America's criminal justice system has deteriorated to
the point that it is a national disgrace. Its irregularities
and inequities cut against the notion that we are a
society founded on fundamental fairness. Our failure
to address this problem has caused the nation's
prisons to burst their seams with massive
overcrowding, even as our neighborhoods have
become more dangerous. We are wasting billions of
dollars and diminishing millions of lives.
We need to fix the system. Doing so will require a
major nationwide recalculation of who goes to prison
and for how long and of how we address the long-
term consequences of incarceration. Twenty-five
years ago, I went to Japan on assignment for
PARADE to write a story on that country's prison
system. In 1984, Japan had a population half the size
of ours and was incarcerating 40,000 sentenced
offenders, compared with 580,000 in the United
States. As shocking as that disparity was, the
difference between the countries now is even more
astounding--and profoundly disturbing. Since then,
Japan's prison population has not quite doubled to
71,000, while ours has quadrupled to 2.3 million.
The United States has by far the world's highest
incarceration rate. With 5% of the world's population,
our country now houses nearly 25% of the world's
reported prisoners. We currently incarcerate 756
inmates per 100,000 residents, a rate nearly five
times the average worldwide of 158 for every 100,000.
In addition, more than 5 million people who recently
left jail remain under "correctional supervision," which
includes parole, probation, and other community
sanctions. All told, about one in every 31 adults in the
United States is in prison, in jail, or on supervised
release. This all comes at a very high price to
taxpayers: Local, state, and federal spending on
corrections adds up to about $68 billion a year.
