The Prison Boom

Lew, the federal government now touts the building of new prisons as a way to “revitalize” rural and small-town communities. In places like West Virginia and Kentucky, new construction is dominated by new federal prisons being built.

I live in Cumberland, Maryland, and we have both a federal prison (medium security, plus a prison camp) and a medium-security state prison. Right now, the state is building a maximum-security prison, complete with death row and facilities to carry out executions.

Prisons in this country have gone from places that incarcerated dangerous people to places where about anyone can be sent, as long as someone in the government trumps up a charge. Ronald Reagan’s drug war, which not only turned local police forces into occupying armies, has been responsible for much of the explosion of the prison population, as more than half of all U.S. prisoners are there for low-level drug offenses.

Unfortunately, conservatives are responsible for much of the modern police state, although liberals have no problem in employing the apparatus for their own ends. Conservatives want people locked up for possession of marijuana (or even having bongs in their possession), while the New York Times calls for the imprisonment of property owners who might put some dirt on a piece of ground that the government declares a “wetland.” Welcome to Prison Nation.

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1:23 pm on July 25, 2006