Politicians

Policy

In shaping the penal system, correctional management is driven by the prevailing politics and ideology in a political jurisdiction. The heads of correctional agencies are usually political appointees who share the ideological views of those who hired them. Individual wardens and other administrators are subsequently made system directors, thus transmitting their ideological beliefs into practice. In order to secure budgetary resources, institution and agency heads must be attentive and responsive to the current correctional policy climate in the legislature and the executive mansion.

Likewise, crime control policy often appears to be motivated by ideology rather than by empirical evidence. Thus, since the 1980s, there has been a general move toward “Get tough” criminal justice policies that seem to be driven by burgeoning conservative views rather than by any evidence that they are effective. Laws such as Three Strikes and Truth in Sentencing have served to extend the amount of time some offenders spend in prison, stressing the resources of already overcrowded facilities, despite not affecting the crime rate overall.

It becomes clear that the media plays a critical role in the politics of prisons. For instance, the media help define which behaviors deserve punishment. Thus, hysterical and exaggerated news accounts of the dangers of crack cocaine led to increasingly harsh sentences for those convicted of crack-related crimes. In addition, politicians and the public often respond to media portrayals (accurate or not) of prison conditions. Riots, escapes, and stories of inmates working the system all frame the general policy discourse on corrections, and contribute in part to the “Get tough” movement.

There are some exceptions to the “Get tough” trend. For instance, as community has become a popular buzzword in criminal justice policy, certain community-oriented, rehabilitative policies have emerged. Drug courts are one contemporary example, in which the court, probation officers, and treatment providers collaborate to focus holistically on the needs of an offender. Likewise, fiscal realities have promoted policy change in some jurisdictions. In California, voters approved a ballot initiative that mandates probation and community-based treatment for first and second nonviolent drug offenses. The policy is expected to yield a substantial cost savings to the state. As the examples illustrate, politics is a complex process, and factors that are salient at one time (i.e., ideology) may give way to factors that are more persuasive (i.e., fiscal stress) at another time.

Political Imprisonment

Prisons have also frequently been used as an instrument of politicians who wish to confine those who publicly dissent from or challenge an established authority. Examples of political imprisonment can include acts such the 1977 imprisonment of Argentine journalist Jacobo Timmerman, whose newspaper La Opinión published articles critical of the Argentine government. Other examples include the detention of large numbers of individuals, including the imprisonment of dissidents by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union, the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust, and, more recently, the incarceration of opposition under Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. Political imprisonment is widely perceived as a human rights violation and is decried by human rights advocacy organizations such as Amnesty International.

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