The Political Inquirer

1 out of every 100 adult Americans is incarcerated in the U.S. prison system, a historical first, according to a recent report. Over 2,300,000 citizens live behind bars, making the U.S. the leading incarcerater in the world. In 2006, the U.S. also had the honor of the sixth highest execution rate in the world. This put us behind only Sudan, Iraq, Pakistan, Iran, and China, in terms of executions.

What do these statistics mean? Are we simply to believe that America is just a nation of violent criminals?

More than likely, the desire to look for ‘quick fix’ solutions is contributing to the trend. In Kentucky, for example, the study found that while the crime rate had only increase 3% over 30 years, the prison population had increased 600%. This statistics seems to indicate that Americans are being jailed more for minor crimes. Further, if people are staying in jail and returning to jail often enough to keep the populations high, then the prison system is obviously not reforming criminals.

Its time for a changes in philosophy and reform to the system. High imprisonment rates don’t only hurt those imprisoned, but drain money from taxpayers and other state programs, like education and health departments. Our style of vindictive justice - where the system is meant to punish the criminal, not help him or her - isn’t working. Likewise, rhetorical programs like “The War on Drugs” sound nice on TV, but end up hurting in the long run. Marijuana, not hard drugs, now accounts for half of all arrests. Many of these cases don’t go to prison, but even a small fracture of the rocketing number is enough to add extra strain.

Still, I can’t help but wonder - if the war on drugs isn’t responsible for the the higher prison rates, what sort of crimes are people being arrested for? Whatever is going on, were trying to fix the symptoms and not the problem. If people really are more desperate and violent, there has to be a reason behind it. And if that’s not the case, we have to stop imprisoning them because if anything will turn people violent, its probably prison that will do it.

Many people seem to think America is heading down the wrong road. Often, I see posts on this site decrying calls for health care and education spending, claiming those policies will lead us down the road to ’socialism’ and ‘communism’ and total societal decay, i.e. North Korea or communist China. Yet, its not health care and taxes that we should worry about - you’re looking down the wrong road - its imprisonment, restrictions on liberty, and the stifling of free speech that are the signs of bad governance. I, for one, would be a lot more worried about being imprisoned in China than about being treated by its health care system, if it even has one. If your worried about police-state America, don’t point at Obama or Clinton, take a look around. Were already part of the way there.

Now is our chance to stop these trends, but we have to back away from the politics of fear and quick-fix solutions. If we act now, we can begin to fix our problems and look for solutions. If not, we may find that our biggest troubles come not from external foes, but those within.