Imprisoned in the USA

I'm don't know why I get so behind with this blog, especially since I post on Twitter every day. Anyway, I'm back--with some words about prisons in the USA, especially in California.

Last Monday, a majority of five Supreme Court justices said that the overcrowding in California's prisons violates the Eighth Amendment against cruel and unusual punishment. They ordered that the state's prison population be lowered by more than 30,000 inmates. (The order can be carried out in other ways besides early release. such as transfers out of state.)

The ruling talks about cages the size of a telephone booth, inadequate medical care, and a suicide rate 80 percent higher than the national prison average. (A California prisoner needlessly dies every six or seven days.)

That is California. But California has to be seen in the context of the whole country. The USA imprisons more people than any other country in the world. Here are some numbers per 100,000, as of 2009:

USA: 743
Russia: 577
China: 120
Canada: 117

We are five percent of the world's population, but we hold 25 percent of all the inmates in the world.

About one in 32 Americans is in prison, on probation or on parole.

US taxpayers dish out $60 billion a year for prisons.

Civil rights lawyer and legal scholar Michelle Alexander reports that the USA "imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the hight of apartheid."

So what is behind this colossal mess?

Mandatory sentences. Longer sentences than anywhere else in the world. And the so-called War On Drugs.

You can add your name to the hundreds of thousands of people who want to end this useless drug war. Just paste this link into your browser:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/end_the_war_on_drugs_c/?twi