LAND OF THE FREE

Every once in a blue moon the federal government says something we need to
hear. On Sunday, Aug. 17, the government admitted that 1 in 37 American
adults is serving or has served time in federal or state prison. As the
Associated Press wrote in their headline on the subject, "5.6 million in
U.S. have prison experience."

The statistics were released by the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice
Statistics in its first-ever glimpse at the pervasiveness of prison
"experience" among American adults. According to the report, 2.7 percent of
the U.S. adult population have served time or are currently locked up a
state or federal prisons. The report projects that an estimated 7.7 million
people­about 3.4 percent of the nation's projected adult population­will
have served time by 2010.

It's the second jaw-dropping report to come out of the bureau in recent
weeks. Last month, the agency announced that 2.1 million people­about 3.4
percent of the adult population­were currently serving prison sentences.
That's a higher percentage than at any other time in U.S. history.

To understand why these statistics are shocking, one need only look at the
rest of the world. Put simply, the United States, which likes to see itself
as No. 1, truly is the world's leader­when it comes to the number of people
behind bars. The United States incarcerates a greater percentage of its
population than any other nation.

Compare the United States to China, for example. U.S. officials like to
criticize China for its rampant abuses of human rights. Yet China, with a
population that far exceeds that of the United States, has only 1.8 million
people in prison.

The U.S. incarceration rate is three times that of Iran, five times that of
Tanzania and five to eight times that of Western European nations.

Ironically, to find a nation the incarceration rate of which approaches
that of the United States, one must look to Russia, the nation most
Americans were taught to fear during the Cold War as being the enemy of
freedom. Yet, Russia's incarceration rate has dropped over the past couple
of years, as the Russian government has moved to address prison conditions
and incarceration rates, while that of the United States continues to rise.

Who's the enemy of freedom now?

Perhaps even more shocking than the statistics themselves are the
comparison to U.S. statistics from happier times. In 1974, only 2.3 percent
of the adult male population was in prison, compared to 4.9 percent today.
A person born in 1974 had only a 1.9 percent chance of going to prison,
while those born in 1991 have a 5.2 percent chance of spending time in Club
Fed.

Apologists for the U.S. system like to point to the nation's economic and
ethnic diversity, while whining that the United States faces problems
unlike those of any other nation. But those conditions existed in the '70s,
as well.

If you want to know why so many Americans are serving time, look at the
crimes for which they were sentenced. The Sentencing Project has done just
that and reports that drug offenders make up about 36 percent of inmates
serving time in state prisons and a staggering 71 percent of federal inmates.

The War on Some Drugs, ostensibly fought to keep Americans safe, continues
to put record numbers of Americans in prison, destroying lives and making a
mockery of justice. This year alone, the Bush administration plans to spend
$2.3 billion to turn curious people, addicts, thrill-seekers and those with
emotional problems into criminals.

Compare that to the relatively paltry $1.6 billion the government is
willing to spend on drug treatment programs, and it becomes quite clear
that incarceration, not treatment, is the U.S. priority when it comes to drugs.

But the War on Drugs is not to blame alone. Incarceration is the preferred
response to a host of social problems in the United States­mental illness,
poverty, racial stress. Rather than addressing the underlying issues that
cause criminality, we get tough on crime. The result? People are put away
for absurd lengths of time, like the felon who stole videos from
Blockbuster and was sentenced to 50 years to life under the Three Strikes law.

There are undoubtedly lots of people in the United States who have no
problem with the idea that those who break the law spend years in prison.
But a prison sentence carries very real psychological consequences, leaving
children without parents, subjecting young inmates to an environment of
violence and abuse, stripping people of what dignity they might have had.
And there are other options, ranging from drug treatment to house arrest to
community corrections, just to name a few.

As with most things in life, deeper understanding comes when you follow the
money. That's why you won't find our leaders on the forefront of sentencing
reform. Prisons are big business in America and are supported by a bloated
law enforcement industry that wants very much to retain its taxpayer
funding. It's unlikely that the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the CIA
(which deals drugs) or even your local district attorneys are going to
support legal reforms that put them out of business.

Fortunately, they don't hold the reins of power unless we let them. It's
time for Americans to make ending the War on Drugs and the nation's high
incarceration rate political priorities. As the government's own statistics
prove, we could use more freedom in the Land of the Free.