STOP THE PRISON MADNESS AND BUILD SCHOOLS

Every now and then the best of societies goes a little crazy and embraces
monstrous social policies that become almost impossible to reverse. The
United States has done that regarding crime, especially drug abuse.

I doubt that one American out of 10 is aware that you and I are spending
$20,000 a year to keep in prison every single kid caught with a couple of
ounces of marijuana -- a per inmate expense equal to what millions of
people are paid for a whole year's work, or a cost well beyond anything we
taxpayers shell out to keep a child in public school or a kid in college.

Are you aware that our states are now spending almost $30 billion every
year to keep locked up triple the number of inmates they had just 20 years
ago? Or that we are incarcerating our people at a rate never known in any
civilized society?

Can you believe that while bond issues to build schools are often failing,
this country is willingly building a 1,000-bed jailhouse or prison every
week? Building prisons has become the great new American cottage industry
or the perceived economic salvation of many rural and other economically
depressed areas. The growth and clout of this industry is such that
California now pays a prison guard of moderate experience $51,000 a year
but paid its public school teachers an average of $43,000 a year in 1996-97.

In politically inspired moves to prove they were not "soft on crime" -- and
in futile and self-defeating efforts to declare "victory" in the "War on
Drugs" -- our lawmakers have disempowered judges and decreed laws and
minimum sentences that have made almost one of every 150 Americans a
jailbird. And for blacks and Hispanics, one out of every five faces the
curse of the lockup because of political madness over "law and order."

Finally, millions of Americans, conservative and liberal, Republicans as
well as Democrats, are awakening to the reality that incarcerating 400,000
people -- most of them small fry -- on drug charges has not reduced the
curse of drug abuse in America. And they are seeing that even as crime has
fallen drastically, the drive for more jails and prisons at mushrooming
costs does not slow down.

So cries are arising for the return to judges of discretion as to when to
give a first-time minor drug offender treatment instead of the full
punitive treatment or to consider probation and other options for those
convicted of other, nonviolent offenses. President Clinton and many
Republican leaders are saying that "better education" must be the American
priority as we enter a new millennium. They and the people know that states
cannot afford to spend $4 billion a year, as California soon will, to run
their prisons and still finance school systems that will meet the needs of
this technological age. But they also know that many people and powerful
forces have a vested interest in the continued expansion of the prison
industry, so a rediversion of resources will be extremely difficult
politically.

Fear of crime, and political demagoguery about it, made it easy to devote
unconscionable amounts of tax dollars to jails and prisons. It is
impossible to generate the same kind of fear regarding the need for
schools, hospitals, housing or anything else positively productive for this
society. Barring, that is, some extraordinary political leadership that
reshapes public opinion on a grand scale.

The uprising against the current outrageous situation seems great enough
that any number of politicians might take the lead without fear of falling
to the old cries, "soft on crime." Enough Americans seem now to understand
that the policy of locking up almost forever every little gnat and fruit
fly caught in the web of the drug peddlers has been a failure. Still, both
will and courage to admit error and change policy seems to be in short
supply in Washington these days.

We need millions more Americans shouting, "Stop the prison madness" to
ensure that our political leaders will become bold enough to return to
sanity.