According to a 2008 study by the Pew Center, one in 100 Americans is in prison. Oregon, however, is finding ways around imprisonment and finding more effective ways to not only punish but also rehabilitate criminals.
Humanitarian justice
According to a 2008 study by the Pew Center, one in 100 Americans is in prison. Oregon, however, is finding ways around imprisonment and finding more effective ways to not only punish but also rehabilitate criminals.
According to The Portland Tribune, parole officers “are Oregon’s new jailers.” Now with more authority and administrative power, parole officers are, as Peter Korn reports, “an increasingly critical component of public
safety.”
The expanding role of parole officers in Oregon is an exciting prospect when you consider how detrimental and expensive the alternative—prison—can be. Parole officers are a positive addition to the corrections community.
In Oregon, about seven of 10 convicted felons are given probation rather than prison. The trend here, Korn reports, is to save prison space for only the most dangerous criminals and to send drug and property crime offenders to parole officers like Lisa Lewis and Barb Fletcher. With budget shortfalls and the recent closing of an Oregon minimum-security prison, the economics of choosing parole over prison look pretty good. According to Korn, it costs the state $84 a day to keep an inmate in prison, but only $12 a day to have them under supervision.
Not only is it expensive, but prison is also notorious for not being the best method of rehabilitation—even for hardened criminals.
But for clients like those of Lewis and Fletcher—nine out of 10 of which have an addiction—it would be a disaster. Lewis is hesitant to send clients who fail a drug or alcohol screening back to prison, she tells Korn. “Is jail going to do what we want it to do?” Lewis asks. “It’s not going to help a drinking problem.”
With increased jurisdiction in Oregon, POs have the authority to send their probationers back to jail without taking the case to a judge, but Lewis typically opts out of it. She builds a rapport with her clients and calls for sanctions in the client’s best interest according to their particular situation. It is the kind of rational humanitarianism that we don’t often see in the criminal justice system.
There are those who say that not assigning jail time, especially after a violation of parole, is too lenient and that early release would encourage repeat offenders. Scott Taylor, the Director of Multnomah County Department of Community Justice, says the opposite is true. Arrest rates have gone down. According to Taylor, keeping first time felons in jail longer “gives them more time to associate with hardened felons and makes them more likely to re-offend.”
Experts who study the effects of prison agree. In his 1988 study of the psychological stress that prison imposes on inmates, Paul Wiehn calls prison a “breeding ground for psychosis.” Correctional institutions, Wiehn reports, “contribute directly to the emergence of major psychiatric disturbances.”
Wiehn describes the ordeal of a healthy young man who was convicted of larceny and, after six years in jail, was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. He was an example of someone who could not handle the pressures of incarceration.
With Oregon’s committed parole officers and new electronic monitoring like ankle bracelet technology and home breathalyzer systems, probation and house arrest are increasingly viable options for the rehabilitation of offenders. Usually the more humanitarian, personalized option is the more expensive, but that’s not the case here. Working to actually rehabilitate offenders instead of throwing them in prison is both economical and socially responsible. It’s the best of both worlds. ?
