Ethics

The Stain of America's Prison System

By Ed Brayton

Over at Cato Unbound, where the Cato Institute hosts online debates on important issues, Glenn Loury has fired the opening salvo in a dispute over America's prisons and it touches on many issues that I have written about for years. The overall message:

Simply put, we have become a nation of jailers and, arguably, racist jailers at that. The past four decades have witnessed a truly historic expansion, and transformation, of penal institutions in the United States -- at every level of government, and in all regions of the country. We have, by any measure, become a vastly more punitive society. Measured in constant dollars and taking account of all levels of government, spending on corrections and law enforcement in the United States has more than quadrupled over the last quarter century. As a result, the American prison system has grown into a leviathan unmatched in human history. This development should be deeply troubling to anyone who professes to love liberty.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on March 17, 2009 (boomark / email).