IT'S POLITICAL IF U.S. JAILS 1.9 MILLION

THERE are now 1,860,520 people in jail in the land of the free, the
United States. It means that the US has more people in jail than any
country on earth. This figure was revealed by the US Justice
Department. It has more people in jail than China, yet China has more
than four times the population of the US. China has about 1.2 million
people in jail. The US has more people in jail than Russia, which has
about a million people in jail. The US has more people in jail per
head of population than any country on earth. It has 5 per cent of its
population in jail and 20 per cent of the world's prison population.

Bear in mind that Russia is the child of the Soviet Union, the place
US President Ronald Reagan called the Evil Empire. Bear in mind that
the US periodically tries to get China condemned in the United Nations
for breaches of human rights.

But we must ask why all these people are in jail. In China and places
like Saudi Arabia and a dozen or so African countries, many people are
in jail for political dissent. In the US, all the prisoners are common
criminals. They have committed crimes against the person or property.
Political dissent is tolerated at least up to a point. There is no
long jail term for political dissent, though you might spend a weekend
in jail if you are caught up in a demonstration against the
International Monetary Fund in Washington.

But is the US so lawless and are the people so under siege by crime
that it is necessary to have so many people in jail? Perhaps it is
worth looking beyond the offences for which the 1.9 million people
have been convicted. The number of people in jail in the US and the
length of time they are in there is, in fact, a direct cause of
political policy rather than any sensible need for justice, deterrence
or rehabilitation.

Looking at typical sentences in western democracies for various
crimes, the US figure is much higher. The reason is that US
politicians allow themselves to be swayed by irrational calls from
their voters for longer sentences. So how can one describe the balance
of the sentence served in the US that goes beyond typical sentences in
the rest of the world other than as years spent in jail for political
reasons?

It is the blacks, moreover, who suffer the heaviest sentences. Nothing
is stated in the law but that is how it ends up in practice.

Mandatory sentencing has also swollen US prisons. Many US states have
mandatory sentencing laws that make the Northern Territory's look like
a model of liberalism. In California, a minor third offence can result
in 25 years without parole. Moreover, with discretion moved to
prosecutors and police, blacks are bearing the burden. The political
imperative to impose and not commute death sentences is also a cause
of human-rights concern. It is surprising that UN human rights bodies
have so little to say about the US and so much to say about Australia.

A large factor in the high US imprisonment rate is the prohibition
policy with respect to drugs. A high proportion of those in jails are
there for possession of drugs or for crimes committed in the pursuit
of money to obtain drugs. Once again, politics is a major reason for
the strict prohibition policy and for the policy that imposes
draconian sentences for drug offences. In a sense, the drug prisoners
are political prisoners, too, once they have served what would, in
other western democracies, be considered the norm.

The US constitutional guarantees of civil liberty are fine in theory,
but they are not working in practice.