Wow

On why prison reform may get on the nation agenda.

THE legal scholar Derrick A. Bell foresaw that mass incarceration, like earlier systems of racial control, would continue to exist as long as it served the perceived interests of white elites.

Thirty years of civil rights litigation and advocacy have failed to slow the pace of a racially biased drug war or to prevent the emergence of a penal system of astonishing size. Yet a few short years of tight state budgets have inspired former “get tough” true believers to suddenly denounce the costs of imprisonment. “We’re wasting tax dollars on prisons,” they say. “It’s time to shift course.”

The drug war is strange indeed. I don't know what happens to young black men who get caught slinging. Do they really go to prison en masse? Do they have a felony on their permanent record? If so, then I can see how they get trapped into a criminal lifestyle and forever become a permanent member of the underclass. I do know what happens when upper middle class kids get caught slinging. Their parents are embarrassed and hire a pricey lawyer and they do community service, they don't have a felony on their record, and they likely stop slinging dope because they have other options. Is this racial? Or economic? Probably a little of both.

The prison statistics are scary. But then again, crime has dropped since the 1970s. I don't know what to say about these things...