May 03, 2006 23:55
Currently, we have the largest prison population in the world. Larger than China--an authoritarian government with 1 billion plus people.
How is it that the "Greatest Democracy in the World" has so much crime?
Furthermore, what do we consider "criminal" here?
Black Americans make up 15% of the drug users in this country, but 60% of the prison's population for drug abusers (which is well over half of our prison population). There are similar rates for Hispanics.
Of whites, lower-class whites of course make up the majority of the prison system, which is really a training ground for nihilism and furtherance of crime.
Most people in jail are nonviolent offenders, usually marijuana offenders. Marijuana has not caused a single death of a single person, whereas alcohol and cigarettes have killed hundreds of thousands.
As our government continues to slash social spending, destroy communities with capital flight and suburbanization, as gated communities become the norm and the voices of our underclass are drummed out of the media even as they fight wars against other poor people in OUR name, we need to step back and take a deep breath.
Any of us might be the next victim of this system, any of us. We have a forced labor system in this country, we have a virtual gulag system.
Our prisons are some of the worst in the world: there is torture, sexual abuse, poor conditions, overcrowding, and more. They do not reform, and their punishments only make people hate this society even more.
Without prison reform--rather, without a revolution--we are doomed. We will imprison more and more until our society collapses into revolutionary upheaval--the lower classes can only take so much, and they are growing as the middle class dissolves into the lower.
All of this matters to our lives. It isn't for political junkies. It has affected us, and will affect us even more as it gets worse, and worse.