A DUBIOUS DISTINCTION

The U.S. may soon take first place among nations of the world in ratio of
men and women incarcerated in prisons and jails.

Through most of our history Americans have proudly claimed to be first in
providing their own people with the blessings of material prosperity and
democratic freedom. It was great to be told the United States ranked No. 1
among nations of the world in just about everything - such as economic
well-being, public education, automotive technology, health care, steel
production, Olympic medals and, of course, the lofty moral stature of our
presidents and our elected representatives.

Those were the days. When he wrote "It's a Grand Old Flag," patriotic
composer George M. Cohan couldn't have known that a well-remembered line (
"and there's never a boast or a brag" ) would become all too true. For the
wrong reasons.

But soon the U.S. may assert an unwanted eminence in at least one important
international category. The Department of Justice counted heads in mid-1998
in federal prisons, state lockups and county jails.

It reported last week, after requiring only six months to tote up the
figures, that the number of caged adults has more than doubled in the past
12 years. The total went from 744,208 to 1.8 million - an increase
attributed in large part to drug-related arrests and to ever-harsher
punishments via the politics of crackdown.

(About 600,000 men and women are held in jails; the other 1.2 million in
prisons. And for each inmate, the cost to taxpayers is comparable to the
cost of a full-ride scholarship to Stanford. Not much tax money is left
over for, say, drug-treatment programs, but that's another story.)

It was bad enough in 1985 when 313 adults out of 100,000 were behind bars;
now it's 668 per 100,000. With the new figures we seriously threaten
Russia's claim to be the world's leading incarcerator, with 685 inmates in
gulags for every 100,000 adults on the outside. With amnesty promised
shortly for about 100,000 Russkies, America's international supremacy in
the prison business is all but assured.

USA, No. 1!