America Imprisoned

This is the kind of story I hate to see:

Don't ask the U.S. prison system if this is indeed "the land of the free."

For the first time in history, more than one in every 100 American adults is in jail or prison, according to a new report tracking the surge in inmate population.

The report, released Thursday by the Pew Center on the States, said the 50 states spent more than $49 billion on corrections last year, up from less than $11 billion 20 years earlier. The rate of increase for prison costs was six times greater than for higher education spending, the report said.

Using updated state-by-state data, the report said 2,319,258 adults were held in U.S. prisons or jails at the start of 2008 -- one out of every 99.1 adults, and more than any other country in the world.

By contrast, in mid 2002 the ratio was 1 in 142, with the prison population surpassing 2 million for the first time. Report: 1 In Every 99 Americans Now Behind Bars

A couple of weeks ago we went around and visited people getting signatures for the anti-transgender petitions. I know they try to portray it as harassment, but in most places we talked with the people holding the petitions and had good, interesting discussions. One thing that came out in conversations with some of them is that they really believe the world is a terrible, scary place, full of dangerous, evil people. That's why we have to allow discrimination against transgender people, because there are so many bad people that some of them are sure to take advantage of any loophole that may be created if transgender people are treated fairly.

So, like, if it was legal for a man to go into the ladies room, there are so many bad, dangerous voyeurs and exhibitionists and predators-and-pedophiles that you just know one of them will go into the ladies room and ... do something. (Of course, it's always been legal to go into whatever restroom you want, but that fact doesn't seem to appear in the syllogism anywhere.)

I'll admit, I can't relate to that kind of thinking. I like the world and the people in it. I suppose something bad can happen to me, but I don't dwell on the possibility. And most of the time decent things happen, good things.

But when you believe the world is a threatening place populated by dangerous people, you have to be careful all the time, because anybody might do anything to you. There is always proof that the world is bad and people are evil, there's always somebody hurting somebody or doing something wrong, and Good People have to do everything they can to keep it under control.

From that point of view, it seems reasonable to lock Bad People up.

So now more than one American in a hundred is imprisoned.

Here are some not-surprising facts:

"For some groups, the incarceration numbers are especially startling," the report said. "While one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars, for black males in that age group the figure is one in nine."

The nationwide figures, as of Jan. 1, include 1,596,127 people in state and federal prisons and 723,131 in local jails -- a total 2,319,258 out of almost 230 million American adults.

The report said the United States is the world's incarceration leader, far ahead of more populous China with 1.5 million people behind bars. It said the U.S. also is the leader in inmates per capita (750 per 100,000 people), ahead of Russia (628 per 100,000) and other former Soviet bloc nations which make up the rest of the Top 10.

The "leader?" Now there's something to be proud of.

One black guy out of every nine is in prison or jail. Sounds like there are two general explanations for that, either a whole lot of black guys are Bad People, or the group that is in power locks up the group that is not. Talk among yourselves.

There are people -- lots of them -- who think that too many criminals are running free, that there aren't nearly enough Bad People locked up. You can't run for office in this country promising to free people who have been convicted for victimless crimes, on bad evidence, whatever, you can't say in a speech that sentences are too long or that our system of punishment for misdeeds is insane and needs to be thought through from the beginning. If you actually intend to get elected you have to promise to be "tough on crime," e.g., to lock up even more people.

Imagine where that goes, if you let it go on indefinitely. Eventually everybody will be locked up except a few little clusters of self-righteous people, people who live lives so uninteresting that nobody can find a reason to incarcerate them.