Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2003
Subject: #264 The “Moral Costs” Of 2 Million Prisoners
The “Moral Costs” Of 2 Million Prisoners
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DrugSense FOCUS Alert # 264 April 15, 2003
The U.S. prison population officially rose above 2 million recently,
and this has disturbed editorialists at the Washington Post – at least
a little bit.
“There is no magic ‘right’ number of people to have in prison; that
will properly vary with crime rates and popular attitudes toward
criminals,” the editorial proclaimed, “But there is something
breathtaking about the current figure.”
Later in the piece, writers acknowledge that drug prohibition has
played an important role in the growth of prison populations. The
editorial doesn’t call for ending the drug war, but it does lament the
financial costs of incarcerating so many drug criminals. It also
suggests there are moral costs, described as “hard to define but real
nonetheless.” Hard to define? How about the corruption and dishonesty
needed to maintain prohibition? How about the cruelty that takes
medicine from people in pain?
Please write a letter to the Washington Post congratulating the paper
on its minor moral awakening, but also to remind editors that if they
dare to look at the drug war picture unflinchingly and without
glossing over the realities, the moral costs are so clear they hurt.
Thanks for your effort and support.
WRITE A LETTER TODAY
It’s not what others do it’s what YOU do
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Source: Washington Post
Contact: letters@washpost.com
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Pubdate: 13 Apr 2003
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2003 The Washington Post Company
Contact: letters@washpost.com
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491
Editorial: A Nation Behind Bars
IMAGINE THAT the United States locked up the populations of Wyoming,
Vermont and North Dakota and then threw in the nation of Iceland for
good measure. The result would be an inmate population of
approximately the same size as the one currently behind bars in the
United States. Last year, for the first time in American history, the
states and the federal government — in jails and in prisons around
the country — had more than 2 million people behind bars, according
to Justice Department statistics. Those locked up included 1.3 percent
of all males in this country, 4.8 percent of all black males — and a
shocking 11.8 percent of black men between the ages of 20 and 34. The
dramatic rise in the prison population has created a nation of
prisoners within American society. While hidden from the view, and
even the consciousness, of most Americans, the existence of this
nation forces those on the outside to ask, in turn, what kind of
nation they want to live in.
There is no magic “right” number of people to have in prison; that
will properly vary with crime rates and popular attitudes toward
criminals. But there is something breathtaking about the current
figure. The U.S. rate of incarceration is the highest in the world;
according to data from the British Home Office, the only countries
with rates close to it are the Cayman Islands and Russia. It is nearly
seven times the rate in Canada and more than four time the rate in the
United Kingdom, which leads Europe. It also represents an enormous
rise by the standards of even recent American history. According to
criminologist Alfred Blumstein, the rate of imprisonment stayed stable
between the 1920s and the 1970s. Since the 1970s, however, it has
increased several times over.
The logic of tougher sentencing regimes and extended prison terms for
drug offenders has long since become circular. When crime persists in
the face of tougher sentences, many policymakers conclude that the
sentences need to be tougher still. The cycle has proven enormously
difficult to break, in large measure because popular sentiment makes
the tough-on-crime posture politically irresistible. But keeping an
ever-growing number of people locked up has huge costs: the financial
costs associated with maintaining a nation of inmates, the human costs
in the wrecked lives of those who could have been rehabilitated under
different policies, the costs to society when people are finally
released after years of prison socialization. There are also moral
costs — hard to define yet real nonetheless. For the incarceration
rate reflects on some level the rate at which a society gives up on
its members. And 2 million is a huge number to give up on.
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SAMPLE LETTER
(Please note: If you choose to use this letter as a model please
modify it at least somewhat so that the paper does not receive
numerous copies of the same letter and so that the original author
receives credit for his/her work.)
To the Editors:
I read the editorial “A Nation Behind Bars” (April 13), about the 2
million people imprisoned in America, many for drug crimes. As I read,
I was surprised to see this line: “There are also moral costs — hard
to define yet real nonetheless.”
Hard to define? Separating parents from their children purely because
parents like intoxicants other than alcohol or tobacco is a moral
cost. Empowering violent drug gangs who torment neighborhoods and use
young people as cannon fodder for their enrichment is a moral cost.
And filling our expensive prison system with those who survive gang
warfare, thereby starting the whole cycle again, is a clear moral cost.
The moral costs of the drug war are very literally concrete for those
who have been swept into cells because of it.
Stephen Young
IMPORTANT: Always include your address and telephone
number
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Prepared by: Stephen Young – www.maximizingharm.com DrugSense Focus
Alert Specialist
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