Could This Be The Land Of Sour Milk And Dead Bees?

The United States has been described as the “land of milk and honey,” a land directly “Blessed By God,” a country providing a home for the “tired and poor” of the world, the home of “the greatest generation,” home of the cities with “streets paved with gold,"and numerous other generous appellations.

If these descriptions are accurate, why does a country with five percent of the world’s population have 25 percent of the world’s prisoners in its prisons? When a politician ends his speech with the vote-getting line “God Bless America,” is he asking God for further blessings or is he expressing a desperate appeal?

In this “wealthiest country in all the world,” why do we have one out of every 100 adults in jail? In this country with “the finest medical care in the world,” why are we Number One with 751 out of 100,000 citizens incarcerated?

With 2.3 million out of 300 million in prison, we lead China in total prisoners in a survey of 218 countries. It has only 1.6 million in prison out of a population of 1.3 billion. Remember that China is that great violator of human rights our state department keeps yapping about--except when we are making profitable trade deals with them.

San Marino brings up the tail end of the survey. It presently has one prisoner out of a population of 30,000.

The only country that even comes close to the United States in jailing citizens is Russia, that great land mass once islanded by gulags (prisons) from Moscow through Siberia. These island gulags were made famous by Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s book “The Gulag Archipelago” and the pristine records of their secret police, the KGB. The Russians incarcerate 627 per 100,000 compared to our 751.

United States, 751; Germany, 88; Japan, 63. Why?

Authorities in other industrialized and “civilized” countries are completely “mystified and appalled” by the number and length of our sentences, according to Adam Liptak in a New York Times article. Some of those other nations are England with a rate 0f 151, Germany with 88, and Japan with 63. It seems to me we should study the two most totalitarian nations of 60 years ago that we defeated in the name of “freedom"--and why they currently imprison prisoners at one-tenth our rate!

What has happened in these two societies over the last half-century that would tear them away from the Nazis and Hitler’s dreaded SS and the Japanese forces who turned Korean women into sex slaves? Did the Germans and Japanese just get tired of violating human rights of their citizens?

Why have we earned the dubious distinction of being the leading jailer in the world? Are we idiots to spend an average of $24,000 annually to keep a prisoner locked up when we could send him to a state college for less money? Why do burglars in the U.S. serve an average of 16 months in prison while English burglars do 7 months and Canadians do 5 months? Why do English-speaking countries have higher prison rates? Why do French-speaking countries have very mild prison policies? Are we victims of capitalism, Calvinism, Or righteous Lutherans? Minnesota has a lot of Swedes and so does--Sweden. Why does Sweden imprison 80 per 100,000 while Minnesota jails 300 per 100,000? I think we all know why Lousiana has the highest rate among our states: 1,183 per 100,000.

Our legal experts and criminologists attempt to answer the question by citing the following points: (1) We have higher rates of violent crime, (2) We have harsher sentencing laws, (3) We have a 300-year history of racial turmoil, (4) We have a “wealthy” population that can’t stay away from illegal drugs, (5) Americans fly off the handle quicker than other “civilized” societies, (6) All of the other countries with much lower incarceration rates have much better social safety nets.

Let’s Take a Look at the Six Points:

Violent crime--Can someone convince me that our cavalier attitude toward guns does not increase violent crime? Do we need citizens running around with 30-round magazines jammed into semi-automatic rifles? Can we tolerate citizens running around with 15-round magazines jammed into Glocks? Can we allow gunshows where anything goes, including parts that will turn semi-automatic assault rifles into automatics? Isn’t it interesting that the Mexican drug cartels shop for weapons at gunshows in the United States because it is so “easy”?

Now we have college kids lobbying for permission to carry and conceal handguns on college campuses so they can blast the nuts who attempt to murder other students! As a Marine officer I have fired everything from a Browning automatic to a 105 howitzer. Can you imagine what would happen in a college lecture hall if we have 30 other students armed and a nut starts shooting? Untrained and undisciplined shooters blasting away at everything in sight while needing a change of underwear? Wow! What a movie scene!

I had a fellow teacher many years ago who had made every major island WW II landing in the Pacific over a span of two years and had survived. But he refused to go deer hunting in Minnesota. He said, “Can you imagine 300,000 guys shooting rifles in the brush and at shadows and there isn’t even a corporal around?”

Harsher sentences--Young black kids get five years for a gram of dope in possession while a CEO who steals millions from his shareholders gets a reprimand from his board of directors-and an excuse-me “note” from our Justice Department-and flies off into the silver sunset on a golden parachute.

Race--We have 800,000 black men in jail and only 400,000 in college, many thousands in college only because they are much better athletes than whites. A poem by black poet Langston Hughes called “Mother To Son” outlines the major problems:

Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpets on the floor--bare.
But all the time I’ve been climbin” on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now--
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life ain’t been no crystal stair.

Drugs--In 1980 we had 40,000 people in jail for violating drug laws; today we have over 500,000. This is a business where the poor blacks in the ghettos serve as entrepreneurs to the South American drug cartels in order to sell drugs to the haves and the have-mores. Economists have estimated that a lowly street drug vendor probably knocks down the minimum wage on an average day--but he has better working conditions on the street than he does at a McDonalds. And he doesn’t have to take an expensive bus to his workplace. It’s a good living for many and as steady as peddling alcohol in on- and off-sale establishments.

European drug experts look at the number of people we have imprisoned for drugs and sneer: “The U.S. pursues the war on drugs with an ignorant fanaticism.”

American temperament--We want the vandals caught and locked away for years who have tipped over old tombstones in the cemetery--but if a CEO steals millions we fully expect that he will go free. Why? Because we don’t expect any better out of our judges because they have been elected by the have-mores’ money. We suspect our representatives have been bought by the same crowd and we feel helpless to actually assert ourselves. Who really believes in “one man, one vote” anymore when we know that Bill Gates has 58 billion reasons why politicians and judges listen to him? We are turtles who dig sand once a year for an hour and then disappear into the ocean of society for another year. No wonder we lose.

The safety net--Our safety net is full of holes when 20 percent of our population lives below the poverty line. Can we be educated when our home is so cold we have to wear parkas to go to bed? About 20 percent of Xcel Energy’s 1.4 million customers in Minnesota cannot pay their home heating bills this year. Xcel disconnects an average of 600 customers daily. It’s tough to make hot porridge on a cold stove. Iowa customers owe $40 million to their utilities for fuel and 89,002 Iowa customers were handed disconnect notices this March. Do you think people would actually steal to eat and keep warm? Wisconsin Public Service says 12-15 percent of its 500,000 customers have past-due bills.

Our safety net for health care is not full of holes, it’s like a Wallenda net for highwire walkers. But Lurch says the poor and the middle class can get health care at emergency rooms. That’s a net all right--for collection agencies.

There Are No “Get Out Of Jail Free” Cards

An Illinois woman was freed by the Illinois Supreme Court in 2002 after serving six years because “she should have known” that her boyfriend may kill her three-year-old daughter. The Court said “should have known” was not enough to keep her in jail. But after six years Tabitha Pollock is still waiting for a pardon from the governor. A spokesman for the governor said he was awfully busy and hadn’t had time to study her case! Evidently it’s easy to get in, tough to get out.