Jailhouse Rock

NEW YORK (AP) -- For the first time in history, more than one in every 100 American adults is in jail or prison, according to a new report.

The report, released Thursday by the Pew Center on the States, said the 50 states spent more than $49 billion on corrections last year, up from less than $11 billion 20 years earlier. The rate of increase for prison costs was six times greater than for higher education spending, the report said.

Using updated state-by-state data, the report said 2,319,258 adults were held in U.S. prisons or jails at the start of 2008 -- one out of every 99.1 adults, and more than any other country in the world.

You have to ask yourself why we have a greater percentage of our population in the hoosegow than any other country in the world. Are we imprisoning people that shouldn't be in jail? How many of these folks are in jail for "drugs" like marijuana? Don't you think this might be a symptom of something fundamentally wrong with our society? We are supposed, if you listen to the wingnuts, to be a "Christian" nation so WTF is going on?

When you drill into the numbers a little it becomes even more insane...

"For some groups, the incarceration numbers are especially startling," the report said. "While one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars, for black males in that age group the figure is one in nine."

Read the above paragraph and ponder what it is saying for a minute. If you are a black man between the ages of 20 and 34 there is a 10% chance your ass is going to be in jail. That, my friends, is insanity defined.

I'm all for being tough on crime and all that but don't you think the rationale for locking someone away should be to protect the rest of society from them? If you are guilty of a victimless crime and aren't a danger to society then I seriously doubt the value of locking you up just as "punishment". I think with a little creative thought we could figure out how to get you properly readjusted. Maybe we could make sure you had a good paying job, healthcare and some of that kind of stuff? There are mountains of work to be done in this country and surely some kind of community service would be better than sitting behind bars.