2006-11-30

Land of the Free? 1 in 32 Americans Captives of the US Criminal Injustice System

"A record 7 million people — or one in every 32 American adults — were behind bars, on probation or on parole by the end of last year, according to the Justice Department. Of those, 2.2 million were in prison or jail, an increase of 2.7 percent over the previous year, according to a report released Wednesday."

This number does not include detainees in secret prison camps, Guantanamo Bay and those immigrants who were rounded up after 911 who haven't been seen since. It doesn't include those felons who lost the right to vote even after they served their sentences.

And...
"Today's figures fail to capture incarceration's impact on the thousands of children left behind by mothers in prison," Marc Mauer, the executive director of the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based group supporting criminal justice reform, said in a statement. "Misguided policies that create harsher sentences for nonviolent drug offenses are disproportionately responsible for the increasing rates of women in prisons and jails."
Prison labor is big business in America, as detailed in THIS POST from LastChocolateCity.com, second in employees only to General Motors. And prison is an economic engine for many a small rural town.

Until something is done about the disparity of wealth, the failure of the US educational system and the war on drugs, the number of people in US prisons will rise.

5 comments:

Paul Hue said...

I agree with the main point of Nadir's post: the US has too many criminal laws, including laws banning mutually consensual conduct, such as purchasing and consuming drugs, prostitution, and gambling, which constitute Nadir's dad's favorite activity: internet gambling while waiting for the poppers to kickin and the male escort to arrive.

Somewhere about half of the Americans in prison are there because of the laws banning Nadir's dad from consuming poppers.

Of course I strongly disagree with Nadir's belief that the government needs to "do something" to close any wealth gap... except flatten and reduce taxes.

Paul Hue said...

And of course Nadir and I are in pretty close agreement on overhauling the US education system, though Nadir would exclude vouchers as a component of this plan of ours. I certainly agree that the non-serious non-sports aspects of public schools contributes to criminal behavior.

Paul Hue said...

And of course Nadir and I are in pretty close agreement on overhauling the US education system, though Nadir would exclude vouchers as a component of this plan of ours. I certainly agree that the non-serious non-sports aspects of public schools contributes to criminal behavior.

Nadir said...

If America spent as much money on education as it spends on building new prisons, we wouldn't need new prisons.

Paul Hue said...

My research, previously posted, suggests strongly that lack of spending does not explain US K-12 academic failures. Does the US govt really spend more money annually on prisons than schools?

In any case, ending the war on drugs would surely represent perhaps the biggest immediate and easiest step in increasing the fraction of educated, productive, and positive Americans.