With one in 31 Americans now under some form of correctional supervision, mass incarceration is hitting closer to home for urban, suburban and rural residents who never envisioned family members would one day be locked away in remote prisons. Some have even been shipped off to other states. (Out-of-state transfers are routine in the federal system, and increasingly common in overcrowded state prison systems that contract with private prison operators.)
While California, New York and Texas have begun to show slight decreases in their bloated prison populations, the South has become the epicenter of the latest incarceration upsurge: Kentucky (#1), Florida (#5), Virginia (#6), Alabama (#7), and Louisiana (#8) are in the nation’s top 10 for imprisonment rate increases from 2000 to 2007. Drug-related arrests—nearly 2 million in 2007—continue to play a major role in driving up the numbers of jail and state prison inmates, while the majority of federal prisoners are doing time for drug offenses (more than 95,000 men and women in 2007).
The sidebar article accompanying this piece titled “A Report From the Front Lines in the War on Drugs” by lawyer Leonard C. Goodman is compelling and calls on President Obama to commission a panel of experts to provide a report in the manner of the Shafer Commission in 1972.
Not every Democratic legislator is fearful of criminal justice reform. Freshman Virginia Senator Jim Webb is pushing for US prison reform this spring. The link mentions that
“He clearly has limited interest in the political art, you might say, of reelection,” said Robert D. Holsworth, a political science professor at Virginia Commonwealth University.
via – The Washington Post “Webb Sets His Sights On Prison Reform”
Hmm, I’m pretty impressed a sitting official is more concerned with doing what is obviously right as opposed to making sure he gets re-elected. Senator Webb is different from many elected officials in that he is qualified to do things other than be a career politician.
Wouldn’t be afraid of the money people if the campaigns were publicly funded. Just imagine if we had politicians doing a good job for the majority of all the people instead of the rich few who can finance a campaign.
