GETTING TOUGH ON CRIME CARRIES A HEAVY BURDEN

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 titled "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 now are 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. 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.

Love is a lawyer in Philadelphia and a writer for Progressive Media
Project, a source of liberal commentary on domestic and international
issues affiliated with The Progressive magazine.