The prison guard held his lantern up to the barred window
and with the reflector cast a beam of light into the shadowed
cell. He played the light until it fell upon the bunk.
There lay a prisoner, huddled on a bunk, covered only by a
thin, tattered, wool blanket; shivering in the biting cold dampness
of the steel enclosure.
This scene was as common in the early days of prisons as it
is today, except today the prison guard uses a flashlight to cast
the beam of light and the cell is occupied by not one but two
prisoners. It is now common practice to house prisoners for
23 hours-a-day in a five-by-eight foot cell. Their only reprieve
from this hell is a one hour walk outside the cell. This goes on
day after endless day, for the prisoner(s).
Prison overcrowding has become more and more evident
with the administrations mind-set of "lockem'-up and throw
away the keys," and the high recidivism rate. No one, it
seems, wants to invest in the future of our inmate population,
in the form of real rehabilitation. Prison construction is the
key word today, as we try to build our way out of this dismal
situation.
But, can prison construction possibly compete with our
prison overcrowding? That is the question that must be confronted.
And, despite the presence of prison rehabilitation
services, one point must be emphasized: prisons' have never
been schools, factories, hospitals, or psychiatric centers. First
and foremost they are places of confinement.
The ever increasing size of the U.S. prison population (2.1
million, June 2003: at an estimated $22,000 per/prisoner) ensures
that, in the not to far future, most prisons will serve
primarily as strictly holding facilities--as many are all ready
today—if we don't face this problem before future generations
of our citizen population are lost in the limbo of the
prison system.
