REAL COST OF PRISONS

I don't know where the time went today but I'm just about out of it and I'm turning in early. They added a morning session to the The Real Cost of the War on Drugs Workshop that I'm going to tomorrow. This series is affiliated with the Sentencing Project out of DC so I'm expecting it to be good.

I'm looking forward to learning more about the economic arguments for reform, an area where my knowledge is thin and also the opportunity to network with local activists. Oddly, I have many more contacts internationally than I do here in the Valley.

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While we're on the theme of prisons in the Commonwealth, I have this excellent oped American 'Values' Cast a Global Shadow I've been wanting to post.

It's an archived piece, but Carroll's points are still fresh. Framed within the context of the current political climate in our legendarily liberal Massachusetts he details the brutal nature of the justice system in these times. It's not a pretty picture.

The death penalty was imposed here for first time since 1947, and the grisly murder of convicted child rapist Father John J. Geoghan brought to the light the lawless conditions with which prisoners are virtually tortured. Many voiced the thought Geoghan deserved his fate but indifferent guards and sadistic long timers who run the inmate hierarchy are also endangering the multitude of non-violent drug offenders that currently swell the prison population. This is not a punishment that fits the crime.

Looking at it nationally, yet another judge speaks in support of change.

...Robert A. Mulligan, chief administrative judge of Massachusetts, noted current characteristics of U.S. criminal justice. The American prison population recently went over 2 million for the first time, putting the United States ahead of Russia as the world capital of incarceration. Add to that number those on parole or probation and the total under "correctional" control grows to 7 million. Thirty years ago, one in 1,000 Americans was locked up; today, almost five are. In famously liberal Massachusetts, the prison population has grown, since 1980, from under 6,000 to almost 23,000. In 2003, for the first time, the amount of money Massachusetts spent on prisons was more than what it spent on higher education.

And for anyone who doesn't think this war is racist.

Mulligan, for one, points to the "war on drugs" as key, a war that has seen the rate of imprisonment of drug offenders jump by 700 percent since 1980; a war that depends on narrowly targeted law enforcement and on mandatory prison sentences. In 2002, 80 percent of those receiving such sentences were minorities.

The article also reports there are more African-American men under the supervision of the courts than there are in college. Was this the Bush administration's idea of equal opportunity education when they entered the affirmative action Supreme Court case?