REVIEW ARTICLE: THE SOCIAL ORDER OF THE UNDERWORLD: WHAT GOES ON IN US PRISONS SHOULD WORRY THE UK

摘要

If you want to reduce crime, don't put so many people in prison, certainly not in the USA. David Skarbek, a lecturer in political economy at King's College London, has written the most perceptive book about the US prison regime. We always knew that the numbers of people in prison per 100,000 population were disproportionately high in the USA, but the number has soared in the last few decades. There are now more people in prison in the USA than anywhere else, some 2 million at any time, which is higher than in China even though China has a billion more people. In his article for the October 2014 issue of Economic Affairs, where he is reviewing my own book Prisonomics (Pryce 2013), Skarbek (2014, p. 412) points out that the figures translate into 707 per 100,000 population, having gone up from 148 per 100,000 in the early 1980s. This has been caused mainly by a tighter and more punitive regime, with mandatory and minimum sentencing requirements and more frequent prosecutions. In Europe the average stands at around 140 (Skarbek 2014, p. 412), brought up considerably by the United Kingdom, which is at the high end of the scale and which has also seen a doubling of the prison population for many similar reasons to those in the USA. A number of European countries, on the other hand, are at below 100, with some even seeing a decline through more use of community sentencing. But while the USA is a real outlier, if you are the wrong colour or ethnicity the situation is even worse. Skarbek cites evidence for 2008 which suggested that one in every 31 Americans was either in prison, on probation or on parole, with the numbers heavily skewed towards ethnic minorities. The incarceration rate for young black men was one in every nine and for young Latinos one in every 14.