CAGES: SHAMEFULLY, AMERICA IS THE WORLD'S LARGEST STOCKADE.

Shamefully, America is the world's largest stockade, with more than 2
million Americans locked in prison and jail cells. Per capita, this
nation confines six times more of its citizens than Canada does, eight
times more than France does, and 12 times more than Japan does.

Shamefully, America is the world's largest stockade, with more than 2
million Americans locked in prison and jail cells. Per capita, this
nation confines six times more of its citizens than Canada does, eight
times more than France does, and 12 times more than Japan does.

Are Americans 12 times more criminal than the Japanese, and eight
times more lawless than the French? Of course not. The explanation is
that U.S. justice is more harsh, reflecting a punitive national
mentality, perhaps inherited from the Puritans. America's
incarceration keeps rising, even though crime rates have declined.

About one-third of U.S. prisoners committed violent crimes, and need
to be locked in steel cages for public safety. The other two-thirds
are jailed for drug and property offenses, and could be released
through alternative sentencing. Keeping them caged costs taxpayers
billions each year, wrecking state budgets. Confinement is imposed
disproportionately on blacks and the poor.

West Virginia likewise suffers an imprisonment upsurge. The state had
about 2,000 inmates around 1990, but the number has soared to 6,000
and is projected to reach 7,000 by 2014. Did West Virginians turn
three times more criminal? If not, why did jailing triple? Was the
growth caused by strutting politicians who pose as tough on crime?

Last year, the state Council of Churches and Wheeling Jesuit
University released a study urging the state to divert more nonviolent
felons to probation and "community corrections programs" such as
day-report centers, work-release programs, halfway houses and other
plans letting them hold jobs and support families. Unless this is
done, the report warned, taxpayers must pay up to $200 million for
another 1,200-bed prison, and more millions to staff it.

Now, relief is becoming possible through state "drug courts" that seek
to cure addicts instead of turning them into hardened convicts.
Kanawha County will launch its drug court soon, joining others
including a southwestern one serving Boone, Logan and Lincoln
counties. Kanawha Circuit Judge Jennifer Bailey Walker and County
Commission President Kent Carper champion the plan. Funding comes from
a federal grant and Purdue Pharma settlement money won by Attorney
General Darrell McGraw.

As court reporter Andrew Clevenger explained Monday, the new court
will put addicts on probation - if they submit to regular drug
testing, avoid narcotics "hot zones," perhaps wear electronic
monitors, and obey other controls. They will have a chance to work and
be self-supporting, instead of a burden on taxpayers.

We hope the drug court system succeeds, and spreads throughout West
Virginia, keeping thousands of less-dangerous offenders out of cells.

"The idea is to break this habitual use of drugs and put them to work
and make them pay for their own support," Carper told Clevenger. The
commission president concluded superbly: "The real savings will be the
societal cost. Put people to work, saving a mom or a dad - that's worth it."