So Many People

One of the advantages of travel is the opportunity to observe people of various cultures react to intrusions into their daily routines. When I was last in China in the spring of 1997, Tiger Woods won the Masters’ golf tournament and Beijing had one million cars to go along with the 97 building cranes that I counted from my hotel. It seems the building crane is now the national bird of China.

Having just returned from the Sixth Annual Conference of the International Corrections and Prisons Association (ICPA) in Beijing, another one million cars have been added to the streets and the national bird still dominates the skyline as Beijing prepares for the 2008 Olympics. We all know what Tiger Woods has been doing.

So what’s the intrusion? Sounds pretty much like life in any large Western city. That’s the intrusion. Capitalism has landed in Beijing, and imagining their retreat from commercialism is very difficult. Sure, we had dinner one night in the Great Hall of the People as a reminder of the power of the Party, but the conversation was more about cooling the nine percent annual GDP growth (ours is less than five percent) than in reciting quotes, or recruiting followers of the former Chairman Mao.

Maybe the Chinese have been closet capitalists since the collapse of the Ming Dynasty and we wasted a lot of money trying to prove otherwise, but make no mistake now, Beijing seems to like what they are becoming. Not that they or any emerging economic force would listen, but what should we tell them about the impact on the criminal justice system of a lot of highly mobile people with varying amounts of money living in dense quarters? One thing for certain: we should warn them that the cost of protecting what we “own” can be dear in economic and social terms.

We had a chance to tour several incarceration facilities ranging from serious, long-stay adult offenders to juveniles and women. They looked pretty much the same as ours did 30 to 40 years ago. But a bit of perspective may be helpful. At 1.3 billion people, China incarcerates 119 per 100,000 people. At 0.3 billion, we incarcerate 709 per 100,000. The worldwide average is 147 per 100,000.

Anyone that has been around our system for a few decades knows how far we have come and at what economic and social cost. We’re a long way from being “there” yet because we are still trying to define where we are going, but we are trying while airing our social laundry in the sunshine. One couldn’t help but get the idea that a lot of Chinese laundry is not aired in daylight. That is one of the lessons of democracy; make mistakes, but make them, and correct them, in front of the people.

China has a lot of people in front of whom the most dramatic change they have ever known is beginning to occur. Democracy is not yet the name of this change, but time and the determination of the many highly educated and energetic youth just may extend the commercialization of China to the democratization of the government. If asked, what should we tell them about correcting those who will live outside the rule of law? Are we really the ones to ask?

After only a few years of level growth in the number of people incarcerated in our country, the curve has begun to turn northward again at the same time the crime rate continues the southward journey. We all know why. Whether at the pretrial level of counties or in state prisons for the sentenced, those who pass from freedom to restriction are staying longer than ever before. Sentencing matrixes, misguided political agendas, mandatory minimums, easy access to weapons of personal destruction, and clogged judicial systems all contribute to the United States maintaining the distinction of the most powerful nation ever imagined also being the most incarcerating in history.

During my professional career, I have known times when our opinion mattered. As an American attending international conferences and working outside our protected borders, I now realize that many of our valuable and transferable experiences have become marginalized because we are no longer the best example of balanced correcting. The notion of restorative justice that is so grounded in the essence of community is hardly addressed as a local, much less national, priority; therefore, community corrections struggles for a fair chance to reduce the embarrassing incarceration rate that we own.

The good news is that in far reaches of this incredibly diverse world, democracy is no longer a private club. This is a season of change, and as a former president noted: “In a time of change, security results from initiative, and not inertia.” As we welcome 2005, I think a noble discussion might focus on what level of initiative would be necessary to become “average” and achieve an incarceration rate of 147 per 100,000. This would still be higher than two-thirds of the world.

China, and the rest of the world, can’t afford to compete with us in the rate of incarceration. We ended the cold war by outspending Russia in the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction. Outspending the rest of the world to incarcerate when other options are available is not what is now recognized as leadership. As the world’s leading and oldest democracy, let’s at least have the debate about the future of correcting in the United States.

Happy New Year!

Stephen A. Carter, AICP, is principal of Carter Goble Lee LLC in Columbia, S.C.