I found this piece, end of last week, intriguing:
It sounds like a radical idea: Stop incarcerating women, and close down women’s prisons. But in Britain, there is a growing movement, sponsored by a peer in the House of Lords, to do just that.
The argument is actually quite straightforward: There are far fewer women in prison than men to start with — women make up just 7 percent of the prison population. This means that these women are disproportionately affected by a system designed for men….
Essentially, the case for closing women’s prisons is the same as the case for imprisoning fewer men. It is the case against the prison industrial complex and for community-based treatment where it works better than incarceration. But there is evidence that prison harms women more than men, so why not start there?
Any examination of the women who are in U.S. prisons reveals that the majority are nonviolent offenders with poor education, little employment experience and multiple histories of abuse from childhood through adulthood. Women are also more likely than men to have children who rely on them for support — 147,000 American children have mothers in prison….
I don’t know how practical the idea is, but I like that somebody’s thinking about it. We lock up way too many people in this country, period. I don’t think anyone who is not a danger to others needs to be incarcerated; it serves little useful purpose.
Of course, a certain percentage of male inmates are a danger; but very, very few women are. They’re more likely to be in for writing bad checks than for armed robbery.
So, let’s explore this…
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“women make up just 7 percent of the prison population. This means that these women are disproportionately affected by a system designed for men….”
That makes no sense at all. Just because men are incarcerated at a higher rate does not mean that the criminal justice system is “designed for men”. That’s absurd. It’s designed for criminals. Now, I’m open to the considering the argument that we should lower sentencing for non-violent offenders across the board, but to make it based on the sex of the offender is absolutely ridiculous to me.
“Any examination of the women who are in U.S. prisons reveals that the majority are nonviolent offenders with poor education, little employment experience and multiple histories of abuse from childhood through adulthood.”
I’m fairly sure that would be the same result if you performed an examination of MEN in US prisons, so I’m not sure what that proves.
To go relate this back to the “What Now” post for the GOP Congress, what do you think Obama would do with a bill that decriminalizes marijuana at the federal level if Congress gave him that? I think he’d have to sign it, right?
It would be a great common ground issue. States are already starting to decriminalize it, and it’s only a matter of time before more do. A great pro-Federalism position would be to let each state decide what it’s marijuana laws will be. I really think you could get Tea Party types to go along with decriminalizing marijuana on the federal level. It’s an argument they’d be receptive to.
Maybe Utah would keep marijuana illegal, but California could make it totally legal. Either way, the federal government will stay out of it, and you’ll have less non-violent offenders incarcerated.
Oh, and you could return the drinking age back to 18 on the same idea. Let each state decide if they want to keep it. Get rid of the 1980’s Elizabeth Dole idea that you have to keep the age at 21 to get highway funds. Would Obama veto that?
Who’s with me?
I’m with you.. but I think you should go further and decriminalize all drugs. Nobody – NOBODY – should ever see the inside of a jail cell for using drugs.
“They’re more likely to be in for writing bad checks than for armed robbery.”
What punishment would be applied for writing a bad check if not jail time? What would be severe enough to dissuade the offender from doing it again and again? Stealing is a crime no matter how you look at it and should be punished harshly.
Anyway, I’m much more concerned about the good checks my wife writes than the bad ones written by any other woman
In general, I’d be fine to give Judges more discretion at sentencing. Maybe a first time offense for something like writing a bad check shouldn’t get you prison time. But if you turn into Frank Abagnale, Jr., maybe we should start thinking about a little time in the clink.
“Women are also more likely than men to have children who rely on them for support”.
It is absurdities like this statement, revelatory of our perpetuation as a society of this ill-considered line of thinking, that make me wonder what real hope there is for children of non-intact families? This goes way beyond prison populations.
We as a society do a terrible job of promoting fatherhood outside of nuclear marriages – and it starts with the language we use. More kids than not now suffer because of this paradigm.
“We as a society do a terrible job of promoting fatherhood outside of nuclear marriages”
Am I reading that incorrectly? We should be PROMOTING fatherhood outside of nuclear marriages? do you mean providing support for fathers who choose not to marry the mother of their children? or are you talking about fathers of children of divorce? Because I think the former is a problem that should be fixed, not promoted. An absent father may lead to a mother making bad choices to provide for her kids.
I took what Mark said in a different context…
I don’t know if you’re familiar with the SC Center for Fathers and Families. It’s a ministry of the Sisters of Charity Foundation, and is the umbrella organization for six programs around the state.
They’re about getting noncustodial Dads back in touch with their kids, to make them a positive presence rather than an absence in the children’s lives. The program takes Dads who are in trouble over child support, helps them get decent jobs and get right with the law, and helps them reconnect with their children so they don’t grow up fatherless.
It’s a client of ours at ADCO…
Sounds like a worthy endeavor… however, we should be promoting the fact that having children out of wedlock, especially when poor, is a very bad idea. If we spent more on the cause, we wouldn’t have to spend so much on trying to fix it afterward.
More like that. It’s good for the fathers and the kids – and society to have people promote this bond & responsibility. I imagine it is actually easier to be a hardened criminal if everyone, including the justice system, is telling you you are no longer part of the child’s life. Talk about counter-productive.
Some parents don’t want to be part of the lives of their children.
I’d like to dream that isn’t true- but I know it is true.
True, though true of both fathers and mothers. And some kids just suck themselves regardless of the quality of their parenting.
That does not mean, however, that large numbers of families could not be helped by having more thoughtful public/judicial policies and more discussion of societal attitudes and perceptions that reinforce negative child-rearing outcomes.
Sorry, Mark, but I’m still not following you. You make it sound like it’s society’s fault that there are fathers who don’t take responsibility for their children. When a guy gets a woman pregnant, he should have some basic understanding that there is a responsibility that goes along with that.
True, we seem to be talking of apples and oranges.
Can you explain what this means?
“perceptions that reinforce negative child-rearing outcomes.”
What perceptions? by whom?
I’m trying to grasp what the perceptions are that are incorrect when a father doesn’t pay child support or take an active role in his kid’s life? Whatever perceptions there are of these “fathers” is a result of their behavior.
Doug, you might see it differently if you talked with Pat Littlejohn at Fathers and Families. She has a very passionately held view on this subject. Her attitude is that society, for very good reasons, has done a great deal over the years to provide support to single moms with the difficulties they face. But along the way, we’ve discouraged and even demonized the fathers, with the “deadbeat dad” image.
Men who have been thus labeled tend to believe what is said about them and see themselves as unworthy to play fatherly roles, or they just arrive at the conclusion that everybody hates them, so the hell with everybody, and they disengage.
You have this picture in your mind of the happy-go-lucky guy who goes from woman to woman like a bee among flowers, caring nothing for the children that result. Reality is more complicated. There probably is no TYPICAL situation, in keeping with Tolstoy’s observatino that “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
But read this story, which I wrote for the Sisters of Charity annual report, and you get one glimpse of the experience of one man in the programs…
“or they just arrive at the conclusion that everybody hates them, so the hell with everybody, and they disengage.”
Oh, come on. There may be some men who are really trying hard to have a relationship with their kids but their are far more who don’t.
Boo hoo… it’s SO HARD to be a father and people are MEAN to me because I had a kid with a woman I didn’t plan to marry in the first place and didn’t have a job that would allow me to support the child anyway. Don’t they understand that I want to be there changing diapers, and doing late night feedings, and teaching my kids how to read, and going to parent-teacher conferences, and playing catch, and taking my kids to the movies? All that’s stopping me from doing that is society. Damn you, society!!!
It’s great if some fathers try to fix a bad situation and some people want to help them. But it’s not society’s fault that fathers who give up on their kids are perceived to be deadbeat dads.
I did a pro bono thing for them once. I need to contact them and set up another one. So many dads get in trouble because they don’t think they have ANY rights. Thanks for reminding me about this, Brad.
It’s an excellent pro bono opportunity for members of the bar.
Doug, you did misinterpret, or I mis-communicated. Either way.
I am assuming the baby is born. I didn’t say we should promote fathering children out of wedlock. I said we should promote fatherhood – active, sustained involvement in the child’s life – regardless of whether a father is in a nuclear relationship with the mother or not.
Our society and justice system insidiously attack the responsibility of fatherhood and undermine it at far too many turns. We have a broken system that churns out generationally inferior results. That’s fairly shocking to me, actually. This is true in all contexts from the poor, to the incarcerated to the merely divorced.
Yes, this!
You should hear Pat Littlejohn, director of Fathers and Families, talk about the way we’ve beaten these men down and convinced them they are worthless as fathers and can’t have a meaningful relationship with their kids. (We’ve convinced everyone, including these fathers themselves, that they are “deadbeats.” We call them names, rather than helping them find a way to meet their responsibilities and play a positive role.)
She makes a great case. So does everyone in these programs.
The organization also saves our state a lot of money — the Dads end up paying child support, rather than going to jail for failing to do so…
“we’ve beaten these men down and convinced them they are worthless as fathers”
I’m okay with giving them a pass on the first one they father out of wedlock. But for those (like NFL player Adrian Peterson) who father multiple children by multiple women, I don’t think there is a path to anything but token “fatherhood”. Too many children in too many locations with too much drama with the baby mamas.
Adrian Peterson has at least six children by several mothers. He never saw one of them until THAT baby was beaten by a boyfriend of the baby mama and died. This is a guy who makes $11 million dollars a year.
My guess is that any efforts in this area will only have a minimal impact. We need to stop them from having kids in the first place. That’s the message that should be trumpeted in every school, church, and community gathering: “DON’T HAVE KIDS UNLESS YOU CAN PROVIDE FOR THEM!”
Sure, Doug. I wish all kids were wanted, born into two parent, lifelong happily married parents with ample means to care for them. But, as a Plan B, I think we need to get real, and this fatherhood initiative is a great start. Who knows, maybe it will encourage future generations to follow Plan A more often.
It looks like a great organization. Thanks for getting their message out.
And it’s getting worse. My wife tells me stories everyday of her problem students- 98% of them are from broken- if not totally screwed up homes.