Cruel sentences, high prison rolls shame America

“If you give power to the people we’d all be in jail.”
--I.F. Stone
The rage to punish is one of the many dark sides of America.
That rage is fueled by politicians who want to show how tough they are on crime and by vindictive voters. The result: the prisons nationwide are jammed with 2.4 million inmates.
America’s jailing rate is higher than any other country. It has 5 percent of the world’s population yet has 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. One out of 31 adult Americans has been in prison or on supervised release.
No wonder Daniel Lazare wrote in The Nation last fall: “America’s homegrown gulag archipelago, a vast network of jails, prisons and ‘supermax’ tombs for the living dead…has metastasized into the largest detention system in the advanced industrialized world.”
So it is a happy development that the Supreme Court in December struck down mandatory sentencing. The court restored the right of federal trial judges to impose sentences on the basis of particular crime and individual defendants rather than on rigid standards.
The court also noted the inequality of sentences for possession of crack and powder cocaine, two forms of the same drug. Someone caught with five grams of crack, used in a poor communities, draws the same sentence as someone caught with 500 grams of coke, popular among affluent users. Or, put another way, possession of 50 grams (1 and 3/4 ounces) of crack will get you 10 years. It takes five kilograms (11 pounds!) of powder cocaine to draw the same sentence.
The possession amount is also racist since blacks are predominant users of crack.
In another happy development, the U.S. Sentencing Commission recently voted to lighten punishments retroactively for some crimes related to crack. This affects about 20,000 inmates, meaning release for some prisoners within months.
Sentencing in the bogus war on drugs is excessive. They do extreme violence to the idea of letting the punishment fit the crime. And that is why drug offenders account for 31 percent of prison rolls.
Justice Anthony Kennedy told the American Bar Association convention four years ago: “Our punishments are too severe. Our sentences are too severe.”
All too true. But Kennedy the Hypocrite cast the deciding vote in 2003 upholding excessive sentences for minor crimes under the outrageous “three-strikes-and-you’re out” California law. That draconian measure, enacted in a referendum, sends someone to jail for life for a third felony even if the third offense is as minor as petty theft. Earlier felonies might be as minor as burglary or check fraud.
Progressive magazine published an article in 2006 telling how a 25-year-old man was scheduled to remain in prison until 2059 when he will be 78. Murderer? Rapist? Kidnapper? Armed robber?
No. A medium-scale Salt Lake City marijuana dealer with no previous felony convictions. If he had been a murderer or rapist he might be facing a much shorter prison stay.
Long jail terms for nonviolent drug offenders contribute greatly to the nation’s overcrowded prisons. Overcrowding drives up prison costs, now at $60 billion a year. Overcrowding has forced Arizona to hold some inmates in tents. Hundreds of California prisoners sleep in three-tier bunks in gyms or day rooms. California must also carve out cell space from meeting rooms designed for educational and treatment programs.
Another serious problem with incarceration: rape. A 2001 report by the Human Rights Watch said male rape, often accompanied by appalling brutality, is prevalent throughout U.S. prison system. The damning report led to the Prison Rape Elimination Act of Congress in 2003.
The act put it bluntly: “The total number of inmates (men and women) who have been sexually assaulted in the past 20 years likely exceeds 1 million.” No gender breakdown is available but 93 percent of the jail population are men.
Still another prison problem is recidivism. More than 600,000 prisoners released this year will be back in jail by 2010. Why? Difficulty in getting jobs, education and housing. The stigma of having been in jail is often hard to overcome.
Establishment of a federal agency to combat re-entry problems would help greatly, providing training and wider access to drug treatment. But that would cost money, anathema to President Bush even if Congress were to mandate such an agency. Few politicians dare fight for prisoners’ rights. Such a stance wins few votes.
In any case, the excessive punishment of tens of thousands of Americans is one more example of an uncivilized nation.