Melvin B. Miller
Editor & Publisher

No surprise

Many states euphemistically call their prison administration the Department of Corrections. The ideal is that after a sojourn in the pokey, offenders will see the errors of their ways and reform.

Unfortunately, the American penal system has not been overly successful at reformation. In fact, a 2002 study released by the U.S. Department of Justice showed that between 60 and 70 percent of prisoners released from jail are rearrested within three years, and 51.8 percent find themselves back in prison.

Over the years, the American concept of prison has become merely a warehouse to protect citizens from dangerous individuals and a place to inflict punishment on society’s miscreants. The United States now has proportionately the largest prison population in the world. While only 5 percent of the world’s population resides in the U.S., the country has 25 percent of all those incarcerated in the world.

A study released last month by the Bureau of Justice Statistics revealed that there were more than 2.2 million inmates in jails and prisons in the U.S. in 2006. One of every 133 adults in America was incarcerated in 2006, a rate roughly five to eight times higher than in Canada and most Western European nations. The study follows a November 2006 BJS report that pegged the number of people in America either behind bars, on probation or on parole at more than 7 million.

In state prisons, half of the inmates are jailed for nonviolent offenses, and roughly 20 percent have been convicted of drug offenses. This category of crime has disproportionately snared African Americans, who make up only 13 percent of the population but account for about 35 percent of drug crime convictions, according to The Sentencing Project in Washington, D.C.

Critics of the sentencing system have described it as a method of crowd control of minorities and the working class. The number of prisoners who have been exonerated as a result of DNA evidence lends some credence to that theory. Also, a study of the fate of blacks charged with the same crime as whites in a Boston court indicates a greater proclivity to incarcerate blacks, even first-time offenders.

There has always been a belief that the rich, famous and well connected should not be forced to cohabitate with underclass lowlifes. The sheriff in Los Angeles recently released Paris Hilton from a short DUI sentence to spare her that imposition. And President Bush commuted the 30-month sentence of former White House official I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby because he thought the term was excessive.

According to the special prosecutor in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, a 30-month sentence is consistent with federal sentencing guidelines. Nonetheless, President Bush has the authority to overrule the sentence of the court. In his objection to Bush’s action, Fitzgerald stated, “It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals.”

Clearly, this is not what is happening in America. Defendants of modest means receive harsh sentences for personal conduct that might violate the law but inflicts no violence on others. However, crooked financiers who jeopardize the soundness of the nation’s economic system often get a brief vacation in a low-security prison country club.

Libby’s offense threatened national security. While he might not have leaked confidential CIA information himself, he lied and dissembled to protect those who did. This is not trivial. Of course, the full truth might have been politically damaging to the Bush administration.

Current events should generate public interest in a review of the nation’s obsession with extensive imprisonment.

“I’m going to contact Bush.
I always thought my sentence
was excessive.”