Why Some Politicians Need Their Prisons to Stay Full

By BRENT STAPLES

Published: December 27, 2004


The mandatory sentencing fad that swept the United States beginning in the 1970's has had dramatic consequences - most of them bad. The prison population was driven up tenfold, creating a large and growing felon class - now 13 million strong - that remains locked out of the mainstream and prone to recidivism. Trailing behind the legions of felons are children who grow up visiting their parents behind bars and thinking prison life is perfectly normal. Meanwhile, the cost of building and running prisons has pushed many states near bankruptcy - and forced them to choose between building jails and schools.

Seldom has a public policy done so much damage so quickly. But changes in the draconian sentencing laws have come very slowly. That is partly because the public thinks keeping a large chunk of the population behind bars is responsible for the reduced crime rates of recent years. Studies cast doubt on that theory, since they show drops in crime almost everywhere - even in states that did not embrace mandatory minimum sentences or mass imprisonment. In addition, these damaging policies have done nothing to curb the drug trade.

Changing prison policy, however, is no longer a simple matter. The business of building and running the jailhouse has become a mammoth industry with powerful constituencies that favor the status quo. Prison-based money and political power have distorted the legislative landscape in ways that will be difficult to undo.

These problems are on vivid display in New York, which started mass imprisonment when Gov. Nelson Rockefeller persuaded the Legislature to pass the toughest drug laws in the nation at the start of an ill-starred "war on drugs" 30 years ago. The Rockefeller laws introduced the country to mandatory sentencing policies that barred judges from deciding who goes to jail and for how long. Instead, the laws required lengthy sentences - 15 years to life - for nonviolent, first-time offenders, many of whom would have received brief sentences, drug treatment or community service under previous laws.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/27/opinion/27mon3.html

that the government has to subsidize the industry by providing it with "business". More arrests, more trials, more convictions, and more years in prison. And the local economy depends upon the prison being kept full as it employs guards, has contracts with food preparation companies, gets subsidized with taxes, etc.

Prisons have been used as a panacea for weak economies decimated by factories closing and putting a majority of residents out of work.

With this "blessing" also comes tragedy as people get caught up in the net and are manipulated by the system, thus found in mandatory sentencing. You can have a drug conviction conclude with a 15-20 year sentence as opposed to a homicide with a mere 7 years. Plus, it "looks good" to the public as the "bad" people are removed from the streets and the illusion of safety of the public is promoted.

Sick, sick, sick.

government, people decry enviromental regulations, health regulations, labor regulations are so eager to make laws that effectively create a huge criminal class.

And prison privitization, as with all other privatized social institutions, has now become a monster that threatens millions of non-violent people.

All this in the name of 'helping' them. :puke:

The private contractors running the prisons are often the same ones as, or closely tied in with, the homeland security and military contractors, and the implications are both huge and ominous.

See details at Disinfopedia:
http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Prison-industrial_complex

Writing for The Atlantic in December 1998, Eric Schlosser said that "The prison-industrial complex is not only a set of interest groups and institutions. It is also a state of mind. The lure of big money is corrupting the nation's criminal-justice system, replacing notions of public service with a drive for higher profits. The eagerness of elected officials to pass tough-on-crime legislation -- combined with their unwillingness to disclose the true costs of these laws -- has encouraged all sorts of financial improprieties."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts86.html

While enjoying Christmas, good food and drink with family and
friends in the warmth and comfort of your home, take a moment to
remember the falsely imprisoned. Think about how your own family
would handle the grief, because wrongful imprisonment can happen to
you.

In a just published book, Thinking About Crime, Michael Tonry, a
distinguished American law professor and director of Cambridge
University’s Institute of Criminology, reports that the US has the
highest percentage of its population in prison of any country on earth.
The US incarceration rate is as much as 12 times higher than that of
European countries.

Unless you believe that Americans are more criminally inclined than
other humans, what can explain the US incarceration rate being so far
outside the international mainstream? I can think of the following
reasons:

1.In order to prove that they are "tough on crime," politicians
have criminalized behavior that is legal elsewhere.
2.Many innocent Americans are in jail.

Tough on crime also satisfies 2 of Britt's 14 defining characteristics common to a fascist State:

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists; terrorists, etc.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

http://www.surfaceonline.org/essayamerica6.htm

If even liberals focus on finding a scapegoat while practicing obsession with crime and punishment, that allows the other 12 characteristics to take hold while the liberals are so distracted. The media is very good at promoting this distraction.