I totally agree with this article. flagamuffin asks a good question. For a long time, but not long enough, there was a law reform commission in Canada. I imagine there is something similar in each US state -- or is there. First of all it takes the will to do it, and as the article says, no politician wants to appear soft on crime. One quick step could be to give all judges more flexibility in sentencing -- and more options. One point regarding the article. Paragraph 4 gave me a pause: Since the early 1970s, the nation’s prison population has quadrupled to 2.2 million, making it the world’s biggest. That is five to 10 times the incarceration rate in other democracies.
The first sentence seems doubtful. Do we know the incarceration rate in North Korea, China, and Iran? The second sentence is narrower, saying "democracies" and can be fact-checked.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate China and Iran are pretty well documented. North Korea is estimated by the US government to be approximately equivalent to the US rate. In any case if our defense comes down to "it's technically possible we're not literally the worst" then we have failed as a society.
The US is home to 5% of the world's population, and just under 25% of the world's prisoners. (I only know this because it was mentioned in the first post on Hubski I ever commented on.)
You're right Nik, it's sad and wrong and dysfunctional. It would take great will and vision to change that. It's hard to imagine a movement to change that statistic since the incarcerated are the most disenfranchised of any group. Still, the process of change has to start somewhere.
Given that the overwhelming majority of sentences relate to possession (this is so, yes?), I assume drug liberalisation would be a step forward. Recent moves to decriminalise marijuana in some states suggest things might be thawing a little...
Will this happen while private prisons and cheap prisoner workforces continue to be a source of profit and competitiveness for big corporations? Like so many of the US's problems mass incarceration is a symptom of a system whose function is to exploit the many for the benefit of the few.
I would suggest elimination of prisons-for-profit. Wrong incentive.