Prisoners in our midst

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/us/27detain.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Highly recommend this NYT article and video which explores the dark underbelly of US immigration policy - the criminalization of immigrants and the fact that that some are making lots of money off imprisioning undocumented people, roughly 500,000 last year alone. These people lack the basic rights that criminal suspects have (like making a single phone call or representation by an attorney), and some have even died in custody due to untreated medical conditions.

The journalist titles this an “immigrant gold rush” that turned the private prison industry from bust to boom. Across the country, starting in Texas in the 1980s, prison companies built jail cells on speculation as they rushed to cash in on the war on drugs. They overbuilt; abuse scandals and escapes soured many states on private prisons, and by the late 1990s, as competition for inmates increased, the companies’ stock was suffering.

Then 9/11 and the criminalization of undocumented people happended, which now helps fill those prison beds. In fact our country leads the world in terms of the number of residents we lock up. We have 2.3 million people behind bars. China (with a population 4x ours) only has 1.6 million people incarcerated. This International Herald article provides a good overview:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/23/america/23prison.php

Ultimately our punitive treatment of immigrants and others means that we are pouring resources into building prisons and jailing people, rather than looking to the root issues that cause people to immigrate or commit crime. As a country, I think we need to have a real conversation about how we spend our resources.

What does it mean when a nation locks up so many of its people?