The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Prison Overcrowding

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. Early in February the most savage riot in the modem history of American prisons killed 35 inmates and virtually destroyed the New Mexico State Penitentiary in Santa Fe. Although the death toll was lower than the 43 at Attica, New York, it was all caused by prisoners who erupted in an orgy of sadistic killing. The official inquiry has not yet ended, but New Mexico authorities have already said that a principal cause of the outburst was overcrowding. The prison housed one third more inmates than it was designed to hold. Such overcrowding exists in many other states, and, in the wake of Santa Fe. prison authorities fear it could lead to more riots.

Tonight we visit one of the country`s most overcrowded prisons to see what that actually means to prisoners` lives. We examine what is causing overcrowding and what can be done to stop more prisons from erupting. Jim?

JIM LEHRER: Robin, shortly after the New Mexico riot, the Associated Press did a survey of prison overcrowding nationally. The results were startling. Twenty-three states, like New Mexico, had state prison systems already housing more inmates than they were built to hold, and most of the others were at capacity or nearing it. Their prison officials saw troubles ahead. `It`s only a matter of time before we`ll have the same thing in Wyoming,` said an official in that state. From a California prison man came this word: `I don`t want to indulge in any self-fulfilling prophecies, but the more crowded you get, the more likely some riot or life-threatening situation.` Prisoners who rioted and took 100 hostages at the Essex County jail in New Jersey just last month cited overcrowding as their major complaint. Last week in Kentucky an inmate-brought law suit was settled, after state officials agreed to spend 42 million dollars to relieve overcrowding in two Kentucky prisons. In short, we could have gone to any one of hundreds of prisons around the country to illustrate the overcrowding problem. We chose just one, just up the road from here in Maryland, the Maryland House of Correction, in Jessup. A medium security prison, it was built in 1879 to hold under 1,000 prisoners; 400 more than that live there now. Their crimes range from minor offenses to the serious crimes of rape and murder. Their sentences range from 90 days to life. Their warden is Paul Davis.

[videotape]:

PAUL DAVIS: There are probably many people that look at the prison system and corrections and say, `They`re not supposed to be country clubs, these prisons. After all, people that come into prisons are those who have raped and robbed and murdered, and they ought to be made to pay.` I don`t argue that, and I won`t argue against the debt that society had to be satisfied. However, I think the punishment is the removal from society, the alienation from family and friends and community. I don`t think that that punishment need be multiplied ten-fold by saying, `We`re gonna put you in a little cage somewhere, and we`re gonna cram you in there with another fellow, and we`re gonna make you suffer 24 hours a day.` The suffering is already there. Overcrowding impacts tremendously and most visibly in housing areas. For instance, in the dormitories, we`re housing approximately 119 men in a dormitory that by court order should house only 106 and by actual design should probably hold no more than 80. We`re probably talking about as little as a foot and a half, two foot, between some of the bunks, maximum, perhaps, of three foot. As you go into their cells, our cells are somewhat smaller even than the minimum requirement for one man. We keep two men in many of those cells.

PRISONER: You got F317 here. Temporary resident of Adrian Way and Bobby Smith. As you can see, this is 6 by 8, a very small space for two people, very small space. And, if me and him had to get by one another as he wanted to get out the door, we`d both have to turn sideways. Still, wouldn`t be quite enough room because of this locker here and these two lockers here. This is our toilet area. As you see, it`s not located very far from where we have to sleep at. If one of us is on the toilet defecating [sic] or urinating, or one of us is urinating, the smell, is, you know, it can`t ventilate because there`s no proper ventilation.

PRISONER: Okay. AH right now. If he wants to use the toilet this is the procedures we have to go through. First he`s got to sit down, like this. Then I got to move this way, then he`s got to get up, to use the toilet.

PRISONER: I`m five-seven -- that`s considered short. Even sitting down, if we both-- if we sat down, this is as far as your head can go. You can`t sit erect, and this is very uncomfortable. To read a book you have to lay-- either lay down or sit on the toilet, which is a very small space in itself. It`s depressing. It`s, it`s--a lot of tension builds up, you know, unless you and your cell buddy is-- are sure, you know, really on good time with one another, this creates a lot of tension. You might want to get by, he trying to get by, he bumps-- and damn, man, you know, why don`t ya, you sit down somewhere, you know, and get off my feet or something, man, watch my feet, or something, your shoes are in the way, or something of that nature. A dog has more room than this. Seriously, a dog has more room than this, man.

DAVIS: Staff probably suffers from overcrowding as much as the residents of the institution. In many cases, you have an officer who is supervising a hundred or more inmates for eight hours a day.

GUARD: Approximately every thirty minutes I make a complete tour of the dormitory. Check to make sure that nobody in the dormitory is ill or laying down, you known, falling down in the back somewhere and hurt himself, or nobody`s been assaulted. It`s a little easy to get on each other`s nerves when you`re stuck inside a large room with 119 other men and people have a tendency to get on each other`s nerves. I mean, the man next to you is eating` when you`re trying to sleep. And he wants to talk or listen to a radio station that you don`t want to listen to but you`re forced to because you have to live with all them other people.

PRISONER: This is my bunk. This is this guy`s bunk. If he gets a cold, I got one. You understand? He don`t have another whole room. I mean, you know, you think in terms, you wake up the next morning, you smell the other guy`s breath, he sleeps just that close to you.

PRISONER: You got approximately 1500 men in the institution, approximately about maybe 700 men are working, you got another four or five hundred men that are totally idle around here. You know, there`s no jobs for `em, you know, This constitutes a lot of hostility because the guys don`t have nothing but idleness.

DAVIS: We`re able on any given day to have gainfully employed in some activity about 897 men. We average about 26% of our inmates in what we call idle status, so that the vast majority of their 24 hour day is spent laying around the dormitory or lying around in the cell.

GUARD: As far as equivalent laundry we have a waiting list they call a job bank. Have men sending letters out to me all day long. I`d like to have a job in laundry, I want work. I don`t want to lay around.

PRISONER: If you`re lucky enough to get in front of classification and go for a job, the only jobs they will have will be kitchen or the laundry. The majority of time you`re going to spend at least twenty-three hours a day in this cell. I`ve been here back in the system since the 16th of October and I have yet to see a classification board or any type of employment. I have been around here personally myself and asked for a job and I was told the job bank is filled up, they have no jobs.

DAVIS: Another one of the areas impacted tremendously by the over crowdedness in the prison is the visit area. We`re operating a visit room that is far less than adequate for handling the visits of our 1294 and yet we`re running visits for 1520 something.

PRISONER: What problems do you think there are down there? Everybody`s all bunched up, `cause they only give you an hour on Sundays and they cut that down to 45 minutes. That`s not enough to say anything.

PRISONER: You sitting elbow-to-elbow with the next person. There`s some things that you want to say to your people that you don`t want the next man to hear. Something he want to say to his that he don`t want you to hear.

PRISONER: [talking through screen to a woman, very close and in a low voice] Sometimes I get depressed, too. You understand what I`m saying? I think of you in the kitchen--

GUARD: Betty Harrison, time`s up.

DAVIS: What does it mean? It means the man goes into a visit today and gets some bad news from home. Maybe his brother comes and delivers the Dear John message from his wife or his girlfriend. He`s-- There are some hostilities that are building up in this man, and maybe he`s one of those few that would like to, in some creative way, get rid of those hostilities. Maybe he wants to go over and bounce a basketball around or beat on a punching bag. He gets to the gymnasium and the basketball courts are crowded. He can`t get his hand on a basketball. Can`t get his foot on the court. So what does he do? Perhaps he`s the guy who goes back to the housing area and if he`s one of the men that is in a cell with another man, perhaps he takes it out on his cell partner.

PRISONER: It usually results in something physical because that`s the way men react in here. They don`t react on an intellectual basis. Every time they interact it`s gonna be some type of physical, you know, or some type of physical threat; there`s body harm.

DAVIS: One of the most critical yet not so visible problems that we face because of the overcrowded conditions in the institution is the ability of our classification counselors to deliver services to the inmate population.

PRISONER: You got ten classification officers to deal with 1500 men. So you got approximately I`d say round-about maybe 150 men to one classification officer.

DAVIS: Three times a week our counselors will sit on what we call reclassification teams. Those teams simply take requests from the population for classification to another job, another institution, or whatever, and will spend an entire day screening anywhere from 40 to 60 or 80 residents.

PRISONER: There is classification here and I haven`t seen anybody. Only thing I have received is a note informing me that I was supposed to go in front of the classification board for transfer consideration Monday. That`s it.

CLASSIFICATION OFFICER: [to prisoner] Mr. Chambers, the team is gonna recommend that you be returned to the camp system. Any questions? PRISONER: No, sir

CLASSIFICATION OFFICER: That`s all. PRISONER: Thank you. [leaves room]

CLASSIFICATION OFFICER: We make decisions based solely on available beds and moving men. And men who would not normally be transferred from this institution are transferred because of the push for available beds. Little or no thought is put into his actual past criminal history, just that he meet a certain minimum criteria for being transferred to minimum.

CLASSIFICATION OFFICER: [to entering prisoner] Bob Smith? Your counselor`s put you in for a job change. You`re working in a dining hall now. Is that correct? You still want to come out?

PRISONER: Well, no-- Out of here?

CLASSIFICATION OFFICER: No, out of the dining hall?

PRISONER: No, I never planned to come out of the dining hall.

CLASSIFICATION OFFICER: You want to stay there?

PRISONER: I been there ever since.

CLASSIFICATION OFFICER: We know that. But Mr. Guffy said that you told him that you wanted to be reclassified out.

PRISONER: No, I never told Guffy--Mr. Guffy that. I put a reclassification in for camp. 90-day check in.

ANOTHER CLASSIFICATION OFFICER: This is the reason for which you were brought here today.

FIRST CLASSIFICATION OFFICER: Okay, you have to see Mr. Smith about that, and he has to put in a recommendation, [prisoner leaves room]

PRISONER: It gives you a real dim outlook of everything. It`s like, wow, I`ll never get out of here with this many people. There`s no way I can get out of here, `cause I can`t get enough attention from my counselor cause there`s too many people in here.

PRISONER: And when you compress something for so long like that you gonna get some type of combustion. Some type of reaction. You dealing with human beings in here.

LEHRER: The State of Maryland acted earlier this week to correct its overcrowding problems. The Maryland Legislature voted money to renovate Jessup and generally boost the state system`s capacity by 500 prisoners among other things. In Maryland as in other states some of the impetus for doing something about it has come from law suits filed by inmates and others interested in prison reform. Much of that court action nationally has been instigated by the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. Alvin Bronstein is the project`s Executive Director. First, Mr. Bronstein, would you agree with the Associated Press` survey results that just about every state prison system in the country is having an overcrowding problem or will soon have one?

ALVIN BRONSTEIN: That`s true. But the problem is even more serious than overcrowding. Overcrowding is just the tip of the iceberg. They`re also inadequately staffed. They have terrible levels of idleness and violence. They have bad environmental health conditions. And overcrowding really exacerbates all of those things.

LEHRER: You saw the film along with the rest of us on Jessup. How typical - - You`ve been in many, many prisons. You`re very familiar with prisons around the country. How typical is that Jessup situation?

BRONSTEIN: It`s very typical. Jessup is typical. Attica was typical. And, unfortunately, New Mexico was typical. And there`s potential there for all of those things. I mean, the reality is that 60% of the states today have either had their state prisons or prison systems declared unconstitutional or are presently being challenged in court. I think that says something about our society.

LEHRER: What is causing the overcrowding problem?

BRONSTEIN: The problem and the solution don`t lie in the prisons, unfortunately. And the warden there, who seemed like a very decent person, cannot do anything about it. The problem is that in this country we send more people to prison than any other country in the world with two exceptions. And those are Russia and South Africa. And if you eliminate political prisoners in those countries, we`re number one. The problem is we attempt to deal with crime by using prisons and all of the research shows that there`s no relationship between imprisonment and crime rates. Our leadership merely -- whether you goto Mr. Kennedy at one extreme or Mr. Reagan at the other -- they talk about more prisons to deal with crime rates. The way to deal with crime in this country is to do something about racism and housing, employment, all of those other things. Education. And that`s the way we`ll solve this problem.

LEHRER: But in the meantime, the prisons are overcrowded. How do you solve the overcrowding problem that exists today?

BRONSTEIN: By political leadership. For example, in Maryland the Governor`s Task Force report, which was just filed within the last month, showed that 50% of the people of that prison as well as their other prisons are there for nonviolent offenses. Those people ought to be removed from the prisons. They ought to be put on the streets in some supervised capacity where they can work, where they can make restitution to their victims. We`ve got to get people out of the prisons and stop bringing so many in who don`t belong there in the first place.

LEHRER: So the solution, to you at least, is certainly not building more prisons,

BRONSTEIN: Absolutely not. If we build more, we`ll overcrowd those. Ohio built a brand new penitentiary seven years ago. It`s overcrowded. It`s been declared unconstitutional because it`s overcrowded. They reopened their old one. It`s overcrowded. And both of them are now under court order.

LEHRER: Does the political mood of this country at this particular time fit what you think the solution should be to the problem?

BRONSTEIN: Only in the sense that we`re going through a period of fiscal conservatism. People don`t want to spend money on a lot of things, least of all on prisons. So that helps us. But in terms of issues, clearly the mood is very conservative. But that, it seems to me, is the responsibility of public officials. They have got to speak the truth. That prisons damage people. Prisons are not going to solve crime problems in this country. This is the only country that has no national crime policy or national criminal justice policy except lock them up and make the streets safe.

LEHRER: Thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: The man charged with finding out what overcrowding, among many factors, had to do with the Santa Fe prison riot is New Mexico`s Attorney General Jeff Bingaman. His department is conducting the official investigation into what caused the riot and what preventive measures ought to be taken in the future. He`s with us this evening in Washington. Mr. Attorney General, I know your report is not final yet, but do you personally believe that overcrowding was one of the important contributing factors in Santa Fe?

BINGAMAN: Well, I think it clearly was one of the important contributing factors. The more people that you put into a prison, the higher the level of tension. And I think we, as I think you indicated earlier, were approximately a third-- had a third more people in the prison than it was built to house.

MacNEIL: What in practical terms-- You`ve just heard Mr. [Bronstein] say that we are sending too many people to prison for one reason or another. What in practical terms is the reason for the overcrowding in your state`s prisons?

BINGAMAN: Well, in practical terms, I think it`s a problem of lack of adequate planning for the entire criminal justice system. The prison is really the tail end of the whole system and every time you make a change in your sentencing policies, every time you have shifts in political attitudes which affects sentencing, the problem is manifested in the prisons. And I think we`ve had a lot of changes in the early parts of the criminal justice system and it results in more people in being in prison. And there`s been no planning to deal with that.

MacNEIL: What do you think of Mr. Bronstein`s way of solving this? I`m sorry, I mispronounced his name a moment ago. --Mr. Bronstein`s way of solving this?

BINGAMAN: Well, I think ideally he`s right. If in fact we could solve all the basic social problems we would eliminate the crime and we would eliminate the need for the prisons. There are a lot of specific things that I think could be done, at least in the prison system in New Mexico, to reduce the need for maximum security incarceration of prisoners. For example, I think our system of classifying prisoners as they come into the system to determine whether they should be housed in maximum security, minimum security or medium security is inadequate and I think generally recognized by everybody as being inadequate.

MacNEIL: Do you agree with him that there are a lot of people in prison who were convicted of nonviolent crimes who could be -- nonviolent offenses -- who could be treated outside?

BINGAMAN: Our situation in New Mexico, I don`t think, would indicate that half of our prisoners are in that category such as he suggested was the case in Maryland. But there`s no doubt that there are some people in that category who, if we had the ability and skill to properly classify, we could put them in minimum security work projects.

MacNEIL: Are you in favor of what some reformers are, which is determinate sentencing -- giving definite sentences for certain crimes without the indeterminate sentence that is so often given where the parole board can decide how long the person stays in prison?

BINGAMAN: Well, I think it depends on how that`s applied. We have a new determinate sentencing law in New Mexico which has some benefits and some disadvantages. I think the benefits of determinate sentencing are they take a lot of the arbitrariness out of the judge`s decision. It does not depend so much upon which judge you happen to go before. The disadvantages, of course, are that under the determinate sentencing you wind up with longer sentences and many of the carrots which the present administrators could previously hold out to try to motivate people to do better as prisoners are gone. They no longer have that ability to grant early release.

MacNEIL: Finally, the suits that are being brought-- the ACLU`s among them -- are they aggravating discontent in the prisons or are they helping to solve the problems of overcrowding?

BINGAMAN: I think they`re probably doing both. I think that the suits that they have brought have undoubtedly raised expectations on the part of some prisoners and have thereby put a-- sort of a destabilizing influence into our prison systems. At the same time, spending money on prisons is not a politically popular thing to do and I think if the courts were not addressing the problem it`s doubtful to me that in most situations the problem would be addressed at all.

MacNEIL: Thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Mr. Bronstein, would you agree that some of your lawsuits have been a destabilizing influence on some of these prisons?

BRONSTEIN: Well, I think we need a little definition. It is clear that we do raise expectations. And we try to be very careful about not promising more than we can deliver. I don`t really believe it`s a destabilizing influence. In fact, a number of corrections experts throughout the country have told us that our lawsuits have probably saved hundreds of lives by preventing things other than what happened in New Mexico happening in other places.

LEHRER: Would you agree?

BINGAMAN: No, I think-- as I say, I think the suits have been helpful in addressing the problem through the court system because of the inability of the other aspects of our political system to deal with it.

LEHRER: In other words, you`re saying that political leaders have abdicated their responsibility and the courts are having to do it for them?

BINGAMAN: Well, I`m saying it`s one of these issues that you don`t get elected because you spend a lot of money on prisons. Nobody in the general population wants to hear about prisons at all. And the less they hear about it the better they like it. So I do think that it`s difficult for legislatures, especially in a period of fiscal conservatism, to appropriate large sums of money to solve prison problems.

LEHRER: What is your position, Mr. Bronstein, on the determinate sentence question?

BRONSTEIN: We, in an ideal situation, favor a flat or determinate sentence so that the person who is sentenced knows precisely what kind of time they`re gonna serve and that we favor the abolition of parole as a release mechanism. The problem is that--

LEHRER: Now, why? Why?

BRONSTEIN: Well, because we believe that`s the fair way to eliminate disparity, to reduce the kinds of confidence games that go on in prison where prisoners do things to influence parole boards, parole boards guess at when a person is rehabilitated and they`re really just guessing. But the caveat is that we favor the determinate sentence only when the sanction of imprisonment is used as a last resort. We favor first a variety of other sanctions -- fines, restitution, public service -- and only when you must use incarceration, then a relatively short determinate sentence.

LEHRER: Mr. Bingaman, let me ask you this. You`re from the political world as well as the legal world. Would a person running for political office or holding public office now who advocated the position of the ACLU, which is basically there are too many prisoners. The solution to the prison problem is to take a lot of the people who are in prison and get them out of there. Is that a saleable issue right now?

BINGAMAN: I don`t think it`s saleable without a lot more being done. I think that the examples we`ve had -- we have just as many instances where people who should be maximum security prisoners are put in minimum security facilities and escape and cause problems -- that causes a tremendous outcry and we find that we err that much on that side just as much in New Mexico as we do perhaps in taking minimum security people and putting them in maximum. So I don`t think it`s politically feasible to do just that. I think that if we can solve the basic problems Mr. Bronstein referred to in housing, in discrimination, in those things, then some of these problems that require prisons would go away.

BRONSTEIN: But it would help, wouldn`t it, if politicians began to say things that bore some relationship to reality? For example, that prison that we saw in the film is called a house of correction. It is clearly not a house and it hasn`t corrected anyone in many, many years. I see people in the new National Zoo looking at the places where they keep the lions in this beautiful outdoor open space and say. isn`t it humane that we don`t keep them in cages? But they tolerate keeping men and women and children in cages in this country because our political leadership somehow suggests that that`s gonna deal with crime.

LEHRER: We have to leave it at that. Robin?

MacNEIL: Yes. Thank you Mr. Bingaman. Mr. Bronstein. for joining us this evening. Good night, Jim.

LEHRER: Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: That`s all for tonight. We`ll be back on Monday night. I`m Robert MacNeil. Good night.