Parole And Probation In A Prison Nation
| Published date | 01 June 2002 |
| Date | 01 June 2002 |
| DOI | 10.1177/026455050204900204 |
| Author | Mike Nellis |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
97
Parole And Probation In A
Prison Nation
Mike Nellis discusses his perceptions of crime and punishment in the
USA, reflecting on the significance of the American experience for
policy in England and Wales, and drawing particular attention to the
dangers of emulating the commercially driven and now seemingly
unstoppable penal expansionism of the US.
Ispent six weeks in July/August 2001
teaching summer school at Northern
Kentucky University, and learning, at first
hand as often as possible, something about
criminal justice in this corner of the United
States. Although Kentucky-based, the
nearest urban centre was Cincinnati, just
across the state border, and I had most
contact with criminal justice people in
Ohio. I was not doing systematic research,
and all I assembled was a patchwork of
impressions, lacking in comprehensiveness
– but supplemented by reading newspapers
and books that are not easily accessed in
Britain. One of them, by Wall Street
journalist Joseph Hallinan (2001),
characterises America as a “Prison Nation”,
because it imprisons (on average) 600 per
100,000 people, and because it is now
building prisons to galvanise flagging rural
economies as much as to combat crime in a
coherent and effective way. With only 126
per 100,000 in prison, England and Wales is
clearly not in the same league. However,
with the highest prison population in
Europe – the daily rate passed 70,000 in
March 2002 – there can be no room for
complacency, especially when reputable
Sunday Times columnists suggest that we
should emulate America: “perhaps the time
has come to tolerate the idea of zero
tolerance and build the jails to make it
work” (Marrin, 2002). I offer these
impressions to others who are also working
to understand what it takes to keep criminal
justice decent, and prison populations low.
At the time I was there, Cincinnati –
considered by some commentators to be the
most Southern city in the North because of
the limited headway that local African-
Americans had made in city management –
was a troubled place. There had been major
rioting in one of the ‘poor black’ areas,
Over-the Rhine, in April 2001, triggered by
the shooting of a 19 year old black man. No
newspaper seemed to doubt that there were
problems with the policing of the city, but
some certainly felt that the police had been
paralysed into inactivity, were not now
patrolling enough and that as a result crime
– including black-on-black turf wars over
Crime, Police and Race
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