FEEBLE DEFENSE

Your prison-boom editorial (Aug 16) was feeble defense for a "free" society
that denies freedom to more of its citizens than any other nation on earth.
You wrongly pooh-pooh the Drug War's role in prison expansion. Today the
U.S. jails more citizens for drug offenses than it jailed for all crimes in
1970; and more than the entire European Union currently jails for all
crimes. Drug incarceration also has an indisputable racial bias against
blacks and Latinos.

You neglected another important cause of our prison boom: our entrenched
prison-industrial complex. Prisons are a big business thriving on human
fodder. Tough-on-crime political rhetoric creates the alarm that creates
the harsh penalties that generate the human fodder that maintains high
employment levels for police, jailers, prison builders, and vulture-like
prison service companies (for example, those overcharging for inmate phone
use).

Americans blithely underestimate incarceration. Other than execution, it's
the severest of coercive state powers. Using it to enforce abstinence or
address addiction is obscene. Rather than celebrating our slight
incarceration dip, we should be organizing a broad amnesty, releasing
non-violent prisoners, trimming sentences, and developing humane
rehabilitation programs.

Paul M. Bischke, Board Member Drug Policy Reform Group of Minnesota, St.
Paul, Minnesota