The "Land of Free" is a Prison Nation

The "Land of Free" is a Prison Nation
By David A. Love | 03.07.2007


The "Land of the Free" is a nation of prisons. A recent study by the Pew Charitable Trusts has sounded the alarm on the high rate of prison growth in this country.





By 2011, one out of every 178 U.S. residents will live in prison if
current policies do not change, according to the study, entitled,
"Public Safety, Public Spending: Forecasting America's Prison Population
2007-2011." By that time, America will have more than 1.7 million men
and women behind bars in federal and state prisons, an increase of
nearly 200,000 from 2006. That increase could cost American taxpayers as
much as $27.5 billion more -- $15 billion for prison operations and
$12.5 billion for beds -- than they are now spending on prisons over the
next five years, according to the report.

At the present rate, Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Montana and Vermont can
expect their prisons to grow by a third or more, while Colorado, Nevada,
South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming will experience a 25 percent
growth. In raw numbers and per capita, America imprisons more people
than any other nation in the world. The United States, a mere 5 percent
of the world's population, incarcerates a quarter of the world's prisoners.

What is fueling this prison boom? It boils down to policy choices.

More and more people are being incarcerated with longer and longer
sentences, particularly for nonviolent offenses. Prisons are
overcrowding. Parole is a thing of the past in some places, mandatory
minimum sentences are the rule of the day and the concept of
rehabilitation has been abandoned.

As state budgets tighten and prison spending goes out of control,
education and badly needed social services fall by the wayside. Sadly,
opportunistic politicians pander to () white America's fear of black and
brown criminality. They will pander to whomever pays them : Money is GREEEEEEN Lawmakers enact "get tough on crime" measures that
provide catchy slogans and the appearance of action but do little to
provide creative, effective solutions to society's ills.

As a result, we have the war on drugs, which has really become a war on
communities of color and the poor, with laws punishing crack cocaine
users far more severely than those who use powdered cocaine. Prisons
have become the new company towns. Now that factories and jobs have been
lost to globalization, many depressed rural areas turn to the building
of new prisons for job creation and economic growth. And the raw
materials for these new factory towns are black and brown and poor white
inmates.

Corporate greed fuels the prison boom, and results in exploitative
business practices. For example, some inmates are charged exorbitant
rates (such as $20 for a 15-minute in-state call) for phone calls to
their family members. Fortunately, there are signs of hope as people
question the vast investment in incarceration and seek creative
alternatives to the prison industrial complex.

The Supreme Court is revisiting how much latitude federal judges should
have in sentencing. Two years ago, the high court struck down the
mandatory federal sentencing guidelines and made them advisory instead.
The guidelines had sometimes forced judges to increase a criminal
defendant's punishment based on information that had never been proved
to a jury, resulting in a violation of the constitutional right to a
jury trial.

Some states are recognizing what a drain the prison craze has on their
budgets and are looking for more sensible solutions. This prison madness
is not about serving justice or protecting the public. It is about
warped public-policy priorities, a lack of leadership and protecting
powerful interests. We cannot make society whole by locking millions of
people up and expecting our problems to go away.


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David A. Love is a lawyer in Philadelphia and a writer for Progressive
Media Project, a source of liberal commentary on domestic and
international issues; it is affiliated with The Progressive magazine.
Readers may write to the author at: Progressive Media Project, 409 E.
Main St., Madison WI 53703; e-mail: pmprojprogressive.org
; Web site: www.progressive.org
. For information on PMP's funding, please
visit http://www.progressive.org/pmpabout.htmlanchorsupport
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