DUKE SPEAKER: U.S. PRISONS ARE 'DISASTER'

DURHAM -- The man best known for uncovering the dark side of Big Mac
culture was at Duke University Wednesday night to take on a different
topic, the U.S. prison system.

"Show me your prisons, and I'll show you the state of your civilization,"
said Eric Schlosser, reciting a Fyodor Dostoevsky quote to a packed Love
Auditorium.

To Schlosser, the more than 2 million people in the U.S. prison system --
what he called a "cruel and pointless self-perpetuating system" -- are an
omen of the nation's future.

"For $40 billion a year, we've really built a Kafka-esque revolving door
where our people go into prison, come out and go right back in," Schlosser
argued. "And the American taxpayer is paying for each revolution of this door."

Schlosser's first book, the unsettling bestseller, "Fast Food Nation,"
traced the birth of the fast-food industry in Southern California 50 years
ago to its global reach today.

Once his next book, "Reefer Madness, and Other Tales From the American
Underground," hits bookstores in a few weeks, Schlosser will focus his
energy on a book about the prison system, an extension of an essay he wrote
four years ago for The Atlantic Monthly.

The journalist was in town at the request of Duke Medical Students for
Social Justice. About 10 female medical students comprise the group, which
teaches healthy-living skills to a class of inmates in the N.C. Correction
Institute for Women.

Schlosser opened his talk by cautioning the audience not to live their
lives in the "beautiful bubble" that is a college campus. There are other
sorts of institutions near Duke and UNC, he said, including Central Prison,
Polk Youth Institution and the Durham County Jail.

But why care? Why get involved?

"At these institutions, there is teaching and learning taking place every
day," he said. "Most middle-class people won't ever see it or experience
it, but they're connected to it intimately."

Everyone is affected Schlosser argued, because prison creates a violent
subculture: one that perpetuates and fosters the gangs and one that lets
out the average inmate after two and a half years behind bars. The
statistic was one of a litany that Schlosser tossed out to the crowd.
Others included:

- -- California and Texas have more people behind bars than the entire
European Union.

- -- The United States has more prisoners [2.1 million] than Communist China
[500,0000].

- -- The average inmate represents about $25,000 a year in operating costs
for each prison.

- -- Three-quarters of U.S. inmates are substance abusers, a majority earned
less than $10,000 and 300,000 are mentally ill.

- -- Two-thirds of the prison population are people of color.

"This is a disaster!" Schlosser said.

And because the strong rule the weak in prison, he said inmates learn a
very strong lesson in delinquency and have little chance for rehabilitation.

Schlosser blamed the problems of the prison system not on liberals or
conservatives, but on "a beautiful barbwire system of denial."

To reinforce his point, he said more people went to prison under Bill
Clinton's eight years than under any other president.