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publicly without a factual basis for their policy goals. Moreover, there is rarely an impact study completed in advance of policy enactment to establish the impact on the community, the victim, or the offender. The perhaps predicable result of this behavior has been the erection of vast, inconsistent, and often illogical barriers to housing, employment, voting, and almost every other manifestation of community reintegration.

      1. Prison as an “Easy Life”

      Although the public overestimates the occurrence of violence and sexual assault in prisons, paradoxically, it also sees prison life as one of idleness and even leisure. This could be partially explained by stories in the news that tend to dwell on the amenities to which prisoners have access.⁴⁴ For example, 90 percent of respondents to a survey in Florida believe that inmates are housed in air-conditioned facilities, but for the vast majority of prisoners this is not the case.⁴⁵ A poll by Doble Research Associates found that two-thirds of the public believe that prison inmates don’t work.⁴⁶ Another poll found that 60 percent of the public believes that inmates sit around playing cards or watching television all day.⁴⁷ A recent survey in the United States found that six of ten respondents agreed with the statement, “criminals don’t mind being sent to prison.”⁴⁸

      These are interesting but, upon reflection, perhaps not surprising results. In addition to the “dehumanizing” images of prison life, one sees a parallel narrative of the undeserving inmate: sitting around, lifting weights in the yard, getting three square meals a day purchased by our tax dollars. Although the perception that prison life is brutally hard somewhat contradicts the perception that prison life is “easy,” both narratives serve legitimizing functions. If rehabilitative effort for the dehumanized inmate is hopeless, then rehabilitative effort on account of idle inmates is undeserved.

      This image of prison time as easy time begins to suggest that, not unlike the welfare recipient, working America is paying for these individuals to live off the dole.⁴⁹ Conservative politicians attempting to create a tough-on-crime image by taking something away from the incarcerated are the primary beneficiaries. Inmates looking for educational or vocational training and corrections officers who see the benefit of good prison programming tend to be on the losing end of these political maneuvers.

      2. Prisons as a Training Ground for Future Criminals

      The public also believes that the prison experience increases criminality in inmates. According to Doble Associates survey data, nearly 50 percent of respondents agreed with the statement, “prisons are really schools for criminals that turn new inmates into hardened criminals.”⁵⁰ Another survey by Doble Associates found that two-thirds of respondents believe that prisoners become more dangerous by the time they leave prison.⁵¹ As a result, the public holds pessimistic views about the rate of recidivism among prisoners. In Florida, 58 percent of respondents believed that by serving time, inmates released would be more likely to commit crimes than before they went to prison.⁵² In fact, only 18 percent of ex-offenders were reconvicted of another crime within two years of release, according to Florida statistics.⁵³

      This image of prisoners becoming more dangerous as they leave prison is a narrative developed by those who seek to depict prison as a place where no constructive learning can take place. It comes from popular culture’s notion of the evil con artist, rapist, robber, or murderer who will continue to ply his trade behind bars. Conservative politicians angling for longer sentences and corrections workers seeking to describe a workplace in need of more (and higher-paid) individuals combine to promote this notion. Inmates in need of vocational and educational training as well as recently released parolees are injured by this depiction.

       E. Prisoners Get Out Too Early

      Another image often manufactured for policy reasons and rhetorical flair is that of prisoners “getting out too early.” As mentioned earlier, there is some evidence that a widely held and strongly felt sentiment exists that murderers get back on the streets too soon.⁵⁴ Some studies confirm a pervasive public mistrust of the criminal justice system, which is especially manifest in perceptions that convicted criminals spend too little time in prison.⁵⁵ Media crime coverage helps to support the illusion of early release by what it chooses to report and ignore.⁵⁶

      News accounts of murderers released to rape or kill again are surely effective in confirming the impression of predatory criminals being released too soon. The Willie Horton story cited earlier is perhaps the most striking example.⁵⁷ It succinctly illustrates both selective media coverage as well as “tough-on-crime” political posturing in the electoral process.

      This image has always been used by those seeking to build reputations on law and order by talking of generic “criminals” not being punished enough and the courts being too lenient. Willie Horton was actually on work release—and not on parole or finished with his sentence, as often represented. The length of sentences of incarceration has actually increased over the last two decades, and sentenced prisoners tend to serve longer portions of their sentence in most states. Parole has decreased—there is less potential for a prisoner to get out “too early.”

      Politicians and others seeking to build reputations on law and order as well as those opposed to training and work-release–type programs for offenders all attack any form of furlough for those charged with a crime. The notion of early release and “putting communities in danger” is also a characterization that serves the media well, allowing another level of drama.

       F. Race and the Media

      Media descriptions of offenders tend to make reentry a difficult policy initiative to champion. Shorthand descriptions of crimes and perpetrators, often engaging animal metaphors, create hostility and fear. Frontpage articles of crime and victimization often get politicians to call for sympathetic laws in the name of a victim rather than spurring them to focus on the root causes of the crime. The media uses the same shorthand to link race with poverty and crime in ways that caricature offenders of color and characterize them as particularly unworthy of our compassion or assistance.

      The 1980s and 1990s saw a shift in the way poverty, public political dissent, and crime were characterized in print and electronic media as well as in political circles. After the riots of the late 1960s and civil unrest in the 1970s, conservative politicians recast the political unrest as an issue of “law and order” rather than of human rights and social justice. At the same time, new “coded” terminology was employed to recast public welfare as an issue of race. Increasingly, White America found itself hostile to public welfare. This stemmed in large part from the erroneous perception, often bolstered by media coverage, that most welfare recipients are Black. This also led to the conclusion of many that Blacks evince less commitment to the work ethic.

      The United States Supreme Court decision Bakke v. California Board of Regents and the line of cases about affirmative action that it spawned have also influenced the national debate on race. Media coverage and depictions of “worthy Whites” being denied jobs and admission to college or graduate school because of “less worthy” Blacks and other people of color have each contributed to the impression that deserving Whites were being displaced by “unqualified” Blacks. Indeed, the double impact of media portrayals of poor African Americans as criminals and middle-class African Americans as unworthy (due to affirmative action) spurred public debate. Indeed, it became commonplace for politicians to voice concerns about “welfare queens” and “lazy, shiftless” prisoners as a way of rousing public anger and rallying public support for particularly draconian—and not necessarily effective—crime policies. Conservative politics and backlashes against civil rights gained ground and mainstream support.

      The obvious shift from support and encouragement to attacks on—and distrust for—people of color seeking higher education, seeking employment, and seeking to support their children in difficult economic conditions laid the groundwork for public opinion to demonize those individuals with criminal convictions. Politicians soon capitalized on the prevailing sentiments that people of color tended to be dangerous, unworthy of rehabilitation. The country was well on its way toward turning young men of color, particularly those who came from low-income communities, into an underclass. By the end of the 1980s,

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