Are prisons the solution? examining why crimes happen

A very important component of the proposition, states that anyone convicted of certain crimes will be serve longer time in prison (as stated in my earlier posts). This is done in order to keep crime away from the streets and away from threatening the safety of others.

It is interesting to see, though that those who are committing crimes (or at least being convicted for it at higher rates) are less educated black males.

The fact that black males are more likely to be in prison. In 1993, one in 50 men in the workforce were imprisoned, compared to one in every eleven black men I the workforce were imprisoned (p.26). Education too is a factor for crime, “a disproportionate number of men in prison are high school dropouts.” In fact, in 1991 the Survey of State Prison Inmates reported that of those in prison, two-thirds had not gradated.

And although imprisonment of all convicted criminals has increased, evidence shows that simply isolating criminals does not reduce crime. Those who engage in unlawful activities are not random mistakes of society. Crimes are heavily led by social circumstances that affect some groups more than others in our country.


“In the past two decades or so, more and more American men, particularly the young, the less educated and blacks, have been involved in crime, despite an increased risk of imprisonment” (p.2).


If the prison rate has increased, and undocumented citizens do not increase the rate in crème (as written in an earlier post), then why are crime rates still high? The fact is that incarcerating convicted people does not fix the issues that contribute to crime.

There are trends in society that correlate with crime, which I took and pasted below.


“First, the demographics of the criminal population show that those who commit crimes consist disproportionately of persons with low legitimate earnings prospects- the young, the less educated, persons with low test scores, and so on” (p. 10).

“Second, joblessness seems associated with greater crime (Chiricos, 1987; Free- man, 1983, 1995). For example, areas with high unemployment tend to have high crime rates”

“Third, greater inequality is associated with higher rates of crime (Chiricos, 1987; Freeman, 1983, 1995). Even homicide rates are correlated with measures of inequality across cities (Land, McCall and Cohen, 1990). In the most comprehen- sive study, Lee (1993) found a substantive positive relation between levels of earn- ings inequality and crime rates across metropolitan areas in 1970 and 1980.”

The expansion of prison does not answer the real issues that occur and influence crime. I hate to discredit the proposition in this respect because the safety of victims and community members is important. However, there seems to be a real misunderstanding of known information about the ineffectiveness of prisons, which do not “fix” people and the real reasons these issues arise in the first place.


Freeman, Richard. "Why Do So Many Young American Men Commit Crimes and What Might We Do About It?." The Journal of Economic Perspectives 10(1996): 25-42.