True Cost of Our Broken System

Find out how Texas' broken criminal justice system impacts all issues:

Civil Rights

The U.S. has the highest rate of incarceration in the world (1 in 142 residents). This is 5-8 times higher than in Canada and Western Europe. [1]
If recent incarceration rates remain unchanged, an estimated 1 of every 15 persons in the U.S. (6.6%) will serve time in a prison during their lifetime. Based on current rates of first incarceration, an estimated 32% of black males will enter State or Federal prison during their lifetime, compared to 17% of Hispanic males and 5.9% of white males. [2]

The criminal justice system is fraught with racial inequality:

African American drug offenders now have a 20% greater chance of being sentenced to prison than white drug offenders, and Hispanics a 40% greater chance. [2]
African Americans now serve virtually as much time in prison for a drug offense (57.2 months) as whites do for a violent offense (58.8 months). [3]
African Americans comprise of 12% of Texas' population, but 44% of its jail and prison population. The rate of incarceration is 4.7 times higher for blacks than whites. [3]

Interesting Fact: The majority of states pay their wage-earning prisoners less than $1 per hour. At the very low end of the pay scale, prisoners in Louisiana typically earn two cents per hour—a yearly wage of $38.40—and in Georgia prisoners earn no wages. [4]

Education and Our Children

The financial and emotional impact of over-incarceration policies on our children is staggering:

Over 10 million children in the United States have parents who were imprisoned at some point in their children’s lives. 1.5 million currently have a parent in prison, including 1 in 14 black children. [6]
Students who are suspended or expelled are more likely to drop-out. Of students who drop out, one-third had been put on in-school suspension, suspended, or put on probation, and more than 15 percent had been either expelled or told they couldn't return. Drop-outs are in turn more likely to commit crimes, become pregnant as teens, and end up on welfare. [9]
The average age of minor children who had at least one incarcerated parent was 8. 58% of these children were under 10, and 22% were under 5. [6]
A 1997 study found that 46% of all prisoners had been living with their minor children prior to their admission; 17% had been in single-parent households. [6]
A majority of parents in both State (62%) and Federal (84%) prison were held more than 100 miles from their last place of residence, making it extremely difficult for children to visit or maintain contact with their parents. [6]
These children are 6-8 times more likely to end up in jail themselves if they have (or have had) a parent in prison, and 9 times more likely to end up in jail themselves if they have (or have had) two parents in prison. One in 10 will be incarcerated before reaching adulthood. [7]
In a 1985 study at the University of Michigan, children of incarcerated parents showed symptoms of post-traumatic stress reaction. Of the 5-16 year olds surveyed, 75% reported symptoms such as depression, difficulty sleeping or concentrating, or flashbacks to their parent’s crimes or arrests. [7]
Federal law states that students who are convicted of a drug-related offense are ineligible for grants, loans, and work assistance – a federal legal barrier that cannot be altered by the states. No other class of offense, including violent offenses, sex offenses, repeat offenses, or alcohol-related offenses, results in the automatic denial of educational financial aid eligibility. In the 2000-2001 academic year, more than 9,000 students were found ineligible under this provision. [8]
School “zero tolerance” policies criminalize ordinary child misbehavior, harming students and overburdening the justice system. In one case, a 14 year-old girl was arrested and charged for battery after pouring milk on another girl who she said had been “talking about her.” In another example, a 7 year-old boy with attention-deficit disorder was taken to jail for hitting a classmate, a teacher and a principal. [9]
Zero tolerance policy is being applied to subjective, non-criminal offenses. In 2002, Houston Independent School District Police made 660 arrests (almost 17 percent of the total) for disruption (disruptive activities, disruption of classes, and disruption of transportation) and another 1,041 (or 26 percent) for disorderly conduct. [9]
Nationally, suspensions have increased steadily for all students, rising from 1.7 million in 1974 (or 3.7 percent of students) to 3.1 million (6.84 percent of students) by 2000. [9]

Housing

Federal law gives local public housing agencies the ability to deny housing to virtually anyone with a criminal background.
Federal laws passed in 1996 and 1998 permit public housing agencies to deny housing to anyone who has ever engaged in “any drug-related” activity. After these laws were implemented, the number of applicants denied public housing because of “criminal backgrounds” doubled, from 9,835 to 19,405. [8]
Tenants of public housing can be evicted for the drug-related activity engaged in by their guests or people “under their control,” effectively allowing entire families to be evicted following the misbehavior of a single member. [10]
In Iowa, residency restrictions for released sex offenders effectively prohibit them from living in 30% of the state’s towns, forcing some to remain in halfway housing or even to live on campgrounds and in their cars. [11] As a result, the number of sex offenders in the state whose whereabouts are undocumented has nearly tripled. [12]
Individuals with a criminal background are not considered a protected class under the Fair Housing Act, so private landlords can (and often do) refuse to rent to them.

Foster Care

More than half of the people in prison are parents. Children of these incarcerated individuals often end up living with grandparents or in the state foster care system. [6]
The 1996 Welfare Reform Act, which banned drug offenders from receiving welfare benefits and food stamps, affected more than 135,000 children whose mothers had been denied, putting them at greater risk for neglect and contact with the criminal justice system. [13]

Health Care

Every year, more than 1.5 million people are released from jail and prison carrying a life-threatening contagious disease. [4]
In California, where control of health care in state prisons has been ceded to a federal judge, one prisoner was dying needlessly from medical malpractice or neglect every six to seven days as recently as October 2005. [4]
The majority of state correctional systems and many jails charge between $2 and $15 for a sick call request, a doctor’s visit, and in some systems, for a prescription—while paying prisoners wages of less than $1 per hour. [4]
According to the General Accounting Office, in 2001 parents in 19 states and 30 counties turned more than 12,700 children over to the juvenile justice system so that the children would have access to needed mental health services.
Many people coming out of prison have chronic and serious diseases. On a national scale, statistics from 1997 show 1.4 million individuals with Hepatitis C were released from prison, totaling 32% of the total population in the U.S. with Hepatitis C infection. Individuals released that year also made up 25% of the 750,000 individuals in the U.S. with HIV/AIDS, and 2 out of every 5 people with tuberculosis. [14]

Incarceration and the Mentally Ill

Over a quarter million prisoners are mentally ill, a rate four to five times higher than in the general population. Mentally ill inmates comprise 7.4% of the federal and 16.2% of the state prison population nationwide. [15]
Three times as many mentally ill individuals are in U.S. prisons than are in U.S. mental wards. [16]
Between 13.1-18.6% of the inmates have major depression; 2.3- 3.9% have schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders; 2.1-4.3% suffer from bipolar disorder; 22-30.1% have anxiety disorder; and 6.2-11.7% have post traumatic stress disorder. [15]
Inadequate treatment of mentally ill prisoners contributes to a rate of recidivism four times higher than that of non-mentally ill prisoners. [17]
Over 70% of mentally ill prisoners have a co-occurring substance abuse disorder; they were also more likely to have committed their offense while under the influence (59% to 51% for the non-mentally ill). [18]Incarceration and substance abuse:

80% of state prisoners report a past history of alcohol or drug abuse. [17]
Over half of these prisoners (55%) reported being under the influence when they committed their offense. [17]
Only 10% of prisoners were receiving substance abuse treatment in 1997, a drop from 25% in 1991. [17]
Inmates who participate in residential treatment programs while incarcerated have 9 to 18 percent lower recidivism rates and 15 to 35 percent lower drug relapse rates than their counterparts who receive no treatment in prison. [17]
As a result, for every dollar spent on substance abuse treatment, $3-7 is gained in crime-related cost savings (from actual crimes, litigation, and incarceration). [17]

Taxpayers

Growth in overall state spending on prisons has outpaced spending on education, health care, and natural resources. [19]
On average, states spend $22,650 per year for each prisoner, with some states spending as much as $44,000. State prison costs per U.S. resident more than doubled between 1986 and 2001. [18]
Expenditures on corrections alone increased from $15.6 billion in 1982 to $38.2 billion in 2001. [18]
Nearly half of Texas’ 15,000 state jail felony prisoners in 2002 were serving time for drug convictions involving less than one gram (less than a sugar packet-full). [20]. These offenders cost Texas taxpayers $73 million a year to incarcerate– money that could be better invested in education, families, and alternatives that work.

Safety

Increasing penalties for crime does not reduce crime for most criminal offenders. Inmates serving jail or prison sentences of up to five years had recidivism rates nearly equal to those who served less than six months (63.2% versus 66%). [21]
In 2004, nearly three quarters of federal inmates were non-violent offenders with no history of violence. One-third (34.4 percent) of federal prisoners were first-time, non-violent offenders. More than half (55 percent) were serving time for a drug-related offense. [2]
Two-thirds of people leaving prison will be re-arrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within three years of release. [22] These rates translate into thousands of new crimes each year, many of which are due to declines in reentry education, drug abuse treatment, and job training programs in prisons. [20]

Food and Clothing

The 1996 federal welfare law prohibits anyone convicted of a drug-related felony from receiving federally funded food stamps and cash assistance (also known as TANF- Temporary Assistance for Needy Families). This is a lifetime ban - even if someone has completed a sentence, overcome an addiction, or earned a certificate of rehabilitation.

Employment

Many state and local governments exclude people with criminal records from public employment. In Los Angeles, for example, any felony conviction will disqualify a person from public employment.
Even if charges are later dropped, most arrests lead to a permanent record and can be easily accessible over the Internet.
An arrest may mean loss of a job, housing, public benefits, and even custody of one's own children. Prison inmates who participated in vocational training or prison industries were less likely to become recidivists than those who did not. [23]
Many states do not have any laws prohibiting discrimination by employers based on an individual's criminal record. In a 2004 survey, 80% of employers reported conducting criminal background checks, up from 56% in 1996. Black men who had a prison record were two-thirds less likely to be hired, and whites were half as likely. [24]

Civic Participation

An estimated 5.3 million Americans, or one in forty-one adults, have currently or permanently lost their voting rights as a result of a felony conviction. [26]
Three states deny the right to vote to all ex-offenders who have completed their sentences. Nine others disenfranchise certain categories of ex-offenders and/or permit application for restoration of rights for specified offenses after a waiting period (e.g., five years in Delaware and Wyoming, three years in Maryland, and two years in Nebraska). [25]
In California, a person with a felony conviction cannot regain the right to vote until after she/he has completed their full sentence. This means completion of parole and full payment of any fines or restitution fees, which often total thousands of dollars.
Nationally, more than 1.4 million Black men – a full 13 percent of the Black male population and a rate 7 times the national average – are denied the right to vote. If current rates of incarceration continue, 3 in 10 black men can expect to be disenfranchised at some point in their lives. [25]

Women's Rights

Between 1986 and 1999, the number of women incarcerated in state facilities for drug related offenses increased by 888 percent, surpassing the rate of growth in the number of men imprisoned for similar crimes. [27]
In 2003, black women were 4.5 times more likely than white women to be incarcerated. [28]
Women are often the victims of mandatory sentencing laws which punish non-participants with “conspiracy to commit a drug offense.” These women, often the wives or girlfriends of convicted drug traffickers, receive greater penalties than their partners because they cannot furnish information toward other investigations for plea bargains. Furthermore, the ground for prosecution of this offense has been as little as furnishing aluminum foil that was later used in a drug deal, despite no knowledge of its intended use. [26]
Of all the women in prisons and jails, almost half reported having been abused before their incarceration. An ACLU study found that out of a sample of 66 women who were on Death Row – twenty (30%) reported that spouses or partners had regularly battered them, seven (11%) stated they had been severely beaten as children, and nine (14%) stated they had been abused as both children and adults. [29]

[1] Mauer, Marc. Comparative International Rates of Incarceration: An Examination of Causes and Trends. The Sentencing Project, June 20, 2003.

[2] The Federal Prison Population: A Statistical Analysis. The Sentencing Project.

[3] Kaplan, Dana, Vincent Schiraldi and Jason Ziedenberg. “Texas Tough? An Analysis of Incarceration and Crime Trends in The Lone Star State.” Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. 2002.

[4] Gibbons, John J. and Nicholas de B. Katzenbach. Confronting Confinement. Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons; The Vera Institute. June 2006.

[6] Mumola, Christopher J. Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report: Incarcerated Parents and Their Children. U.S. Department of Justice. August 2000.

[7] Simmons, Charlene Wear. Children of Incarcerated Parents. California Research Bureau. March 2000.

[8] Muer, Marc. “Invisible Punishment: Block Housing, Education, Voting.” Focus, May/June 2003: 3-4. Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

[9] Advancement Project. Education on Lockdown: The Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track. March 2005.

[10] Department of Housing and Urban Development v. Rucker, et al., 535 U.S. 125; 122 S. Ct. 1230 (U.S. Supreme Court, 2002)

[11] “Sex offenders in Iowa fight housing restriction.” The Associated Press, December 14, 2003. Retrieved online on August 8, 2006, http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/Central/12/14/sex.offender.challenge.ap/
index.html

[12] Davey, Monica. “Iowa's Residency Rules Drive Sex Offenders Underground.” The New York Times, March 15, 2006. Retrieved online August 8, 2006, http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/03/15/national/
15offenders.html

[13] Allard, Patricia. Life Sentences: Denying Welfare Benefits To Women Convicted Of Drug Offenses. The Sentencing Project. February 2002.

[14] Hammett, T.M., P. Harmon, and W. Rhodes, “The Burden of Infectious Disease Among Inmates and Releasees From Correctional Facilities,” paper prepared for the National Commission on Correctional Health Care, Chicago, IL, May 2000.

[15] “The Health Status of Soon-to-be-Released Inmates: A Report to Congress.” National Commission on Correctional Health Care. Vol. 1: 22. March 2002.

[16] Fellner, Jamie and Sasha Abramsky. “Prisons No Place for the Mentally Ill,” San Diego Union-Tribune, Feb. 13, 2004.

[17] Ditton, Paula M. Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report: Mental Health and Treatment of Inmates and Probationers. U.S. Department of Justice. July 1999.

[18] Report of the Reentry Policy Council. Council of State Governments. Retrieve online August 8, 2006, www.reentrypolicy.org

[19] Stephen, James J. Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report: State Prison Expenditures, 2001. U.S. Department of Justice. June 2004.

[20] Graves, Rachel. “War on drugs nets small-time offenders.” Houston Chronicle. Dec. 15, 2002.

[21] Recidivism of State Prisoners: Implications for Sentencing and Corrections Policy. The Sentencing Project, 2002.

[22] “Criminal Offenders Statistics.” Bureau of Justice Statistics. Retrieved online Aug. 8, 2006. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/crimoff.htm#recidivism

[23] The Urban Institute. Outside the Walls: A National Snapshot of Community-Based Prisoner Reentry Programs. Reentry Media Outreach Campaign.

[24] Zimmerman, Ann and Kortney Stringer. “As Background Checks Proliferate, Ex-Cons Face A Lock On Jobs.” The Wall Street Journal. Aug. 26, 2004

[25] Uribe, Joana. The Power of Partnering With Authentic Community: Recommendations to the Philanthropic Community From Formerly Incarcerated Organizers. Peace Development Fund.

[26] Felony Disenfranchisement Laws in the United States. The Sentencing Project, April 2006.

[27] Caught in the Net: The Impact of Drug Policies on Women and Families. American Civil Liberties Union, March 15, 2005.

[28] U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration. Women’s Health USA 2005. Rockville, Maryland: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2005.

[29] The Forgotten Population: A Look at Death Row in the United States through the Experiences of Women. American Civil Liberties Union, Dec. 2004.