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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

All countries deal with those who affront society with varying  
severity of punishment. In our country, that we like to think is  
superior to all others, it seems to me that we have 1) more unhappy  
citizens, 2) more laws against personal freedom to act, 3) a far  
superior apprehension and conviction system, 4) harsher laws, 5)  
longer sentences, 6) a cavalier attitude toward social inequities, 7)  
a lack of consideration for productivity lost, and/or 8) we are just  
mean people.

There are so many things wrong with our so-called criminal justice  
system. We put minor offenders in prison where lose what positive self- 
image they might have had and they learn advanced criminal techniques  
from other prisoners.

The expense of maintaining a police, court and detention business of  
this magnitude is awful. Citizens are in prison, costing we taxpayers  
large sums of money to give them food, shelter, clothing and medical  
care, and in many cases doing the same for their spouses and children.  
Through out various failings we cause and support this war against our  
citizens.

The only answers I have are to eliminate dumb laws like the stupid War  
on Drugs and to offer non-violent lawbreakers the option of prison  
versus a decent job and a strict parole system so they can support  
their families and gain a sense of self-worth.


Inmate Count in U.S. Dwarfs Other Nations’
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: April 23, 2008
The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population.  
But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.
Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a  
reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive  
American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for  
crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely  
produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they  
are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.

Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say  
they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American  
prison sentences.

The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind  
bars, more than any other nation, according to data maintained by the  
International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College London.

China, which is four times more populous than the United States, is a  
distant second, with 1.6 million people in prison. (That number  
excludes hundreds of thousands of people held in administrative  
detention, most of them in China’s extrajudicial system of re- 
education through labor, which often singles out political activists  
who have not committed crimes.)

The full story is at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/us/23prison.html?hp