Nice to see some actual sanity coming into the discussion. I've been saying for at least 20 years that the righties won't be happy until half of us are in prison and the other half are watching that half. It's their full employment plan.

The real problem is that prisons have become just another profit center for the rich. When you make a profit from locking people up, there is no reason NOT to lock people up. And it's people like Cheney who own the companies that make profit from this system. There are some things that SHOULD be the duty of the gov't, and jails and prisons are on that list. It's the only way that you have an incentive to keep people OUT of jail.

Justice for money is NO justice at all.

This situation that we are in now is completely unsustainable. 7 million people in the system is just too much incarceration and is far too costly. What we have now does far more ddamage than good. It destroys lives, breaks up families, and ruins society, all for the profits of the few over the good of the many. When a system does more damage than good, it's time for it to be scrapped. And this system damages far too many for the benefit of just a handful. Time for the handful to stop profitting on the misfortune of the rest of us.

But let's not forget the prisons set up for children...and the money being made off that; private prisons and privatized foster care.

My husband and I adopted 3 young grandchildren in 2004; now our daughter has two more and the state has removed them too. They've placed them in our care which is what we wanted to do but last week, they showed up at our door to say they (private foster care agency) will be removing the two younger ones and putting in another foster care home because..get this, our house is too small!!!! Apparently the State of Michigan changed their laws last year to support this and it's dammed scary. When a price tag has been placed on innocent children in the care of loving family but being removed to make money for a private business, it makes me wonder where was the world when it was decided it should be that way.

I have to say that I am not going to be able to comment in a way that solves anything but things are bad. There is a feeling in this country of totality. Kinda like a buch of prison states looking for inmates. The thing is that there is a target group. The drug user. It's a cultural war and the drug user is the new enemie or something worse. It's deeply about what we believe, think and feel. It's very unsettling that people don't see this weird deal that's going down. State, county and municipal police forces are armed to the teeth and all they do is search for weed and other worse things. But it's weed. They have the dogs and other kinds of things and they will ruin your life and glad to do it. It is just very weird that we are not "arm and arm" (now more than ever)and we want to do this to each other. Violent offenders should be put away but this system of putting one culture behind bars is really working against our nation. Why do we stand for it? I hate the word "sheeple" but that what it looks like to me. I am afraid and that's what they want, I know. In the old days.....

Anyone reading this might also want to read the other CD article by Amy Goodman, “Jailing Kids for Cash, on today's list.

First drug usage should not be treated as a crime, but a public health matter. Prisons were originally meant to be a place where society's unwanted people were to be sent to turn them into something acceptable or at least tolerable. On the surface this seems to have been a worthwhile goal, but it never, ever came close to realization. Sure, some individuals are so dangerous to society that they need to be separated from that society until such time as they can be determined not to be a danger. But prisons are not the answer. Our country has a punishment mentality which, by definition, implies treating the symptoms of a disease that has already gone out of control. Few people seem to see the need to prevent such conditions from arising in the first place. Punishment is never the answer, unless, it would seem, one only deals with people for whom punishment has only ever been the solution. Studies have shown that positive rewards are, in the long run, more effective in deterring negative behavior than negative “reward” systems, punishment. Unfortunately we learn to punish early on, as small children when we are hit and slapped for what are really minor “offenses”. A parent gets frustrated with their child and hits them for disobeying, thinking that “sparing the rod spoils the child”. Any why shouldn't they use this system? Because that is what they were taught and their parents before them and so on... If one thinks hard about this, this system of negative re-enforcement can be seen as a prime ingredient to the mix of problems that are plaguing the world now: the failing economy, global warming. We aren't taught to deal with problems patiently and with forethought and we, at least in America, are all guilty of this, including me. Think of how the banksters we bailout are like the gangsters we lock up; the only real difference between the two is the speed with which they kill their victims.

If I had to give only one single convincing argument demonstrating the decadence of US capitalism it would be our prisons, which house more than all of authoritarian China - for a rate of incarceration at least 5 times more than China.

“The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”

-Fyodor Dostoevsky

---USAn

A lot of it has to do with the stupid war on drugs. Release all non-violent drug offenders; get them into a recovery program if necessary. Prisons have also been a way of addressing poverty; poor kids (if their not killed in the ghetto) seem either to join the military or go to prison. We have become a sad, mean country indeed.

Interesting that in the entire essay the author neglected to mention that fully 33% of all prisoners in federal, state and even local jails are ILLEGAL ALIEN CRIMINALS who should not have been in this country in the first place.

If we just enforced our existing immigration laws and deported every single illegal alien criminal, thatat would significantly alleviate the prison overcrowding problem.

An Claidheamh Anam

The war on drugs breaks, then maintains, the separation of the family unit, especially for the poor.
The war on drugs discriminates against one seeking gainful employment (both in terms of urinalysis and background checks).
The war on drugs has removed the peace officer from the community and has militarized them, turning them into nothing more than heavily armed thugs, not respected peace officers.
The war on drugs is racist. Yet, the current Atty General calls us a nation of wimps when it comes to racial issues! The audacity!! And still "Uncle Tom" Holder locks up ever more blacks and hispanics!
Time to legalize currently illegal drugs. It will remove profits from the cartels, bring peace to the streets and revenue to the local and state coffers.
Let's get real people.

Excellent article. It should have been said long ago and much more often.

The problem of prison overcrowding can be solved literally overnight by "uncriminalizing" marihuana.
Everybody knows the criminalizing of this weed was just a "get rich sceme" by Randolph Hearst and DuPont who, after inventing nylon, wanted to "barge in" on the rope market,(which was made mainly of hemp), while also scapegoating minority migrant workers who used the weed.

America has more political prisoners than all other nations combined. If not for having a job, identification, a home, and other "responsibilities," I'd be in jail by now if a host of law enforcement fascists had their way - that for being strongly and ascerbically opinionated and critical of U. S. government, and nothing more. I've had numerous visits from Homeland Security for saying what many more of us think. If I were homeless, or had a prior, I'd likely be in one of California's houses by now. Prisons exist because the elite find value in them as a means to scare us all into submission. A president can kill millions and retire to his ranch, but a poor Mexican immigrant can spend a life in prison for a dime bag. We have no justice system, just a system of fear and retribution meted out by the boot-licking lackeys of capital-driven psychosis.

We should be all clamoring for shutting down prisons, or filling them with the real criminals who run our banks, government, corporations, media, and military.

"Prisons exist because the elite find value in them as a means to scare us all into submission. A president can kill millions and retire to his ranch, but a poor Mexican immigrant can spend a life in prison for a dime bag."

Sand flea, it is so obvious it would be funny if not so sad that two systems of justice exist in this country, one for the "elite" and one for the rest of us. If you or I are suspected of having involvement in illegal drugs, the pigs can confiscate your vehicle, home, or anything else they think may be connected with you dealings with drugs and sell it. They then get to keep the proceeds from said sale to buy new crime fighting stuff for themselves, even if the case for drugs is never even brought to trial. Just last week, one of our finest, a DPS trooper, stopped a guy driving a pickup for a traffic violation. Suspecting the guy may have drugs in his vehicle, the trooper called a local sheriff's deputy K-9 unit to check for drugs. They didin't find any drugs, but found $30,000 in cash, which they confiscated. Then, they arested the guy on money laundering charges and started trying to figure out which department got what portion of the cash the seized. Now, change of scenes. Scooter Libby is charges, tried, convicted, and sentenced to prison for perjury and obstruction of justice. What did he get? A pardon.

It seems that the prison system today has become a way to bypass laws against slavery. Just look at Louisiana's Angola State Prison for example. The majority of the prison's population is black and most of these inmates work in the fields day in and day out harvesting sugar cane, cotton, and other crops. The prison then sells these crops on the open market and has an annual income of hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Further, civilian prison inmate labor may now be used by the U.S. military doing construction work and other labor on military installations.

No wonder the war on drugs is not up for discussion. For one, the federal government, the biggest importer of illegal drugs (why do you think the opium crops have increased by 700% in Afganistan) makes more money if the drugs are kept illegal. Second, the war on drugs keeps all of these DEA agents, FBI agents, state police, and local pigs employed as well as private prisons making profits, and state and feseral prisons getting plenty of slave labor. Just don't look for anyone such as a Rockefellar, anyone from Congress, any CEO's of major corporations, etc. to be in the headlines for getting busted for drugs anytime soon. They seem to be exempt from those particular laws that we must follow to the letter.

I wonder if anyone commits a crime hoping to get sentenced so that they can obtain health care, or even just to eat. If those type of crimes go up, at what point do prisons become concentration camps? If the economic downturn gets severe enough, it will be interesting to see what kinds of compromises are made.

Paul Siemering
We need to stop privatizing prisons. Capitalists need to see their enterprises grow, their profits increase. if they are in the prison business- and it is huge- then they need to get fresh supplies of prisoners. how do they do this? they do it by getting legislation passed like mandatory sentencing. etc.

also, a fixed principle of business is to keep costs down and profits up. So the food in private prisons is the cheapest slop they can find. will they install a library? a gym? no, and if any such amenities exist, they won't last.

I wold also recommend Angela Davis's idea of prison abolition.

The author said:
"This is madness. And it's expensive."

AND it in itself is a criminal exploitation for profit that creates a caste justice "system." It only punishes -- and "corrects" nothing but the bottom line of "security" assembly line behemoths. It's nuts, alright. Oh, so much of it is really just political.

Those who call themselves "tough on security" (while demeaning others), are really the fear-mongering cowards who seriously undermine our real and long-term security by:

1- what they do and advocate, and

2- just being the sef-centered, sociopathically dissconnected who they are, while excercising tremendous power in our names; they are too sociopathic to comprehend the grave threat they represent to our nation and to humanity.

Outsourcing "justice," like outsourcing "defense," contradicts BOTH concepts and represent a rapidily growing breach of our national security, only fixed by an expansion in democracy and empowerment of the general population.