the Red, White and Blulag

I filched this from a leading advocate for prison reform in the United States, The November Coalition.

These were America's prison stats for 2005. It's a bit stale. The June 2006 stats were just released. They're worse. And our incarceration rate is growing.

When I was growing up in the United States, I just took it for granted that the world's largest prison would always belong to some ghastly, repressive tyrannical police state like the Soviet Union or the Peoples Republic of China.

Well, since February 2000 (and it needs to be noted that the achievement happened on President Bill Clinton's watch), it's no longer Russia and it's no longer China. The United States of America, in raw numbers of prisoners and in percentage of population behind bars, is the world's largest prison. One out of every four of the world's prisoners is in an American prison or jail.

We're Number One!

The US Department of Justice's midyear 2006 stats just published: 2,245,189 children, women (currently the fastest-growing segment of the prisoner population) and men are behind bars in the Land of the Free.

Prison construction in the United States, and private contract prisons, have become a vast and profitable sector of the US economy. If you're an investor, one of the most solid and guaranteed ways to make profit is to invest in an industry associated with the growing prison population. One contemporary term for it is The Prison-Industrial Complex, a coinage I think originates from Angela Davis, a professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

More troubling, in states with the biggest prison populations (most notoriously in California), prison guard unions have become the most powerful political lobbies in their state legislatures -- specifically bribing and coercing legislators to pass new felony crimes and increase the lengths of felony sentences.

This, of course, guarantees prison guards job security for life.

This is a bipartisan achievement: Democrats and Republicans alike have become addicted to perpetual re-election on the sound bites and bumper stickers:

* I'm tough on crime!

* My opponenent is soft on crime!

About 53 percent of America's prisoners were convicted of non-violent, consensual, victimless adult drug crimes. Drug buyer and drug seller both got what they wanted and walked away satisfied.

The most miserable aspect of the New American Gulagocracy is its racist component. The fast track to long felony sentences is reserved for blacks. The slow path to prison is reserved for whites. Mike was thoughtful enough to help me with my defective fractions, and here's the American math: About 1 of every 20 adult black males is behind bars. About 7 of every 1000 adult white males is behind bars. The Hispanic imprisonment rate is wedged between blacks and whites.

Are Americans safer from violence now that we have more prisoners behind bars than any repressive police state in history? Was mass national incarceration the wonder cure for violent crime in America?

I have a dream. It's not a very glorious or visionary dream, but I'll settle for it and feel great about it.

I have a dream that someday, The Land of the Free will become the world's second-largest prison.

If you know a single candidate for president of the United States who is actually mentioning the world's largest prison in her or in his campaign, and promising to shrink it, please let me know and supply details. This is one big-ass Elephant In The Bathtub, but to the best of my knowledge, not a single major-party candidate is even whispering that it's a problem he or she will do something about.