CRIMINALS SHOULD BE CURED, NOT CAGED

What are prisons for? To reform criminals, replied of the 77% of nation's Americans in "correctional" a recent Harris Poll. But 80% of the nation's " correctional;" employees merely guard 426,000 inmates in a hodgepodge of archaic institutions that range from adequate to appalling. Only 20% of the coun try's correctors work at rehabilitation. And 30% of all released offenders (75% in some areas) are reimprisofied within five years, often for worse crimes.

What eludes U.S. penology (from the Latin poena, meaning pain) is the basic recipe of effective punishment: speedy, inescapable prosecution, a fair chance for a fresh start, and state-upheld values that offenders can reasonably acknowledge as superior to their own. For one thing, 77% of reported U.S. crimes are never solved; many are never even reported. Thus, most caught criminals see their problem as bad luck rather than bad character. Indeed, such are the human mind's defenses that the guilty often feel in nocent. Dostoevsky astutely depicts a would-be murderer viewing his act as "not a crime."

All the more resistant is the typical U.S. offender: a failed male youth who wears the outcast labels of slum dweller, minority-group member, school dropout, unsuccessful employee and law violator. Stripped of selfesteem, this loser compensates by hating and hurting life's winners. And the U.S. criminal-justice system all too often reinforces his contempt for society's values. If the suspect cannot afford a skilled lawyer, he is pressured to plead guilty without a trial. For the same crime, different judges hand out wildly disparate sentences.

Perhaps the most appalling aspect of all this is the fact that the number of crimes is increasing because the number of young people is growing, and they commit most crimes. Viewing this situation objectively leads to two basic conclu sions. First, the U.S. is now spending $1 billion a year for corrections in ways that can only increase crime. Second, a dramatically different approach can decrease it -- for the same money.

Barriers to Reform

The notion that imprisonment corrects criminals is a surprisingly recent idea. Before the 18th century, prisons were mainly used not to punish but to detain the accused or hostages--the debtor until he paid, for example. To combat crime, Europeans castrated rapists, cut off thieves' hands, tore out perjurers' tongues. England boasted 200 hanging offenses. When crime still flourished, reformers argued that overkill punishment is no deterrent. In 1786, the Philadelphia Quakers established incarceration as a humane alternative. Seeking penitence (source of "penitentiary"), the Quakers locked convicts in solitary cells until death or release. So many died or went insane that in 1825 New York's Auburn Prison introduced hard labor--in utter silence. Until quite recently, the U.S. relied almost entirely on the spirit-breaking Auburn system of shaved heads, lock-step marching and degrading toil in huge, costly, isolated cages that soothed the public's fear of escapes.

The caging syndrome has crippled U.S. penology in every way. Because forbidding forts refuse to crumble (25 prisons are more than 100 years old), there is often no way to separate tractable from intractable men--the preliminary step toward rehabilitation. Of course barriers to reform go far beyond the limitations of buildings. It is ironic that only in Mississippi are married convicts allowed conjugal visits with their wives; sexual deprivation in other American prisons incites riots, mental illness and homosexuality. By using strong inmates to control the weak, authoritarian officials create an inmate culture that forces prisoners to "do your own time"--trust no one, freeze your mind, be indifferent. Roughly 80% of adult inmates need psychiatric help. But illtrained, ill-paid guards are so concerned with security that treatment staffs can barely function. All American prisons have onl$ 150 full-time psychiatrists, half of them in federal institutions, which hold only 5% of all prisoners.

Even humane prison officials are still generally paying mere lip service to "individualized treatment"--the new ideal of curing each prisoner's hang-ups and converting society's misfits to crime-free lives. In progressive prisons, to be sure, guards are taught to break up the inmate culture by friendly communication; inmates are classified in graded groups, promoted for good conduct and hustled toward pa role. Indeed, the average stay today is 21 months; the average lifer exits in 20 years.

Yet all this usually amounts to what Penologist Howard Gill calls "birdshot penology." All the bands, baseball, radios and rodeos cannot gloss the fact that real rehabilitation is rare. Caging still outranks curing; short funds dilute short-stay effectiveness. And prison job-training is a scandal. Federal prisons do well; yet only 17% of released federal inmates find jobs related to their prison work. Most state prisoners get no usable training because business and unions have rammed through laws preventing competition by prison industries. At least one-third of all inmates simply keep the prison clean--or do nothing.

Building Community Bases

To attack the basic prison problem -- isolation from society the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice advocates a drastic shift to "community-based corrections." Two-thirds of all offenders are already being supervised outside the walls, on probation or parole. But probation is still widely regarded as clemency rather than treatment; only one-third of American courts have reasonably adequate probation staffs. Burdened with over 100 cases apiece, plus pre-sentence reports for judges, many probation officers can give offenders only ten or 15 minutes, once or twice a month. To cut average caseloads to 35 per officer, the commission urges a quick and major staff increase -- sevenfold in misdemeanor cases, which now too often turn jail graduates into prison felons.

There is no question that probation can be more effective than prison. In one experiment by the California Youth Authority, convicted juvenile delinquents were immediately returned to their homes or foster homes, where parole officers grouped them according to their special characteristics and then provided intensive treatment -- tutoring, psychotherapy, occasional confinement. After five years, only 28% of the experimental group had their paroles revoked, compared with 52% of a similar group that was locked up after conviction. By giving 600 more delinquents such treatment, California avoided paying $7,000,000 for a new reformatory. Supervising adult felons on probation costs $200 a year, v. $2,000 for imprisonment, and about $13,000 per inmate 'to build new prisons. By tripling its probation staff in 1963, New Mexico cut its prison population 32%, now saves $4,000,000 a year in prison costs and welfare payments to prisoners' families. The whole prison ethos can be changed. Just as astronauts train by simulating space conditions, so prisons should be located right in the inmates' community, where a vastly augmented treatment staff could use local resources to help the offender identify with an-ticriminal people and succeed at legitimate work.

To reduce regimentation, says Criminologist Daniel Gia-ser, no prison should house more than 100 inmates, v 4,000 in many of today's bastilles; small groups of tractable prisoners could live in Y.M.C.A.-type hotels or apartments.

And prisons should exploit the ironic fact that mere aging is now the main cause of going straight. Since youths are the most defiant prisoners, they should be scattered among older, wiser men, not segregated as now. In a community setting, prisons can expand work-and-study furloughs, arrange part-time release programs with industry, universities and therapy groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous. At the federal penitentiary in Danbury, Conn., for example, Dictograph Products Inc. sponsors a training program for microsoldering hearing aids, hires the trained convicts after their release. Geared to problem solving, such treatment reconciles offenders with relatives, schools, employers. It is urgently needed in local jails, which should be integrated into state correctional systems. Under this concept, prisons would resemble hospitals; "punishment" would produce functioning human beings--the way to crime prevention.

Searching for Reinforcement

Crucial to such reform is a more rational definition of criminal behavior. For example, half of all county-jail inmates are in for drunkenness--something far better treated at public-health detoxification centers. In mass arrests of small drug pushers, police mainly cut supplies and raise prices, which addicts then meet by more thefts and burglaries. In New York City, the daily toll is almost $1,000,000, and addicts account for half the city's convicts. Not only are big suppliers untouched; a national trend to mandatory sentences and no parole or probation in drug cases is defeating curative efforts.

In general, sentences should be far more flexible. An American Bar Association committee recently urged maximum five-year terms, except for dangerous offenders.*But even with good pre-sentence reports, trial judges cannot predict whether x years will suffice. Some countries require written sentence opinions for higher-court review. American law should probably hand the job to penal experts. Federal judges already may send convicted persons to classification centers before sentencing; New York's bail-pioneering Vera Institute of Justice is retraining such people for three months before the judge decides. In California, which leads the U.S. and most of the world in systematic penology, judges give indeterminate sentences, and correction officials then determine the offender's fate according to his well-tested possibilities. In 1966, only 7% of California felons went to prison. Of all state inmates, 20% actually work outside in 80-man forestry crews, saving California millions.

Thus far, most American prison reform has focused on the traumas of release. The pacesetting federal system, which includes a no-wall unit at Seagoville, Texas, has institutionalized the "halfway houses" pioneered by religious groups to shelter ex-convicts seeking jobs. Intensive prerelease training at federal centers has cut some graduates' repeater rate by 15%. Texas boasts a remarkable six-week course at a relaxed center near Houston, where civilian volunteers (bankers, auto salesmen, personnel experts) teach felons how to get loans, buy cars, apply for jobs--things many never knew. Result: a repeater rate of 13.9%, down from 35% five years ago.

All this suggests that prisons are slowly absorbing a key lesson of modern psychology: desirable behavior is best induced by "positive reinforcement"--rewards rather than punishment. Thus, federal prisons and 24 states now use work-release schemes pioneered by North Carolina, where 12,000 select convicts have earned $10 million in ten years-even working as court reporters, while partly supporting their families, partly paying their prison keep and landing future jobs. At California's San Joaquin County Jail, one recent prisoner was an ex-airplane dealer who spent all day flying charter planes, duly landed for the night lockup. The big problem, though, is how to "reward" far less promising inmates. At the new federal juvenile unit in Morgantown,

W. Va., one well-researched solution is to let delinquent boys loaf completely--or choose to work and study for "points" that pay off at a penny apiece. Earnings can hit $40 a week, cutting confinement time in the process.

Some critics argue that many of the new ideas still fail to solve the criminal's basic problem: his firm belief that society is wrong, not he. As critics see it, even the best prison is still a totalitarian society that spurs human resistance and reinforces the criminal's cynicism. In this view, the solution is getting criminals to reform themselves in the process of reforming other criminals. This approach has worked wonders in New Jersey with groups of 20 delinquent boys housed at Highfields, the old Lindbergh mansion. After working at daytime jobs, the boys spend evenings listening to a selected boy's woes--and then deflating his rationalizations. Nonviolence is enforced by an adult sitting quietly outside the circle; but things get rough, for no boy leaves Highfields until he has proved to both his peers' and the adult's satisfaction that he has mastered his hang-ups enough to attain a very practical goal--avoiding future arrest.

In 1964, North Carolina courageously put young felons into an open prison camp staffed entirely by group-therapy veterans--recently paroled California convicts. It worked, until the legislature nervously stopped the money. (The head parolee later became a professional penologist.) Several states profitably rely on Author Bill Sands (My Shadow Ran Fast), a reformed California armed robber, whose Seven Step Foundation sends ex-convicts into prisons to counsel inmates and runs "freedom houses" to help re-leasees. Of 5,000 Seventh Step graduates so far, only 10% have returned to prison. An ex-New York prisoner named Hiawatha Burris has carved a new career persuading reluctant employers to hire ex-cons. With federal funds, Burris started Washington's Bonabond, a convict-run agency that has bonded and guided 441 men in new jobs. Bonabond has never had to pay off. Only 7% of its charges have been rearrested, none for crimes against their employers. Some employers now skip the bond and just take Bonabond's word.

"We might feel that in prison we've paid our debt," says Burris, "but we know the community doesn't think so. Doing time is not enough--we have to give back to the community." And that may be the most profound point. The goal of crime prevention can be reached partly by attacks on crime-breeding social conditions, partly by creating more efficient police and courts. But also vital is a new concept of mutual reconciliation between convict and community: the outcast must be allowed to earn his way back and thereby learn to believe in himself.

Toward Self-Respect

Can prisons be abolished? Not quite: perhaps 15% of inmates are dangerous or unreformable. But Attorney General Ramsey Clark, for one, estimates that 50% of today's inmates do not belong in prison; removing them would sharply improve attention to the rest. And caging must go. It is scandalous that in the U.S. only about 2% of all prison inmates are now being exposed to any kind of reform-oriented innovation.

What most convicts really need is neither repression nor sentimental treatment as patients, but rather opportunity for restitution. Never was American prison morale so high as during World War II when the nation relied on convicts to work their heads off producing almost $300 million in war goods and food. Never was morale so low--and riots so rife --as when idleness returned after the war. On many occasions, prisoners have fought fire and flood with a zest and courage that amazed and won the communities they saved. As guinea pigs in countless medical experiments, they have voluntarily suffered malaria, cancer, syphilis and other ugly ills for the public benefit--and their own.

The key is self-respect: prisons are full of men who perhaps above all need a chance to serve society in order to respect themselves. When the law-abiding public accepts that fact, U.S. penology will be on the road to genuine rehabilitation.

-A seeming example: Winston Moseley, 33, convicted for the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese, whose screams were disregarded by 38 neighbors in New York City. Now a lifer at maximum-security Attica Prison (the wall alone cost $1,275,000 in 1931), Moseley was recently hospitalized in Buffalo for a self-inflicted wound. Last week he escaped from the hospital, raped a housewife, terrorized the area until an FBI agent talked him into surrender. Whether or not Attica is the right place for Moseley, he obviously needs confinement.

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