An Analysis and Comparison of Prison Systems in the U.S. vs. Hong Kong

Prisons in the US vs Hong Kong

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An Analysis and Comparison of Prison Systems in the U.S. vs. Hong Kong

This paper will compare the widely different correctional systems of the United States and Hong Kong. The U.S., because of the size and regional variation of being a large country, obviously has many internal differences: Prisons in rural Kentucky can be vastly different from urban prisons in southcentral Los Angeles. The Hong Kong prison system, on the other hand, is more homogenous, serving as it does the more manageable area of a highly urbanized island. Nevertheless, it is still possible to generalize about the American correctional system in overall terms and to compare that basic model to that of the Hong Kong system. This paper will strive to identify the salient points of each systems, the strengths as well as the weaknesses, and compare and contrast them.

There is one salient aspect makes the American correctional system immediately stand out from all others in the world: It currently has the highest rate of incarceration of any country, locking up 716 people per 100,000 (Center for Prison Studies 2013). What this means is that the U.S. has five percent of the world's population, but a quarter of its prisoners-or morethan 2.2 million (The Economist 2013). Hong Kong, by contrast, pales in comparison, locking up 128 per 100,000, and ranking 121 on the same world ranking (Center for Prison Studies). The reasons behind this are not germane to this paper, but they do indicate that the U.S. has a much larger criminal population, and much of that seems to tie in directly with the American War on Drugs.

Regardless populations generally, another major issue is overcrowding. Both systems are currently overloaded with prisoners, but Hong Kong prisons are especially overcrowded (Human Rights Correspondence School 2013). Maximum security prisons particularly, and the worst example is the Stanley prison, which held 2032 inmats despite a maximum capacity of 1409 (Human Rights Correspondence School). Women's prisons in Hong Kong are also operating at far above capacity, with three women's prisons in 2012 reporting operation at 228, 189, and 178 of capacity (Human Rights Correspondence School). Overall, the Hong Kong correctional system was 1,137 prisoners above the total capacity of 10,963 prisoners (Human Rights Correspondence School).

Overcrowding in American prisons varies greatly from state to state, but at its worst, in California, the situation is just as bad if not worse than in Hong Kong. Overcrowding reached such proportions in California that the state was mandated by state court, then by the U.S. Supreme Court to remedy the situation, by "shedding 30,000 prisoners over the next two years" (Medina 2011). This resulted in roughly 10,000 prisoners not being released, but being shipped to the prison systems of other states (Medina). California is usually regarded as the bellweather state in the U.S., giving an indication of where future trends are heading. The currrent indictions in the correctional department do not look promising.

Just as bad as the overcrowding, is that there is "far too much idleness," according to Matthew Cate, the secretary of the state prison system (Medina). This creates a dangerous and morally corrosive situation in which criminals sit around with nothing to do other than learn criminal skills from other criminals. In enforced idleness situations such as this, inmates are not even receiving the pretense of rehabilitation, but only stagnating in an environment almost guaranteed to make them become worse. Combined with overcrowding, this "leads to greater violence, more staff overtime and a total inability to deal with health care and mental illness issues," according to a former California state prison director (Medina).

The Hong Kong system, as does the U.S., separates its inmates according to sex, and to age (Hong Kong Special Administrative Regional Government 2013). The systems runs compulsionary drug treatment for those convicted of drug-related crimes, with can last up to one year, with a follow-up probationary period of one year. Inmates are also provided psychological services if such are determined to be needed following a compulsory psychological screening (Hong Kong Special Administrative Regional Government). Young inmates (between the ages of 14 and 21) are also required to sit through half-days of classwork (Hong Kong Special Administrative Regional Government). The Hong Kong prison system is also striving to implement non-smoking policies in its jails, in conformance with the increasingly strict antismoking policies of Hong Kong itself, and one of its prisons in 2013 became entirely smoke-free (Hong Kong Special Administrative Regional Government).

While Hong Kong prisons are entirely state run, the trend in the American prison system is towards privitization, a trend that has been greatly criticized in recent years. That is, more and more American prisons are being run by for-profit companies. A RAND study estimates that about eight percent of American prisoners are currently incarcerated in private prisons as of 2011 (Davis, Bozick, Steele, Saunders, and Miles 2013 p. 4).

Another big difference between the two systems is that the American prison system is more ethnically diverse than the Hong Kong prison population. Hong Kong prisons are overwhelming populated with ethnic Chinese, while American prisons are made up of the Caucasian, African-Americans, Latinos, Asian, etc., although the proportion of blacks and Latinos is much higher than their representation of the total population-so disproportionate, in fact, that "there are more black men in the grip of the criminal-justice system-in prison, on probation, or on parole-than were in slavery" (Gopnik 2013).

But American prisoners also seem to have more rights and priveleges than their counterparts in lockup in Hong Kong. For example, inmates in Hong Kong are prohibited from making phone calls (Human Rights Correspondence School). They can only receive visits from family or friends or others (only with special permission) twice a month, with no more than 3 at a time, for a duration of half an hour; some prisons also permit two additional monthly visits (Human Rights Correspondence School.) American prisoners have considerably more visitations privileges in general, especially with regard to phone calls, but again there is a huge variation in the policies that different states and individual prisons adopt.

Conditons in American jails again vary very much, but conditions in Hong Kong jails are considered generally to be "not too bad" (Human Rights Correspondence School). However, there is also a heavy gang, or Triad, presence, mainly composed of Hong Kong citizens, in order to protect themselves from Chinese nationals (Human Rights Correspondence School). American prisoners are notorious for vast arrays of different prison gangs, including the Aryan Brotherhood (a neo-Nazi white supremacist group), the Black Guerrilla Family, and Nuestra Familia, each of which is essentially a racially-based and extremely violent gang (U.S. Department of Justice 2013). California, incidentally, is also regarded as "the birthplace for every major prison gang in the country," according to state secretary Cates (Medina).

In contrast to the American and particularly the Californian culture of prison idleness, overcrowding, and gang-infested criminality, the Hong Kong jails strive to keep their inmates active, by keeping their prisoners "purposely and gainfully occupied for maintaining prison stability" (Hong Kong Special Administrative Regional Government). The prison system tries to achieve this by rehabilitation services, as well as industrial and vocational training (Hong Kong Special Administrative Regional Government). The Hong Kong system puts a vast majority of its inmates to work, making "office furniture, staff uniforms and leather acccoutrements, hospital linen, filter masks, fiberglass litter containers, traffic signs, slabs and kerbs for infrastructure projects" (Hong Kong Special Administrative Regional Government). The system also runs accredited vocational programs that lead to credentials that inmates can then put to use when they are released (Hong Kong Special Administrative Regional Government).

American prisoners also have vocational opportunities, which again vary widely, but are increasingy recognized as having an excellent effect on combatting recidivism. A recent RAND meta-analysis showed that vocational training in particular was successful in helping released inmates integrate more smoothly and permanently into civilian life after been released, and had a 28 percent higher chance of gained employment after being released (Davis, Bozick, Steele, Saunders, and Miles, 2013 p. xvii). However, the problem with many U.S. programs is that unlike the counterparts in Hong Kong, these programs are not mandatory (p. 4). Inmates in many states have the freedom to not participate, and there is not a uniform consensus on essentially forcing prisoners to stay active, and opposed to the conditions of idleness lamented above by the state prisoner secretary in California.

Overall, the question is which of these systems, the American or the Hong Kong, is more effective. Comparing the two can be incredibly difficult, because of the massive variations that extend across the American system, versus the relative sameness and small, self-contained nature of the Hong Kong system. But in the end, the Hong Kong system seems to be the more efficient of the two. True, it is also the easier to run. Hong Kong is an island-city, and it is easier to run a prison system on an urbanized island that it is to provide rehabilitation for 2.2 million prisoners, or the largest prison population in the world. There are fewer negative variables at work in the Hong Kong prisons, too. Racial problems, though they certainly exist, between Hong Kong citizens and mainland Chinese, as well as mainly prisoners of other nearby Asian countries, is not as complex and varied as the ethnic problem and conflicts that can occur in American jails. This also means that the prison gang problem is therefore more monolithic in Hong Kong jails, as opposed to the widespread proliferation of gangs in American prisons.

But the problems that affect both is overcrowding, and this is an endemic problem that contravenes the basic mandate of modern prisons to rehabilitate rather than to merely punish. Both systems are deficient in this respect, and overcrowding as seen above, leads to poor outcomes, increased violence, results essentially in an education in further criminality, and also results in poor health outcomes, worsened mental health for those with existing mental health issues, and in the end is ultimately bad for society in that the inmates from overcrowded jails are more likely to carry diseases, commit crimes, become unemployed, and generally present an antisocial nuisance to the communities they are released into. So this is big challenge for both of these systems-to reduce overcrowding so that these other problems can be avoided or at least dealt with more effectively.

References

Center for Prison Studies. (2013.) "Entire world-Prison Population Rates per 100,000 of the national population." Center for Prison Studies, the University of Essex.

Davis, Lois, Bozick, Robert, Steele, Jennifer, Saunders, Jessica, and Miles, Jeremy. "Evaluating the Effectiveness of Correctional Education." RAND.

Gopnik, Adam. "The Caging of America." The New Yorker. Web.

Hong Kong Special Administrative Regional Government. (February 2013.) "Hong Kong: The Facts: Correctional Services." Hong Kong Information Services Department. Retrieved from csd.gov.hk

Human Rights Correspondence School. (2013.) "Lesson 2: Case studies of Hong Kong, Thailand and Malaysia with regard to prison conditions and the complaint mechanisms for prisoners." Asian Human Rights Commission. Retrieved 1 December 2013 from Human Rights Correspondence SchoolAsian Human Rights Commission

Medina, Jennifer. "In California Prison, Bunk Beds Replace Pickup Games." The New York Times. Web.

The Economist. "One nation, behind bars." The Economist. Web.

U.S. Department of Justice. "Prison Gangs." U.S. Department of Justice.