Incarceration numbers

I meant to blog about this the other day. More than 1 in a 100 American adults are behind bars in this country. Doesn't that just boggle the mind? The numbers for non-whites is even worse--1 in 36 Hispanic adults, 1 in 15 black adults and 1 in 9 black adults between the ages of 20 and 34 are behind bars. States spent $44 billion in tax dollars on corrections. We are doing something wrong. Yes, violent criminals need to be incarcerated. The problem is incarcerating nonviolent criminals for lengthy jail terms. We can blame the war on drugs for a large part of this increase. We pride ourselves on being a role model for other countries. We need to take a long hard look at the number of people we lock up before we tell other countries how to handle their justice system...

Prisoners and the Media...

Heres Why You Havent Been Reading Any Prisoners Tales From the Colorado Supermax Prison - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog

This blog brings up an interesting thought about prisoner rights. Do prisoners have the right to media access? Or put the other way does the media have the right to have access to prisoners? The prison mentioned here is one of the most secure prisons in the country. Does it matter if it is a secure prison or a minimum security one? Are there different rules for prisoners based on which facility there are housed in? Being convicted of a crime does mean you lose some rights. That is only fair. But where does the line stop? One comment asked if denial of access was only for face to face interviews, which the blog specifically mentions, or if it is for all access. If the media can still do phone and/or email/letter interviews is that enough? Secrecy is not always necessary. We do have the right to know how prisoners are treated in this country. One of the shames of our society is the high number of people in our prison system. We incarcerate people at an alarming rate compared to the rest of the world. Of course that is best left to another posting...