December 7, 2006 - Journal Standard (IL) Editorial: Incarceration Nation The Issue: US Leads The World In Prison Population Our View: We Can't Afford The Soaring Human And Financial Costs

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With scant media coverage beyond an official press release, the U.S. Justice Dept. recently announced that a record 7 million people, or one in every 32 American adults are behind bars, on probation or on parole -- an increase of 2 million.

Of those 2.2 million are in prison or jail somewhere in the United States, giving us the highest rate of prisoners per 100,000 in the world.

Isn't it ironic then that, with so many prisons and prisons so wretchedly overcrowded nationwide -- Illinois' 130-year-old Menard prison houses 3,315 in space built for 1,983 -- we still can't get a new, $140 million prison open in Thomson?

But that's another editorial.

Those millions of prisoners and parolees, meanwhile, represent a fraction of real costs of what has become in the last few decades an incarceration nation -- for as offenders do time at $20,000 per year, they also leave behind fatherless children and families.

Lacking any means of support, they are far more likely to join welfare roles at taxpayer expense, or turn themselves to crime.

It's shameful for a democracy to lock-up one in every 32 adults.

Yet it's also a shame to have so much crime in America, so many innocent crime victims and so much glorification of violence, crime and lawlessness in popular culture.

And what of the estimated 1 million or so incarcerated Americans who are non-violent offenders, mostly drug addicts who spend years in prison conditions that can, paradoxically, make them violent or mentally-ill before they return to life on the street with their addictions, an ex-con's scarlet letter, and no means of support?

There are no easy answers.

Nor do there appear to be any meaningful attempts by our leaders to ask the right questions, or to try new approaches beyond costly prisons.

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