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Break the cycle

Criminals often come from abusive families. Sure, we build prisons to house society's criminals. But we could just as well say we build our prisons to house society's victims.

Now don't tear up your newspaper just yet. Society should support victim's rights programs and efforts to crack down on crime and keep dangerous and career criminals jailed for a good long time.

But the sad fact is that a big percentage of the people doing time come from families, or living arrangements, in which drugs and alcohol were abused, as were the children.

That abuse, and other criminal activities that often go along with it, produce individuals destined for prison. And individuals who pass along their substance abuse and violence to their children, who in turn may continue the family tradition and pass it along to their children.

This does not mean that criminals should be forgiven or mollycoddled. This doesn't excuse crimes or criminals, but it does help explain them.

A recent study of inmates in local jails by the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics may provide at least some indication of the forces at work in the makeup of the nation's jail population.

The Associated Press report on the study said a rising number of jail inmates are dependent on drugs.

More than a third were taking drugs at the time they committed their offense, and 60 percent were using alcohol or drugs or both.

Substance abuse isn't the only thing these criminals-in-the-making had in common.

Forty-eight percent of female inmates and 13 percent of male inmates had been physically or sexually abused at some point in their lives.

THE STUDY, BASED ON hour-long interviews with 6,133 inmates about two years ago, found that large numbers of inmates came from dysfunctional homes or spent at least part of their childhood on welfare or public assistance.

Said Eric Sterling, president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation: "The tragedy is that people who have been victimized often become victimizers themselves. It's a cycle we could break, but it involves some expense. As a society, we haven't put our resources there."

He's right. If we really want to do something that might actually break this cycle of abuse, criminality and massive public expense dealing with the consequences, we should throw our efforts into education, community drug/alcohol and job-training programs.

OREGON IS GETTING more prison space for its growing prison population. But in the long term, we'll have lower prison and court costs, safer communities and less property and human damage if we help keep dysfunctional families from spawning new dysfunctional people.