A WP article on the front page today detailed a report released Thursday that found that not only is the US at an all-time high in the percentage of people we incarcerate, but we also lead the nation, both in numbers and percentages, in incarceration.  More than 2.3 million people are behind bars, 1/100th of our population. 

The report attributes the increase to stricter laws.  The report also presents some statistics on more effective, and cheaper, alternatives.  For instance, it suggests that for some non-violent offenders, community supervision is better option.  The co-author of the report also suggests that even though imprisoning often reduces crime, other changes, such as in unemployment rate, wages and the ratio of police officers to residents may be more influential. 

There was one statistic I found semi-misleading.  At first it alarmed me when I read that five states (Vermont, Michigan, Oregon, Connecticut and Delaware) now spend as much or more on corrections as on higher education.  My first thought was “shouldn’t we be spending more to invest in people rather than punish them?  This is a very pessimistic approach.”

But then I realized the statistic compared it to higher education.  Maybe we actually are investing more in people than we spend to punish them.  I think a more appropriate statistic would include money we spend on all education.  The statistic wouldn’t sound as persuasive, but I think just comparing to higher education paints a very different picture that is not reality. 

So I went to the original full report.  I found that there actually was a really good reason to compare spending on higher education and corrections – they represent “a roughly comparable portion of state expenditures” and both are funded almost entirely by state funds rather than federal funds.  Other than higher education, the report also mentioned pre-k funding.  However, this was tricky because it did not represent a similar portion of state spending.  In 2007, states collectively spent $44 billion on incarceration and $4.8 billion on pre-k education.  There were no statistics for spending between pre-k and higher. 

That said, I still think it’s sad that these five states spend as much or more on corrections as higher education.  Opening up opportunities for everyone would be a much more effective means of reducing crime than our over reliance on incarceration and moving away from this trend is very important. 

So what do we do?  Well, I think the report makes it very clear that we need to keep considering alternatives to incarceration.  Also, I think the way to go is to invest in people by spending money on education and working on decreasing unemployment.