Where did our majority go? [View All]

There is what I see as a very large and very ignored detail that should concern the Democratic party and on this board you seem more aware but as a party I'm still not hearing any concern over a pretty relevant question. Where did your party go? I don't mean that in a figurative sense, I mean it in a literal one.

There's a fairly interesting chart at the top of the following document that shows the growth of our prison systems over time, if you compare the years on that chart with the decline in influence of the party you might find an interesting correlation. The rise of the system and the fall of the party fairly closely match each other.

http://www.sentencingproject.org/pdfs/pub9036.pdf

We're now the most imprisoned nation in the world by a long shot with at least 724 inmates per 100,000 residents with the next closest being Russia at just 564, among nations more similar to us our 724 inmates per 100,000 dwarfs England & Wales at 145, Australia at 120, Canada at 116 and Japan at just 60.

http://www.sentencingproject.org/pdfs/1044.pdf

But wait, we're still not quite done. The distribution of those prisoners is hardly equal among us. Whites overall are imprisoned at a rate of 393 per 100,000 while blacks are imprisoned at a rate of 2,531 per 100,000. Among young black males it's even worse with 12,603 per 100,000. (That's one in eight or 12.6% of Black men in their late 20s.)

http://www.prisonsucks.com/

We're still not quite done. Those young men are removed from their own neighborhoods in the census count and credited to the population of the area where they are imprisoned. The effect of that is to strip funding and representation from the often troubled neighborhoods they will be released to and to give that political power and additional representation to their jailers.

http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/

This is an ugly system, and there's way too little talk of reform. I know where the difference between your losses and former wins went, the difference between minority party and majority. It's about time the party started working on the issue, isn't it?