TWO MILLION IN AMERICAN 'GULAG'

Thus runs the caption in the Austrian 'Der Standard'
(http://derstandard.at); sub-heading: In the USA the incarceration rate
climbs faster than the crime rate drops.

The rigorously prosecuted 'War on Drugs' policy, which arose chiefly in the
Reagan era, has led in the interim to massive increases in the number of
incarcerations, so that prison costs have risen to 30 billion dollars
annually, reports the 'Standard' Washington correspondent, Thomas Rust.

Washington - 'Round one third fewer serious criminal offenses than in
1990', announces the US Bureau of Statistics contentedly, commenting on the
blunting of the greatest social problem in the country. Yet behind these
favorable figures lies buried a dirty secret: the number of prisoners has
risen by seven per cent annually, and has doubled in the last nine years.

Two million prisoners are behind bars in conditions which 4 star General
Barry McCaffrey has called "an American Gulag," that is a situation which
many contemporaries compare to conditions pertaining in the former Soviet
Union. The number of prisoners in the USA is higher than in Germany,
France, the UK and Japan put together.

Experts point to the 'Anti-Drug-Abuse-Act', passed in 1986 under Ronald
Reagan in the general anxiety caused when the rise in the crime rate was
associated with the newly ciruclating drug 'Crack', as being responsible.
It targeted those whose crimes were associated with drugs or drug dealing.

While only a small percentage of high profile drug dealers were prosecuted,
however, the new statutes led to a serious disproportion between the
felonies committed and the sentences awarded. The 'world record' for an
excessive sentence was won by Gloria Van Winkle. She was prosecuted three
times for possession of relatively small amounts of cocaine and on the
third occasion received, under the new 'three strikes' statute, a sentence
of life imprisonment for the possession of drugs with a value of only 40
dollars.

Imprisonment Statutes

At the same time a new branch arose which rapidly won political and social
influence. Under the new statutes, the building and direction of prisons
was let out to private contractors. The stocks of these newly formed
companies were the subject of dealings on Wall St. Meanwhile they received
federal funding to the tune of 30 billion dollars.

Experts are now beginning to raise doubts about the essential soundness of
the System. One study came to the conclusion that locking up 2 million
persons at a cost of 30 billion dollars per year was 'not effective', since
the number of drug users remained roughly the same. According to a 1997
report, around 14 million Americans are regular users of illegal drugs. The
figures are about the same as those for 1988 when only half as many were
incarcerated.

Even some individual Reagan supporters have concluded that the mandated
minimum sentencing guidelines should be at least 'reconsidered'. Thus
declared Edwin Meese, Reagan’s former justice minister, who is known to be
anything but a 'Liberal'. And, as Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey stated
recently, "In the long run, we can’t arrest our way out of this problem."

DER STANDARD, 12 March 1999

News in Brief

The Peace Process In Columbia In Question Since The Murder Of Three US
Citizens

Hero Buss, writing in 'Die Welt' (http://www.welt.de) under the above
caption discusses Columbia’s invidious situation. It holds the macabre
world record for murders pro-capita of population with 25.000 and 5,000
kidnappings annually. The recent murder of three American citizens, civil
rights activists, has endangered Pastrana's peace negotiations with the
'Farc' guerrillas who control a large part of the crucial territory in
which cocaine is harvested from the cocoa crops.

The Farc leadership refuses to yield to US demands to turn over the alleged
killers. With that, the corner stone of President Andres Pastrana’s peace
negotiations with Farc has been torn away. Columbia's strapped financial
position does not permit him to finance alternative crops for the cocoa
farmers. And the Lockerby affair has shown that when it is a question of
pursuing terrorists who have American citizens' blood on their hands,
Washington can be relentlessly long-winded. (DIE WELT, 12.3.1999)