Prison Market Growth: Can the Boom Continue?

        by Michael H. Frawley, AIA

        During the last two decades, prison construction in the United States has been accelerating at a lightning-fast pace which is causing many design professionals to wonder if this phenomenon will continue. As a higher percentage of state budgets is being allocated to Departments of Corrections coffers, many officials have voiced concern over the direction the criminal justice market has taken. In a somewhat “tongue-in-cheek” overview of the growth presently being experienced in the State of California, one legislator was reported to have quipped, “If our inmate growth continues to expand at its present rate, it won’t be too long until everyone in the State will either be a prisoner or a guard.”

        Bypassing the irony of the statement, the real question is, “Will the taxpayers of California continue to tolerate the expenditures required to pay the tab?” Some estimates indicate that the cost of housing California’s prisoners will soon reach $5 billion a year.

        Just the Facts Ma’am, Nothing But the Facts

        Not to be outdone, the rest of the country has been experiencing the same relative “growth.” Consider the following comparisons:

        These historical figures are staggering—and frightening. During the first 50-year interval, inmate population experienced a relatively modest annual rate of increase of only 2.8%. That figure grew almost six-fold in the ensuing 14-year period, resulting in a demand that equated to 1,600 new prison beds per week in 1989.

        Statistics for the decade of the 1990’s are not any brighter. In the last five years alone, the incarcerated population (prisons and jails) has grown an average 6.7% annually. Most significantly, despite the massive justice system construction program which we have experienced in the last two decades, most jurisdictions continue to operate above capacity—holding more prisoners in less space.

        Formula for Growth

        Can we continue to build enough facilities to serve the increased prison population and tougher crime bills? Will the need for additional cell space ever abate? Responses to these questions are truly complex because they encompass social attitudes and economics. Simplistically, the answer points to an ever-expanding prison construction program. The facts speak for themselves:
        • Population in the US continues to grow at a fairly constant rate.
        • The percentage of incarceration per 100,000 population has doubled since 1985.
        Recently initiated systemic laws/policies are all geared toward keeping prisoners incarcerated for longer periods of time.

        In order to better understand the complexity of the situation, let’s look at the equation:

        Swelling Population + Increasing Rate of Incarceration + Tougher Crime Laws = More Prison Construction

        Care must be taken, however, to recognize that this type of extrapolative reasoning is valid only to the extent that the future mirrors the past. While we could easily justify investing our energies in this seemingly bottomless market, the prudent design professional might first want to understand more about the dynamics of this environment. To that end, we do have to ask ourselves some additional questions:

        • What has happened in the last 10–15 years to precipitate this condition?
        • Will conditions permit the boom to continue?
        While there are many possible reasons offered for this incredible surge in inmate population, two in particular stand out—drugs and a change in social attitudes.

        The Impact of Drugs

        According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, almost half of the growth since 1980 is linked to the increased number of drug offenders entering prison. As reported in the Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin Prisoners in 1993, an estimated 30.5 percent of all new commitments in 1992 were drug offenders—up from 6.8 percent in 1980. The increase in drug offenders admitted to prison accounted for nearly 46 percent of the total growth in new court commitments during the same 12-year period. Compounding the impact of more drug-related arrests, the rate of drug offenders sent to state prison rose from 19 per 1,000 adult arrests (1980) to 104 per 1,000 (1993). Drugs are unquestionably at the root of our prison boom.

        Conservative Shift

        In the mid-1980’s, corrections retreated from many of its rehabilitation goals in response to the public perception that crime was out of control and efforts to rehabilitate offenders did not work. Judicial discretion with sentences crafted to specific offender’s needs were replaced with mandatory, lengthy prison terms in response to the call for increased public safety. More recently “three strikes and you’re out” has become the rallying-cry of politicians playing to the visceral fears of their constituencies. “Lock them up and throw away the key” has become the fashion, while the philosophical corruption and financial toll that these attitudes have taken on society is ignored or, at best, not fully understood.

        Philosophically, the wisdom of locking up more and more people for longer and longer periods of time, as the cornerstone of correctional policy, deserves scrutiny. Because no empirical evidence has been found linking rates of incarceration with reduction in crime, many doubts exist regarding whether incarceration provides society with the protection and safety it seeks. Once the public begins to understand the facts, it is possible that the pendulum may begin to swing back toward the goal of providing meaningful interventions that change offenders’ behavior. Rehabilitation coupled with public support for programs that return offenders to society as law-abiding citizens may play a role; however, altruism will most likely not be the prime motivator. Understanding the cost of our present direction is more likely to provide that change of heart.

        The Cost of Doing Time

        On a per-prisoner basis, the “three-strikes” measure must be recognized for its net effect on taxpayers’ dollars. While supported by an emotionally-charged public, commitment to enforcing such measures obligates governments to spend upwards of $500,000 for each prisoner over the age of 50—despite studies which indicate many criminal careers slow to a halt. Between 1992 and 1993, the Criminal Justice Institute reports that the average percentage of time served by US inmates increased by 23.7 percent. This “aging” of the inmate population is the result of recent conservative legislation directed at keeping criminals locked up for longer periods of time, despite their age.

        In the aggregate sense, a report released by the Sentencing Project indicates that keeping US inmates incarcerated costs $26.8 billion annually. Not withstanding the propensity to build, the report further proposed that “there is no reason to believe that continuing to build and fill more prisons will stop the crime and violence in our communities.” Yet, we do continue to build, operate, and maintain— a significant financial factor not necessarily understood by many politicians or electorate. As difficult as it is to appropriate capital dollars for construction, over the 30-year life cycle of any prison only 10 percent of the total dollars expended on that institution represents construction. Fully 90 percent of the money associated with the cost of a facility is for maintenance and operations—the billions of dollars expended as an investment in the construction of facilities are truly the proverbial “tip of the iceberg.”

        Crystal Ball Approach

        Symptomatic of our past has been the correctional manifestation of a quote attributed to A. Maslow: “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” Even the most conservative in our midst today would agree that the exigencies of our inmate population/growth problems demand an exploration of an expanded array of “tools” as alternatives to building. Let’s examine three elements which are driving forces in the corrections market.

        Intermediate Sanctions

        Crime does not dictate prison pop-ulations—social policy does. Reasonable-thinking people with the diligence to delve into the crux of the problem generally agree that we cannot continue to house every person convicted of a crime and say that they are all similarly dangerous to society or hopelessly incorrigible. Whether the motives are altruistic or budgetary, efforts are being made to divert from the correctional environment those individuals who should really not be incarcerated. Making this distinction requires the development of programs and opportunities to intervene in the incarceration cycle or to provide non-construction solutions.

        Conditions of Confinement

        Conceptually, most individuals have come to understand that deprivation of liberty is, in and of itself, the punishment to be extracted for the commission of a crime. In today’s conservative atmosphere however, this concept is still difficult for the average citizen to understand. While most would agree that inmates should not be tortured or grossly mistreated, there is little sympathy expressed for prisoner complaints regarding their environment. “If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime” is the catch-phrase today. Few individuals not directly involved in the criminal justice system are aware that virtually everybody incarcerated in our institutions will someday be released. Notwithstanding the constitutional and human rights prerequisites, you simply cannot place inmates in an environment that is worse than where they came from and then blame the system for not making them better!

        Cost-effective Construction

        There presently exists a large segment of society with the perception that we have “country clubs” for prisons; people who give little thought to conditions of confinement unless their son or daughter happens to misstep. That’s where evolving standards and guidelines have served corrections so greatly in the last 25 years—and where they will continue into the next millennium. Ugly, however, is not necessarily less costly. Well-designed, efficient-to-operate, easy-to-maintain conditions of confinement are presently available in today’s market at costs equal to, or less than, the Bastilles of our past.

        Future Facility Use

        With the systemic complexity of the problem complicating any easy solutions, it’s evident that we will maintain a “build” mode for the foreseeable near-term future—a fact underscored by the Crime Bill. Despite the fact that the US presently has more people incarcerated than any other country in the world, billions of dollars will continue to be allocated for construction and operation of new prisons. In view of the tremendous resources required of these increasing requirements, it is also fairly obvious that we simply can not continue to build, and build, and build. Moreover, there exists a distinct possibility that, at some point in time, the proposition that we have overbuilt may become a reality. At the very least, the situation may require a refocusing of facility use. Although some of these tactics may seem a bit far-fetched, let’s consider what impact they may have on our criminal justice system:
        • Decriminalization of drugs;
        • Improved and more effective methods of in-home detention;
        • Genetic manipulation of crime-producing tendencies; and
        • Lunar Prisons—a penal colony on the moon—who’s to say?
        Getting back to reality—we have a tremendous investment in facilities that, by and large, have no practical use other than its primary one—a prison. Impregnable fortresses with small, immovable cubicles of steel and concrete are not conducive to re-use. In a perfect world, we would have no use for these facilities as prisons, but what other use could they possibly serve? Perhaps we should consider what can be incorporated in the design, before they are constructed, to facilitate their re-use and adaptation to more compatible functions in the future. Therein lies the challenge. As the pendulum swings and we recognize the need for alternatives to incarceration, we will eventually stop building. In the meantime, however, we will build, and build, and build. You can count on it. What happens, then, to what we have already built?

        It’s obvious that all factors indicate a continued aggressive response to the pressures of a conservative, crime-fearing public—more prisons. And, since incarceration is a function of population, it is no surprise that the most populous states have experienced the greatest expansion projects. California, Texas, the Federal System, New York, Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Georgia, and Pennsylvania presently constitute the “top ten” in prison population and will most likely maintain their relative positions in the foreseeable future.

        States projected to see substantial relative growth through 2025 (and a concomitant justice facility requirement) are New Mexico, Hawaii, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Utah, Alaska, and Wyoming. The big issue is whether a greater social awareness and the overwhelming financial pressures necessary to finance prison construction will ultimately force an amelioration of that direction. As such, we will accommodate the apparent conundrum of how to address, in different ways, the criminal condition created in our society by the criminals of our society.