http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/international/story/0%2C%2C136753%2C00.html

Anger grows as US jails its two millionth inmate

The land of the free is now home to 25% of the world's prison population

Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles Tuesday February 15, 2000

Vigils are being mounted today in more than 30 major cities in the United States to draw attention to the arrival of the two millionth inmate in American jails. The US comprises 5% of the global population yet it is responsible for 25% of the world's prisoners. It has a higher proportion of its citizens in jail than any other country in history, according to the November Coalition, an alliance of civil rights campaigners, justice policy workers and drug law reformers.

The coalition is co-ordinating protests across the US to draw attention to what they feel is a trend for locking up ever more offenders, most of them non-violent.

"Incarceration should be the last resort of a civilised society, not the first," said Michael Gelacak, a former vice-chairman of the US sentencing commission. "We have it backwards and it's time we realised that."

"Two million is too many," said Nora Callahan of the coalition, which is calling for alternatives to prison for the country's 500,000 non-violent drug offenders.

"We are calling on state and federal governments to stop breaking up families and destroying our communities. Prison is not the solution to every social problem," she said.

In New York city, the Prison Moratorium Project will focus on the fact that one in three black youths is either in custody or on parole. Kevin Pranis, of the project, said: "New York state is diverting millions of dollars from colleges and universities to pay for prisons we can't afford."

Criminal justice is already a campaign issue in the presidential race. The Republican frontrunner George W Bush, governor of Texas, is a staunch supporter of both the death penalty and stiffer sentencing for drug offences.

Since he took over in Texas, the prison population there is up from 41,000 to 150,000, much of this as a result of locking up people for drug possession. This is one of the reasons that commentators have pressed Bush to be more open about his own alleged drug use in the past.

Second biggest employer

Of those held in federal rather than state prisons, 60% are drug offenders with no history of violence. Aminah Muhammad, who is organising the Los Angeles vigil, said: "My husband is doing 23 years for just being present in a house where drugs were found, so my 10-year-old son doesn't have his father."

The vigil also coincides with the publication of Lockdown America, a report by Christian Parenti analysing the US criminal justice system. He notes the expansion of the private prison sector - dubbed by one investment firm the "theme stock for the nineties" - which now runs more than 100 facilities in 27 states, holding more than 100,000 inmates.

A total of 18 private firms are involved in the running of local jails, private prisons and immigration detention centres. It is estimated that firms such as Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch write between $2-3bn in prison constructions bonds every year.

This has led some commentators to suggest that the United States is effectively creating a prison-industrial complex in much the same way as the military-industrial complex operates.

Critics of the system suggest that so much money is invested in incarceration that politicians would find it difficult to reverse the trends against the wishes of their financial backers and lobbyists.

In his study Christian Parenti suggests: "In many ways the incarceration binge is simply the policy byproduct of rightwing electoral rhetoric."

With the economic restructuring of America, politicians found it necessary to address domestic anxieties, Parenti suggests and this "required scapegoats, a role usually filled by new immigrants, the poor and people of colour".

The cost of building jails has averaged $7bn per year for the last decade and the annual bill for incarcerating prisoners is up to $35bn annually. The prison industry employs more than 523,000 people, making it the country's biggest employer after General Motors. Some 5% of the population growth in rural areas between 1980 and 1990 was as a result of prisoners being moved into new rural jails.

The national convention of the American Bar Association, held in Dallas, Texas last weekend, was told there was growing momentum for a moratorium on the death penalty. This follows the recent announcement by the Illinois governor, George Ryan, that the state will suspend executions pending an investigation into the number of death row inmates who turn out to have been wrongly convicted. There are 3,600 people awaiting execution in the US - 463 of them in Texas alone.

Today's vigils are being held near jails, courthouses and prisons and span the US from Spokane in Washington state to Gainesville in Florida, from Austin in Texas to Newhaven in Connecticut.

In 1985, the then Chief Justice Warren Burger said: "What business enterprise could conceivably succeed with the rate of recall of its products that we see in the 'products' of our prisons?"

The demonstrators today are hoping to make the same point count, if not with the politicians, then at least with the voters who will be called in to endorse such penal policies in the coming months.

-- Jailhouse Joe (@ .), February 16, 2000

Answers

Storm the Bastille!

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), February 16, 2000.

Also see this thread: <:)=

welcome to our lovely gulag!

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), February 16, 2000.

There is a connection between today's higher rate of incarceration and the current lower rate of crime. And there is a reason the United States has a higher proportion of people in jai--it has a higher proportion of violent crime. Note from the report below that Belfast--the most dangerous city in the UK--even with paramilitary murders, shows 4.4 homicides per 100,000, compared to DC's 69.3. From the BBC:

The United States of Murder

Wednesday, August 19, 1998 Published at 12:55 GMT 13:55 UK

The United States of murder

Washington DC heads the homicide poll

Washington DC has come top in a poll of the world's murder capitals.

A survey conducted by the UK Home Office of 20 European and nine North American cities put the US capital way out in front with a murder rate of 69.3 per 100,000 population.

That suggests Washington is about 170 times more dangerous than the Belgian capital, Brussels, which came bottom with 0.4 murders per 100,000.

Washington was a long way ahead of the second most murderous city, Philadelphia, which had a rate of 27.4.

The nine American cities in the survey all came in the top 12 of the poll. San Diego had the lowest rate with 8 homicides per 100,000.

Only three European cities came out worse.

Dangerous city

Moscow, contending with the rise of the Russian mafia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, was the most dangerous European city in the survey with 18.1 killings per 100,000. Helsinki and Lisbon also ranked highly.

London came fifth from bottom with an average of 2.1 cases of murder, infanticide or manslaughter per 100,000.

Belfast was the most dangerous UK city in the survey with a death rate of 4.4. Edinburgh's figure was 2.4.

The UK Home Secretary, Jack Straw, said it was one league table in which the UK was happy to fall near the bottom.

He said: "Few people would have guessed that both Amsterdam (7.7) and Lisbon (9.7) have murder rates over three times higher than that of London.

"Moreover despite the impact of zero tolerance policies, New York City's homicide rate - at 16.8 - is eight times London's."

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), February 16, 2000.

Life is so unfair. The Black community is being plowed into the ground by drugs and drug culture and are complaining about people being put in prison for doing this.

My brother was a drug addict and was murdered in San Fransisco.

OK. Tell me again about how unfair it is. Tell me about all the drug dealers who bring joy and hope into this dreary old world of ours. Tell me about how they have helped so many people to live full and meaningful lives. That's right. All the contributions they have made to our society.

The Chinese deal with drug dealers by KILLING them. That is why they do not have much of a prison population OR drug problem. They learned from devastating experience what happens when a society turns to drugs...it disintegrates.

My father died from cancer and emphasima from smoking for 50 years. It cut 30 years off of his lifespan. Tobacco companies are drug pushers as well.

Death is not a pretty thing. We have gotten too used to allowing people to deal in death. Prison is, IMHO, a pretty light reward for this type of thing.

-- ..- (dit@dot.dash), February 16, 2000.

Funny how no mention is made of the thousands of Political...Um, Federal Prisoners incarcerated on gun law technicalities.

What's their horrible crimes? In many cases, having a half inch too much or too little metal or wood on a weapon. Or possession of READING MATERIAL (even if those materials are offensive to some, and I'm not talking pornography), which is protected by the First Amendment! Or a pistol grip or a bayonet lug or flash hider...which were all perfectly legal last year, but now there's this retro-active new law that's made it illegal. (See California) That's clearly a violation of Section 9, Clause 3 of the US Constitution: "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed."

Their favorite charge is "Conspiracy" This is thought crimes. Thinking about something is now the equivalent of doing it according to the BATF and the rest of those Jack Booted Thug alphabet agencies. With no evidence of any committed crime, you can be imprisoned and persecuted for thoughts. Piss someone off at the BATF? Hell they'll sic the IRS on your butt.

The point is that most of the gun law violations are paperwork and technicality violations. Not violent gun crimes. The people perpetrating violent crimes are being released for lack of space! I say let the normally law abiding citizens, railroaded on a technicality, go free. Then give every violent offender no less than 20 years in prison. THEN we'll see where the violent crime rates go.

As for people who are convicted of First Degree Murder, I say there's only one penalty required. Why should I pay for some scumbag to have a lifetime of leisure doing nothing all day. After 60 days of appeals, execute them all. THEN we'll see where the murder rate goes.

-- Powder (Powder47keg@aol.com), February 16, 2000.

"The home of the free and the brave...God Bless America" how hollow those words are today. Its so sad that we now have more prisoners than even Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia (at its Stalinist worst) and Red China.

Something really stinks about all this...the obscene profits being made by 'someone' from all that low cost prison labor. This fits in perfectly, however, with the Clintons love of everything (communist) Chinese...who have long been masters of exploiting their prison population...even going as far as selling their body parts. Perhaps the Clintons (and that awful 'woman' heading their Justice Dept) will offer to have prisoners trade kidneys or other body parts for parole. Sounds disgusting, but nothing surprises me anymore about the depths of depravity which the DC bunch stoops to.

-- Disgusted (WithTheDC@Bunch.com), February 16, 2000.

drugs are a real problem but jail is not the answer. the current war on drugs is a failure in many ways. heroin addicts beg for real treatment but there are no places available in programs. let's face it-- we have a dismal track record in treating addictions effectively. alcoholism is the worst area.

yet a cheap, effective treatment IS available, useful for all addictions. it's called ibogaine, it's from a plant, and you have to go out of the USA to get treatment because the FDA made sure it is currently illegal here. we are only now starting to do a few real scientific studies with it, and must go to other countries for subjects. it's a crying shame, the lack of studies. what drug company is going to pay for studies on a substance that can't be patented because it's natural? the current situation is insane.

-- jocelyne slough (jonslough@tln.net), February 16, 2000.

>> My father died from cancer and emphasima from smoking for 50 years. <<

I am sorry to hear that. My own father's health is highly impaired from smoking for 50 years, too, but he is still alive.

However, were cigarettes to be treated in the same way as marijuana is today (and most of the past 60 years), then your father would more likely have spent 4 or 5 years of his life imprisoned. Possibly several times. Because it isn't the "pushing" that is illegal, but the possession. Users possess drugs. We throw them in jail for it.

If your compassion is for the users, into whose lives the "pushers" have brought so much pain, then what is compassionate about arrest and imprisonment?

IMHO, the massive money we now spend on law enforcement and incarceration of users should be spent on treatment. Addiction is better addressed as a medical problem than a criminal problem.

-- Brian McLaughlin (brianm@ims.com), February 16, 2000.

Too many prisoners in the USA? The obvious solution -- outsourcing! I'm sure that many of the traditional powerhouses of the incarceration industry, such as Turkey, North Korea, and the like would be pleased to take our spare prisoners at very modest daily rates. Think of the money we'd save.

-- E.H. Porter (just@wondering.about it), February 16, 2000.

Big business in busting. Parolees are disenfranchised: no vote no power. Therefore no control over what happens. I see more rip-offs on the system side than the guys who got busted ever thought to attempt, but who gives a red rat's a**. And ain't it a little strange that the state will use the knowledge of the people who can't get past the conviction barrier on the outside to write and run the computer programs that control government while they're doing time and work for free? I always thought that it was pretty stupid to let a person build your system, then throw him away: actually, not stupid. Dangerous. Hot issues on this thread. By the way, for those who don't know, there are genuinely non-violent offenders who just do dumb things and get caught-especially the kids or very hard up (and not for dope-plenty of people are broke and down right now). The dangerous ones are smart enough not to get caught, have enough money to buy their way out or are in the system. Any doubts, readers? Check out the latest scandals on private prisons in Texas: rape, illegal use of identification documents, fraud... that'll get it, home boys- and those are the jailers. Private contractors, as they say. Prob'ly bet start another forum on this topic,Sysops.

-- knows the profit game (Yo,Joe@the other side.com), February 16, 2000.

hey you have now won Australia's 'Penal Colony Award'! Congradulations!!!

-- JM (ship@em.out), February 16, 2000.

Hmmmm... interesting stuff :-)

http://ibogaine.desk.nl/treatment.html

-- Casper (c@no.yr), February 16, 2000.