BULGING PRISONS FULL OF WRONG CRIMINALS

Judging by television, Americans' primary news source, the public is
worrying about all the wrong things. Last summer shark attacks were the
obsession, although the rate was lower than other years - this summer,
kidnappings, although actually lower than other years. The News & Record
front-page story on Aug. 26, "6.6 million in prison system" reports that
well over a million people were in prison last year, others being on
probation or parole.

What a surprise that the United States now tops most other nations in the
proportion of its population in prison. Its nearest rivals are rogue states
that we don't admire. North Carolina is planning to use subterfuge to build
more prisons, and many states turn over prisons to private corporations
that use inmates for cheap labor.

The high rate of imprisonment is due to the "Drug War" and its mandatory
sentences. I wrote in 1996 and again in 1999 that drug pushers hanging
around schools and getting children addicted were ruining people's lives in
a way akin to murder and should get similar punishment. That has not been
done, and drug lords corrupt the system like bootleggers of the 1920s.

Instead, while the public wasn't looking, politicians posing as hard on
crime put through laws that imprison the victims of the drug pushers.
Possession of even a small quantity of a "controlled substance" leads to a
mandatory sentence. Meanwhile, the "legal" drug manufacturers use heavy
advertising campaigns to push their (often addictive) drugs.

Something is wrong here.

Richard A. Stimson, High Point