Texas Tough

Fear, vengeance, and the rise of US prisons

By Bill Williams, Globe Correspondent  |  March 29, 2010

The United States currently incarcerates 2.4 million people, a greater proportion of its citizens than any other nation in the world. How did it happen?

In his ambitious new book Robert Perkinson argues that the country’s modern prisons evolved out of slavery, with Texas leading the way. After the Civil War, Southern states began arresting freed slaves, sometimes on flimsy charges, and sending them to work for plantation owners in a system known as “convict leasing.’’ The author estimates that the death toll associated with convict leasing exceeded 30,000 over several decades. States eventually ended the practice when they realized it would be more profitable to set up their own farms and factories, using convict labor.

Perkinson, who teaches history at the University of Hawaii, describes the horrific treatment of prisoners, including beatings and backbreaking work that sometimes resulted in death. Texas guards punished inmates by locking them in dark boxes, and once stuffed 12 convicts into such a box. Within hours, eight had died from suffocation. Some penologists compared conditions at Texas prison plantations to those in Nazi concentration camps.

In the era of Jim Crow the public cared little about how convicts were treated. “Texas became the template for a more fearful and vengeful society,’’ Perkinson writes.

Unfortunately, the book bogs down in repetition and too many numbers, names, and quotes. After reading scores of stories of rapes, beatings, and savage mistreatment, one’s mind becomes numb.

An important theme in the book is the long-running debate involving harsh punishment versus rehabilitation. The reader soon feels a sense of déjà vu, as myriad progressive initiatives are each followed by disillusionment and a return to tougher punishment. Researchers have yet to prove a link between rehabilitation programs and reduced recidivism, but after reading this book one wonders if the progressive model has ever been given a fair trial.

Between 1965 and 2000, the prison population shot up 600 percent nationally, but 1,200 percent in Texas. The Lone Star state today keeps 170,000 inmates under lock and key, which is more than the countries of Germany, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands combined.

The author demonstrates that both Democrats and Republicans have promoted the current policy of toughness and mass incarceration because no politician wants to be tagged as “soft on crime.’’

The federal prison system mushroomed under Republican Presidents Nixon, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush, but it may surprise some to learn that Democratic President Clinton presided over the most intensive incarceration boom in US history. Drug convictions account for much of the ballooning inmate population.

Perkinson makes a convincing case that mass incarceration is the most pressing civil rights issue today. One of every six black men has spent time behind bars, compared with one in 39 white men. Black men go to prison at twice the rate they go to college.

Although “Texas Tough’’ reflects considerable research, it takes on a dry, just-the-facts tone. We don’t get much insight into what the author thinks about the horrid conditions he describes. Much of the book, including 91 pages of footnotes, reads like a doctoral thesis.

Perkinson ends by asking, “Is there a better way?’’ He cites three possibilities: Continue building prisons, return to the ideal of rehabilitation, or address the root social causes of crime, such as poverty. He seems to favor the latter course, but without much enthusiasm or specificity.

Overall, “Texas Tough’’ offers timely background on how the United States came to be the world’s imprisonment behemoth — essential reading if the nation ever hopes to move in a different, less-punitive and more-rehabilitative direction.

Bill Williams is a freelance writer in West Hartford and a member of the National Book Critics Circle.