The Leader of the Unfree World

[n2doc]

On Friday, the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted unanimously to allow nearly 50,000 nonviolent federal drug offenders to seek lower sentences. The commission's decision retroactively applied an earlier change in sentencing guidelines to now cover roughly half of those serving federal drug sentences. Endorsed by both the Department of Justice and prison-reform advocates, the move is a significant step forward in reversing decades of mass incarceration—though in a global context, still modest—step forward in reversing decades of mass incarceration.

How large is America's prison problem? More than 2.4 million people are behind bars in the United States today, either awaiting trial or serving a sentence. That's more than the combined population of 15 states, all but three U.S. cities, and the U.S. armed forces. They're scattered throughout a constellation of 102 federal prisons, 1,719 state prisons, 2,259 juvenile facilities, 3,283 local jails, and many more military, immigration, territorial, and Indian Country facilities.

Compared to the rest of the world, these numbers are staggering. Here's how the United States' incarceration rate compares with those of other modern liberal democracies like Britain and Canada:


more
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/07/the-leader-of-the-unfree-world/374348/

[locks]

1. Thanks to you

and to John Oliver last week for his incredible comedic rant about this terrible unjust system we hear so little about. Surely most of us would never allow our children and families to be tortured, abused, and come out of prison worse than when they were incarcerated. Are we our brothers' keepers? Somehow we have learned to see these brothers and sisters as less than human.

[Cal33]

2. While on the topic of prisons, does anyone know if any other country in the world

also has private prisons? When I first learned about it, I was shocked. It's
a source of cheap labor for those companies owning them. It isn't too much
different from owning slaves. To some people, profit is profit, what difference
does it make?

[locks]

3. There have been a number of investigations

of for-profit prisons; the numbers have grown in the US and in Australia, UK, Scotland, and other countries. Their record is dismal all over the world. In the US they spend millions buying elected officials and some corrections officials actually own these private corporations. Of course their goal is to keep the prisons full at the least expense and bank on recidivism, so why would they have programs to help inmates rehabilitate back to freedom? The state contracts have reduced the amount the companies are required to spend on basic needs of the prisoners and the companies are making obscene profits.

[Doctor_J]

4. A lot like our health "care"

and soon our schools.

Fascism.