A State in Shackles: The Effect of a Dysfunctional Childhood on Crime and Imprisonment

I. INTRODUCTION In 1977, America's prisons held about 280,000 people, with a prison rate that had remained static for fifty years. (1) Since then, however, its prison population has exploded to 2.3 million men and women, growing at a rate seventeen times that of the nation's overall population growth. Despite massive efforts to reverse the trend, the Land of the Free now incarcerates more of its citizens than any other nation in the world, and five and one-half times the rate of forty years earlier. (2) Although the United States comprises less than 5% of the world's population, it harbors 25% of the world's prisoners. (3) The United States also imprisons more people per capita than any other country; (4) more than eight times that of Western Europe, nearly seven times that of Canada, three-and-one-half times that of Mexico, (5) and more than China and India combined. (6) In all, over seven million Americans today are either incarcerated or on felony supervision; eleven million go to jail each year, (7) only a small minority of whom have been convicted of a crime. An estimated twenty million Americans have a felony record. (8) South Dakota's numbers are even more staggering. In 1977, South Dakota housed about 500 inmates, but over the past four decades that number has swelled to more than 3,900--a roughly 750% increase. (9) The state's prison numbers have grown at a rate thirty times that of the state's overall population increase during the period. (10) Today South Dakota imprisons more people per capita than every state it borders. (11) The increased prison populations have placed unprecedented burdens upon state and federal welfare systems and state and county budgets which pay to feed, clothe, house, and cover the substantial medical costs of inmates. The era of mass incarceration has also profoundly affected millions upon millions of America's children. What do we really know, though, about the lives of those sentenced to prison and how they ended up there? While we know America's seemingly insatiable appetite for illegal drugs drives the vast majority of crime, what do we understand about the factors that lead to addiction? (12) Finally, are there ways in which the system itself actually perpetuates and exacerbates the problems and circumstances that led them to prison? The answers to those questions lie not in the law, but in mountains of data developed in the fields of sociology, socioeconomics, demography, and in the still-unfolding science of the brain. It is in the data that a mosaic of the prison population emerges, revealing a multi-generational sub-culture made up largely of the under-educated, the dysfunctional poor, the addicted, and the mentally ill. (13) This culture sustains itself into the next generation due to various mutations of those factors, fueled by exceedingly high rates of unintended births. These factors create an environment in which the children of prisoners often also grow up in impoverished, unstable homes, which can lead to a host of adverse educational and economic outcomes, and eventually lead those children also into poverty, mental illness, and addiction. The path they tread all too frequently leads to prison. While the imprisoned come from all walks of life, each with a unique life story, two-thirds of South Dakota inmates lack a high school diploma, about 90% suffer from a substance disorder, many with a co-occurring mental disorder; a substantial number grew up fatherless and in poverty; many--including over half the women in prison--are childhood abuse survivors. (14) Yet, more than half of the men and 75% of the women in South Dakota's prison system are there for nonviolent crimes. (15) This article is not about statutes and case law. It is about the troubled lives experienced by so many dwelling in society's shadows, their road to prison, and the factors that continue to shackle them long after they have served their sentences. …

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