The Incarceration Mentality

When will we understand that in the U.S. today, it's the incarceration rate and not the crime rate that is escalating? According to Bureau of Justice Statistics, despite falling crime rates since 1991, the rate of incarceration has increased 51%. The three strikes law is wrong-minded, the death penalty is inhumane, and the justice system needs help (but not through Homeland Security).



Two quotations:

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalized by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime."
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of civilization of any country."
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

Tags: government blogging weblog death penalty incarceration prisons