WHY ARE ALL THESE PEOPLE IN JAIL?

You have to wonder why, when you see the statistics, the U.S. holds
750 prisoners per 100,000 citizens. You have to wonder why our rate of
locking up should so far exceed the world average of some 166 per
100,000. You have to wonder why we are far ahead of Russia, which
holds the distinction of having the second-highest number of
imprisoned persons, per capita.

Some answers come rather quickly. Back in the Nixon era, we were
admonished to Get Tough on Crime. The everyday expression was "lock
'em up and throw away the key."

And we did.

But who were these miscreants, these terrible people who deserved only
to rot in prison? Well, first of all, they were victims of the
so-called War on Drugs.

Marijuana, a rather harmless stimulant and pain-killer, was demonized
as the destroyer of the nation's youth. We simply had to protect our
young people from this evil plant. States imposed mandatory stiff
sentences upon those caught using, growing or selling this "grass."
Dealers especially, and especially those peddling the Devil Weed on
the street, were sentenced to long prison terms by judges who had no
recourse but to impose the number of years mandated by
legislators.

Cocaine has been a popular recreational drug for many years. We got
tough on the crime of using coke. Only there was a discrepancy in our
sentencing -- pure cocaine, used mostly be white people, merits a much
lower sentence than the use of crack cocaine, although the effects are
much the same. Why the difference? Because crack is used more widely
by African Americans than whites.

Which brings up the nasty subject of racism. A far larger percentage
of black men are in prison today than whites. Latinos also far
outnumber whites in our prisons.

Prisons have become warehouses for putting unwanted people, especially
males. We lock them up and we forget them.

You ask, "But what about other crime? What about theft, robbery,
murder? Are not the minority races more addicted to violence than
whites?" One response is to show that prosecutors are far more likely
to bring serious charges against minority citizens. Do you remember
Jena, LA, and the prosecutor there, who charged black students with
attempted murder after a schoolyard fight?

I recall what it was like in Cincinnati in 1968 after Martin Luther
King's assassination. I broke the court imposed curfew and drove down
to the courthouse to look at the quick trials going on then. One poor
fellow, a black, was accused of looting. He had stolen a hand of
bananas. The judge in his wisdom said, "We have agreed that every
crime must have a minimum sentence. You are sentenced to three years
in prison for theft."

And so we hold the world's record for the number of our citizens
packed away in prison.

Thomas Geoghegan, writing in The American Prospect, comments about all
the disease that is festering in our crowded jails and prisons. He
writes of MRSA, a staph infection that is raging in lockups. MRSA
shows up first in boils, then it starts to eat flesh. It comes,
according to Geoghegan, from overcrowding and lack of medical care.
Even as the epidemic rages in Chicago jails, the county board has cut
the medical staff.

In Russia, there is a similar epidemic exacerbated by prison
overcrowding. This epidemic is of drug-resistant tuberculosis. Both
epidemics have spread to the non-imprisoned population. One wonders
whether we will one day try to live through another pandemic like the
flu epidemic of the last century.

Two things come to mind as responses to the vast overcrowding of
America's prisons. First, we might build more jails to house more
people with less crowding. This, of course, is being done in many
places. It is soon to be done right here in Cumberland County.

I think a much better idea would be for us to largely empty our
prisons. Reserve the space for violent criminals, robbers and thieves.
Offer probation to the addicts and the casual users of drugs.
Rehabilitation works, and the possibility of freedom might help
alleviate some of the bitterness and anger so many prisoners feel.

Reader, by now you know that I have no magic solution to our prison
problems.

Do you?