack cocaine and African American men). This is a scientific analysis of trends in law making and the fair application of criminal justice.
There must be consequences that are as clear as the reasons why society is enforcing the law. This is a tool that should be in the hands of every sentencing body at every level. Again, it is this very clarity that keeps drivers out of the intersection, for example, regardless of socio-economic status.
However, the math that I think was missed in this post: $200 per prisoner per day.
This number is a benchmark I have often seen in discussions of prison and immigration reform. There is a corporate prison-industrial complex that lobbies for tougher sentencing in all sectors because of how much they profit on the backs of taxpayers.
In my opinion, anyone who suggests that our privatized prison system doesn’t have a profit motive for incarceration is, at best, disingenuous or obtuse.
@Eloy – I appreciate your comments, as they help me understand better a mathematical approach that accounts for inequality and persistent injustice. You’re right, I think I was missing the point and took the argument down a path thinking that it failed to acknowledge and critically evaluate significant qualitative factors. I wonder if anyone has created some sort of model to test run this? Are you aware of any research in this area? cheers.
So…
You write down an entire article about math and numbers, part of one paragraph about the prisons; and call that an article about the prison population?
Without a single bit of an effort as to examining the problem?
Like, oh, yeah, massive misandry versus looking at women like saints; so men get sentenced far far higher, while women get off? (By the way, numbers aren’t going to help you solve that problem.)
Or for that matter; wasting money on massive campaigns to imprison people who use drugs that aren’t deemed “ok” by the corporations since they don’t sell them – oh, sorry, I mean government and medical doctors. Money flushed down the toilet since it doesn’t work, and it’s a practice that hurts nobody but the user. And doesn’t “freedom” cover that one? Nobody is dumb enough to demand nicotine and alcohol is made illegal.
Or for that matter the ridiculous notion of women (and men, but especially women) not being allowed to choose how to use their bodies in order to pay the bills. Also known as prostitution. Unless of course a camera is running, then you’re not a prostitute, then you’re an actress. Compound this with the idiocy of throwing the men who make use if prostitutes longer in jail then the actual prostitutes. That’s like throwing a drug user in jail longer than the person selling the drugs.
I can see both sides of this issue. However, one other argument in favor of what Lisa is saying is a recent NY Times article on the concept of ‘decision fatigue’ – http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-from-decision-fatigue.html?pagewanted=all
What the article basically states is that the more decisions someone has to make, the more shortcuts they take in making those decisions. Which has huge implications in how a judge/jury determines sentencing.
Maybe the ideal system would be an algorithm, with limited sentencing flexibility for exceptions on other side? And say, if the judge/jury feels that the verdict should fall outside that spectrum, some additional process would have to occur to approve that?
“Maybe the ideal system would be an algorithm, with limited sentencing flexibility for exceptions on other side?”
Isn’t this the case? It certainly is in Ireland. Minimum and maxmum sentences are usually written into the law itself. As for statistics like men being convicted more than women, the only way to solve that is to correct society’s prejudice, which can’t be fixed by numbers.
I didn’t understand this topic. Anything is clear here!!!!
Numbers are the Supreme Court of science. However Godel proved that we may not prove everything. There are Physics Foibles!!
Hi Lisa – Can’t help but do the math on this one and my numbers come hard up against a Prisons for Profit model of justice in our clever, greedy, capitalist gone wild society. Somewhere we lost our way and have yet to return to sanity. I’m never going to argue that making a profit is a bad thing, it’s not, BUT when making a profit isn’t tempered by a social conscience, we end up with bad math. To make the current model work it would be necessary to make rehab more profitable than prison. Greed creates the problem. Greed will solve the problem. It’s a matter of application right?