INCARCERATION NATION

The Issue: US Leads The World In Prison Population

Our view: We can't afford the soaring human and financial costs.

With scant media coverage beyond an official press release, the U.S.
Justice Dept. recently announced that a record 7 million people, or
one in every 32 American adults are behind bars, on probation or on
parole - an increase of 2 million. Of those 2.2 million are in prison
or jail somewhere in the United States, giving us the highest rate of
prisoners per 100,000 in the world. Isn't it ironic then that, with
so many prisons and prisons so wretchedly overcrowded nationwide -
Illinois' 130-year-old Menard prison houses 3,315 in space built for
1,983 - we still can't get a new, $140 million prison open in Thomson?

But that's another editorial.

Those millions of prisoners and parolees, meanwhile, represent a
fraction of real costs of what has become in the last few decades an
incarceration nation - for as offenders do time at $20,000 per year,
they also leave behind fatherless children and families. Lacking any
means of support, they are far more likely to join welfare roles at
taxpayer expense, or turn themselves to crime.

It's shameful for a democracy to lock-up one in every 32 adults. Yet
it's also a shame to have so much crime in America, so many innocent
crime victims and so much glorification of violence, crime and
lawlessness in popular culture. And what of the estimated 1 million
or so incarcerated Americans who are non-violent offenders, mostly
drug addicts who spend years in prison conditions that can,
paradoxically, make them violent or mentally-ill before they return
to life on the street with their addictions, an ex-con's scarlet
letter, and no means of support?

There are no easy answers.

Nor do there appear to be any meaningful attempts by our leaders to
ask the right questions, or to try new approaches beyond costly prisons.