U.S. Human Rights Abuses?

Source: "New High In U.S. Prison Numbers: Growth Attributed To More Stringent Sentencing Laws," N.C. Aizenman, The Washington Post, February 29, 2008.

With more than 2.3 million people behind bars, the United States leads the world in both the number and percentage of residents it incarcerates, leaving far-more-populous China a distant second, according to a study by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States.

The growth in prison population is largely because of tougher state and federal sentencing imposed since the mid-1980s. Minorities have been particularly affected: One in nine black men ages 20 to 34 is behind bars. For black women ages 35 to 39, the figure is one in 100, compared with one in 355 for white women in the same age group.

Comment: Great Britain tried to reduce crime by more and more draconian penalties for more and more offenses, and failed. It looks like the United States is falling into the same trap.

Is is a human rights abuse of our minorities that we find it necessary to place so many more of them in jail than does any other nation?

We criminalize narcotics abuse, when we might better use other approaches to reduce the problem. There must be a whole variety of technological approaches now that could substitute for incarceration for many crimes, with less interference with human rights.

We should use the information to make better public policy! JAD