Prison Reform

Anyone who has studied the problem of U.S. Prisons is left with one inescapable conclusion:  We need prison reform.  As Dahlia Lithwick reports in Slate, Senator Webb wants to use this moment of reflection (even the kneejerk variety) on prisons and prison conditions as an opportunity for reform.

Far too many people with addictions are incarcerated.

Far too many individuals are incarcerated long-term because of determinate sentencing (such those three strikes provisions where someone can steal a candy bar and find themselves in prison for the rest of their life). 

Far too many folks are incarcerated for twenty plus years for being too poor to see any other way to make a living except for dealing drugs.

And far too many of us outside of prison assume that we are made safer because so many others are incarcerated.  Not true.  The National Institutes of Justice has routinely demonstrated -- to the deaf ears of politicians -- that the average citizen has more to fear from those they trust and love than the mythical stranger on the prowl.

Yet we continue to assume that those in prison deserve it because they were convicted in a court of law.  Never mind the fact that most of those poor souls are drug addicted, mentally ill, or suffer from precious few economic choices.  Ignore the fact that many of them will sign plea bargains that are not in their best interest because their exhausted public defender just wants to do the best they can as quickly as they can.  That is why so many criminologists call it "Bargained Justice."

Into this discussion has entered the Guantanamo Bay NIMBYs - No [incarcerated terrorists] In My Back-Yard - who do not want to see any of the prisoners from Guantanamo Bay brought to the United States.  Or is that just near them?  Forget for a moment that most terrorists (some foreign and domestic) have been incarcerated for years and in some cases decades inside prisons inside of the United States without major problems.  And forget that we spent millions in setting up the torture rooms of Guantanamo Bay.

We need to move past discussions of terrorists and prisons outside of the borders of the United States.  We need to take a long hard look at our prisons and why we - as members of a self-defined civilized society - want to put so very many of our people there.

To Senator Webb and his colleagues, we say: about damn time. Now do something about it.