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There is no question that probation can be more effective than prison. In one experiment by the California Youth Authority, convicted juvenile delinquents were immediately returned to their homes or foster homes, where parole officers grouped them according to their special characteristics and then provided intensive treatment — tutoring, psychotherapy, occasional confinement. After five years, only 28% of the experimental group had their paroles revoked, compared with 52% of a similar group that was locked up after conviction. By giving 600 more delinquents such treatment, California avoided paying $7,000,000 for a new reformatory. Supervising adult felons on probation costs $200 a year, v. $2,000 for imprisonment, and about $13,000 per inmate 'to build new prisons. By tripling its probation staff in 1963, New Mexico cut its prison population 32%, now saves $4,000,000 a year in prison costs and welfare payments to prisoners' families. The whole prison ethos can be changed. Just as astronauts train by simulating space conditions, so prisons should be located right in the inmates' community, where a vastly augmented treatment staff could use local resources to help the offender identify with an-ticriminal people and succeed at legitimate work.
To reduce regimentation, says Criminologist Daniel Gia-ser, no prison should house more than 100 inmates, v 4,000 in many of today's bastilles; small groups of tractable prisoners could live in Y.M.C.A.-type hotels or apartments.
And prisons should exploit the ironic fact that mere aging is now the main cause of going straight. Since youths are the most defiant prisoners, they should be scattered among older, wiser men, not segregated as now. In a community setting, prisons can expand work-and-study furloughs, arrange part-time release programs with industry, universities and therapy groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous. At the federal penitentiary in Danbury, Conn., for example, Dictograph Products Inc. sponsors a training program for microsoldering hearing aids, hires the trained convicts after their release. Geared to problem solving, such treatment reconciles offenders with relatives, schools, employers. It is urgently needed in local jails, which should be integrated into state correctional systems. Under this concept, prisons would resemble hospitals; "punishment" would produce functioning human beings—the way to crime prevention.
Searching for Reinforcement
Crucial to such reform is a more rational definition of criminal behavior. For example, half of all county-jail inmates are in for drunkenness—something far better treated at public-health detoxification centers. In mass arrests of small drug pushers, police mainly cut supplies and raise prices, which addicts then meet by more thefts and burglaries. In New York City, the daily toll is almost $1,000,000, and addicts account for half the city's convicts. Not only are big suppliers untouched; a national trend to mandatory sentences and no parole or probation in drug cases is defeating curative efforts.