No Man Is Just a Number

I'm sure that will be the cry of the fiberal crowd, just like no human being is illegal, after this Reuters news story.

U.S. has most prisoners in world....

We rank first in the world in locking up our fellow citizens," said Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance, which supports alternatives in the war on drugs.

"We now imprison more people for drug law violations than all of western Europe, with a much larger population, incarcerates for all offenses."

We're #1! USA! USA!

Could it be that Europe has a too relaxed policy when it comes to "recreational" drug use?

Can you say Denmark?

Ryan King, a policy analyst at The Sentencing Project, a group advocating sentencing reform, said the United States has a more punitive criminal justice system than other countries....

Commenting on what the prison figures show about U.S. society, King said various social programs, including those dealing with education, poverty, urban development, health care and child care, have failed.

No kidding!

I'm sure he thinks it's because we haven't thrown enough money at the social programs.

I remember in 1992 then State Representative Tom "Tubby" Baker was stunned to learn that people coming out of prison were no better educated than when they went in.

I felt it necessary to point out to him it was PRISON and not COLLEGE!

Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in California, said the high prison numbers represented a proper response to the crime problem in the United States. Locking up more criminals has contributed to lower crime rates, he said.

"The hand-wringing over the incarceration rate is missing the mark," he said.

Scheidegger said the high prison population reflected cultural differences, with the United States having far higher crimes rates than European nations or Japan. "We have more crime. More crime gets you more prisoners."

Finally a voice of reason!

In the immortal words sung by Sammy Davis Jr., "Don't do the crime, if you can't do the time"!

PS: The title of the article and the picture come from the mid-1960s TV show 'The Prisoner'.