How the USA became a prison nation.

Charles Platt on life in prison - Boing Boing:

"It’s important to understand just how extreme the situation is. We now incarcerate a larger proportion of our citizens, and a larger absolute number of them, than any other nation in the world. The United States has less than 5 percent of the global population yet has almost one-quarter of all the world’s prisoners. (Source: New York Times, April 23, 2008.) The Land of the Free has become the land of the confined.

Now here’s the interesting part. From 1925 through 1975, the American incarceration rate remained around 110 prisoners per 100,000 population, not far from the current world median of approximately 125. (Source: New York Times, as above.) What happened since then? How could the rate increase by a factor of 7 during just three decades?

I can suggest an answer in three words: Money, fear, and politics.

Money is an issue because the United States is one of the few nations that can afford to build enough prisons and keep millions of people locked up. Most other nations are unwilling or unable to spend so much money unproductively.

As for fear and politics:

Back when Ronald Reagan was the Governor of California, growing discontent among conservatives encouraged the state to lead a movement toward tougher sentencing. When Reagan reached the White House in 1981, with his wife promoting the “war on drugs” and chanting “Just say no!” with her vapid grin, conservatives gained the power to encourage changes on a national level.

This trend reached its culmination in 1988, as Reagan’s reign was ending and Republican presidential candidate George H. W. Bush was looking for an edge over Michael Dukakis, his Democratic opponent. Bush’s campaign manager, Lee Atwater, and his media consultant, Roger Ailes, found their opportunity in the story of a convicted murderer in Dukakis’s home state of Massachusetts who had served 12 years in jail before being released on a weekend furlough, at which point he proceeded to commit a particularly unpleasant rape and other associated crimes.

Atwater and Ailes believed that one disturbing incident of this type, involving a heavy-set black rapist, would matter far more to voters than any reasoned debate about policy issues. It would capture the imagination, regardless of statistics showing that the event was a rarity or even a singularity. They didn’t seem to care whether the furlough policy had been a good thing or a bad thing. They simply knew that Dukakis had been in favor of it while he was governor, and it could smear him as damagingly as possible.

...Many other politicians were quick to notice Bush’s successful exploitation of public anxiety, and followed a similar strategy, calling for harsher penalties while denouncing their opponents for being less punitive than they were. In other words, they followed the ancient practice of whipping up fear while simultaneously promising to alleviate it.

This is a simplification of a complicated national trend, but I believe it does help to explain how the general U. S. prison population increased by a factor of 7. Many conservatives see no problem in this, since long sentences have been accompanied by a reduction in violent crime. On the other hand, in Canada, violent crime went into a similar decline without a massive increase in the prison population; and in some states (notably, New York) the crime rate didn’t go back up even after authorities relaxed their previous punitive policies."