[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 191 (Monday, December 4, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S17928-S17929]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     THE PROS KNOW WHY PRISON FAILS

   Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I would like to draw my 
colleagues' attention to an op-ed written by Coleman McCarthy in the 
September 9, 1995, Washington Post.
  In discussing prison policies, Mr. McCarthy draws an important 
distinction between professional and amateur 

[[Page S 17929]]
opinions. No matter how we like to flatter ourselves, Members of 
Congress are amateurs when it comes to understanding what works to 
reduce crime. The professionals are the people who work in prisons and 
the criminal justice system every day. Unfortunately, it is the 
amateurs who get to set policy, and, according to the professionals, we 
are doing a lousy job.
  One year ago, I sponsored a survey of prison wardens asking for their 
views on our criminal justice and prison policies. Eight-five percent 
of the wardens said that most politicians are not offering effective 
solutions to crime. Instead of building more prisons and passing 
mandatory minimum sentencing laws, the wardens overwhelmingly favored 
providing vocational--92 percent--and literacy--93 percent--training to 
prisons, and 89 percent support drug treatment programs in prisons. 
Congress has been quick to defund these programs, and pour scarce 
resources into prison construction, in the rush to be tough on crime.
  The reality is that most prisoners will at some point be released, 
and our goal should be to ensure that those released from prison do not 
return to a criminal lifestyle. The Huron House in Michigan, a 
community-based alternative sentencing program which Mr. McCarthy 
refers to his in his piece, costs less and is more effective at 
reducing recidivism than prisons.
  In setting prison policies, we need to be more focused on what works. 
The best way to find out is to consult the professionals.
  I ask that the full text of the op-ed be printed in the Record.
  The material follows:

                     The Pros Know Why Prisons Fail

                         (By Coleman McCarthy)

       Port Huron, Mich.--Robert Diehl, who works with prisoners, 
     believes it's time to get tough on crime. How? To begin with, 
     not by longer sentences, not by building more prisons and not 
     by agreeing with California Gov. Pete Wilson, who announced 
     his presidential candidacy with the preachment that he'll 
     ``appoint judges who know that it's better to have thugs 
     overcrowding our jails than overcrowding your neighborhood.''
       Diehl's philosophy of toughness involves the arduous and 
     complex work of rescuing people with messed-up lives. He is 
     the director of Huron House, a nonprofit, community-based 
     alternative sentencing program for felony offenders. The 
     three-story, 30-bed facility--located on a residential street 
     in this small lakeshore community 60 miles north of Detroit--
     provides intensive 24-hour supervision and comprehensive 
     services ranging from job training and job placement to 
     mental health and drug counseling.
       It isn't blind faith, much less addled thinking, that keeps 
     Diehl going. In the 15 years he's been with Huron House, 
     which opened in 1979, fewer than one in five men and women in 
     the program has committed a new crime. The recidivism rate 
     for the imprisoned is two out of three. It's $50 a day to 
     cage a person in a Michigan prison, as against $35 a day to 
     supervise a resident at Huron House.
       In his office last week, Diehl, 53, described the futility 
     of the current panic-button solutions to crime mouthed by one 
     Pete Wilson or another: ``Michigan has been trying to build 
     its way out of the crime problem for the past 12 years. We 
     now have three times as many people in our prisons as 12 
     years ago. It doesn't work. There's been no reduction of 
     crime, and there's no more perception of safety among our 
     citizens. And prisoners' lives are not being changed for the 
     better.''
       The public faces a choice: Does it want to follow the 
     counsel of such corrections officials as Diehl or place its 
     trust in politicians who advocate spending money on chain 
     gangs, boot camps, three strikes, death rows, mandatory 
     sentencing--and investing less or no money in inmate 
     education or job programs.
       The choice was rarely more stark than a few weeks ago, when 
     two groups met--one in Cincinnati, the other in Washington--
     to offer prescriptions for fighting crime. One group was the 
     professionals, the other amateurs.
       The pros were people who run the nation's prisons and jails 
     and who belong to the 20,000-member American Correctional 
     Association (ACA). The amateurs were such members of the 
     Senate as Texas Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison, testifying 
     before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on prison reform.
       At the ACA conference in Cincinnati, those who toil behind 
     the walls told of the frustration of doing politicians' dirty 
     work and knowing all the time that longer sentences and 
     meaner bastilles are counter-productive.
       They listened to corrections officials who detailed the 
     facts on how recidivism is reduced through community programs 
     like Huron House and how the payoffs for public safety are in 
     combinations of education, employment, drug treatment and 
     punishment--not punishment alone.
       Few people are wearier of quick-fix politicians than 
     corrections professionals. Bobbie L. Huskey, the ACA 
     president, states categorically that an ``overwhelming 
     consensus'' exists among wardens that ``incarceration, in and 
     of itself, does little to reduce crime or have a positive 
     impact on recidivism.'' Huskey cites a poll conducted by the 
     Senate Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution in which 85 
     percent of the wardens surveyed said that most politicians 
     are not offering effective solutions to crime. Ninety-three 
     percent favor literacy and other educational programs, 92 
     percent vocational training and 89 percent are for drug 
     treatment.
       While the professionals who know struggle on, the amateurs 
     who don't keep popping off. At the Judiciary Committee 
     hearings in late July, Sen. Hutchison accused federal courts 
     of creating ``comfort and convenience'' for criminals in 
     prisons. That was news to the wardens.
       In addition to criminal recidivists, it appears that we now 
     have politician recidivists: the Wilsons and Hutchisons who 
     lapse, relapse and relapse again into deadend thinking. Maybe 
     they need a brief stretch at Huron House.

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