LOCKED INTO A PRISON MENTALITY

The Land of Liberty now imprisons one of every 99 adults, a criminal
milestone that deserves more than a punch line about law and order.

Forget, for a moment, the causes or the results of putting 2.3-million
adults behind bars in the United States. Just consider the sobering
context: The United States leads the planet in incarceration, in raw
numbers and per capita rate. No other country is even close.

China, with more than four times the population, imprisons a third
fewer. Russia, at one of every 159 adults, has the second highest rate
behind the United States. Cuba locks up one in 204, South Africa one
in 293, Iran one in 450. The U.S. incarceration rate is now seven
times higher than Canada, 10 times more than Italy and 12 times
greater than Japan.

These numbers are supplied by the Pew Center on the States, and one
striking feature of its report is the extent to which conservative
state lawmakers are now looking for alternatives. No one is trying to
push dangerous inmates back on the streets, but some states are
looking anew at how they deal with drug offenders and probation
violators and older inmates under mandatory sentences.

Dave Heineman, Republican governor of Nebraska, introduced a work
program for nonviolent offenders last year, saying: "The concept we've
embraced through community corrections is that there are better
solutions to this challenge than to simply build another
maximum-security prison."

Florida might want to listen. While other big states find ways to
reduce prison population and crime at the same time, Florida continues
to stuff its prisons. Just last year, Gov. Charlie Crist pushed
through a law that can lock up even those who have minor probation
violations.

According to Pew, Florida is second in the nation in the share of
general government revenue it spends on corrections. That financial
measurement is salient, since that same pot of money is used to pay
for public schools and universities. Across the United States, prison
spending over the past two decades has grown at five times the rate of
education spending.

The questions posed by these prison numbers are profound, which is why
the usual political bromides are inadequate.