WHY WE MUST FIX OUR PRISONS

America's criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that
it is a national disgrace.

Its irregularities and inequities cut against the notion that we are
a society founded on fundamental fairness. Our failure to address
this problem has caused the nation's prisons to burst their seams
with massive overcrowding, even as our neighborhoods have become more
dangerous.

We are wasting billions of dollars and diminishing millions of lives.

We need to fix the system.

Doing so will require a major nationwide recalculation of who goes to
prison and for how long and of how we address the long-term
consequences of incarceration. Twenty-five years ago, I went to Japan
on assignment for PARADE to write a story on that country's prison system.

In 1984, Japan had a population half the size of ours and was
incarcerating 40,000 sentenced offenders, compared with 580,000 in
the United States. As shocking as that disparity was, the difference
between the countries now is even more astounding--and profoundly
disturbing. Since then, Japan's prison population has not quite
doubled to 71,000, while ours has quadrupled to 2.3 million.

The United States has by far the world's highest incarceration rate.
With 5% of the world's population, our country now houses nearly 25%
of the world's reported prisoners.

We currently incarcerate 756 inmates per 100,000 residents, a rate
nearly five times the average worldwide of 158 for every 100,000. In
addition, more than 5 million people who recently left jail remain
under "correctional supervision," which includes parole, probation,
and other community sanctions. All told, about one in every 31 adults
in the United States is in prison, in jail, or on supervised release.

This all comes at a very high price to taxpayers: Local, state, and
federal spending on corrections adds up to about $68 billion a year.

Our overcrowded, ill-managed prison systems are places of violence,
physical abuse, and hate, making them breeding grounds that
perpetuate and magnify the same types of behavior we purport to fear.
Post-incarceration re-entry programs are haphazard or, in some
places, nonexistent, making it more difficult for former offenders
who wish to overcome the stigma of having done prison time and become
full, contributing members of society.

And, in the face of the movement toward mass incarceration,
law-enforcement officials in many parts of the U.S. have been
overwhelmed and unable to address a dangerous wave of organized,
frequently violent gang activity, much of it run by leaders who are
based in other countries.

With so many of our citizens in prison compared with the rest of the
world, there are only two possibilities: Either we are home to the
most evil people on earth or we are doing something different--and
vastly counterproductive. Obviously, the answer is the latter.

Over the past two decades, we have been incarcerating more and more
people for nonviolent crimes and for acts that are driven by mental
illness or drug dependence. The U.S. Department of Justice estimates
that 16% of the adult inmates in American prisons and jails--which
means more than 350,000 of those locked up--suffer from mental
illness, and the percentage in juvenile custody is even higher.

Our correctional institutions are also heavily populated by the
"criminally ill," including inmates who suffer from HIV/AIDS,
tuberculosis, and hepatitis.

Drug offenders, most of them passive users or minor dealers, are
swamping our prisons.

According to data supplied to Congress' Joint Economic Committee,
those imprisoned for drug offenses rose from 10% of the inmate
population to approximately 33% between 1984 and 2002. Experts
estimate that this increase accounts for about half of the dramatic
escalation in the total number imprisoned over that period. Yet
locking up more of these offenders has done nothing to break up the
power of the multibillion-dollar illegal drug trade.

Nor has it brought about a reduction in the amounts of the more
dangerous drugs--such as cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines--that
are reaching our citizens.

Justice statistics also show that 47.5% of all the drug arrests in
our country in 2007 were for marijuana offenses.

Additionally, nearly 60% of the people in state prisons serving time
for a drug offense had no history of violence or of any significant
selling activity. Indeed, four out of five drug arrests were for
possession of illegal substances, while only one out of five was for sales.

Three-quarters of the drug offenders in our state prisons were there
for nonviolent or purely drug offenses.

And although experts have found little statistical difference among
racial groups regarding actual drug use, African-Americans--who make
up about 12% of the total U.S. population--accounted for 37% of those
arrested on drug charges, 59% of those convicted, and 74% of all drug
offenders sentenced to prison.

Against this backdrop of chaos and mismanagement, a dangerous form of
organized and sometimes deadly gang activity has infiltrated
America's towns and cities.

It comes largely from our country's southern border, and much of the
criminal activity centers around the movement of illegal drugs.

The weapons and tactics involved are of the highest order.

The Mexican drug cartels, whose combined profits are estimated at $25
billion a year, are known to employ many elite former soldiers who
were trained in some of America's most sophisticated military
programs. Their brutal tactics took the lives of more than 6000
Mexicans last year alone, and the bloodshed has been spilling over
the border into our own neighborhoods at a rapid pace. One terrible
result is that Phoenix, Ariz., has become the kidnapping capital of
the United States, with more than 370 cases in 2008. That is more
incidents than in any other city in the world outside of Mexico City.

The challenge to our communities is not limited to the states that
border Mexico. Mexican cartels are now reported to be running
operations in some 230 American cities.

Other gang activity--much of it directed from Latin America, Asia,
and Europe--has permeated our country to the point that no area is immune.

As one example, several thousand members of the Central American gang
MS-13 now operate in northern Virginia, only a stone's throw from our
nation's capital.

In short, we are not protecting our citizens from the increasing
danger of criminals who perpetrate violence and intimidation as a way
of life, and we are locking up too many people who do not belong in
jail. It is incumbent on our national leadership to find a way to fix
our prison system.

I believe that American ingenuity can discover better ways to deal
with the problems of drugs and nonviolent criminal behavior while
still minimizing violent crime and large-scale gang activity.

And we all deserve to live in a country made better by such changes.