Land of the Free

The United States of America has the biggest prison population in the world and the highest rate of prisoners per capita of all countries. China, with one-party rule and a population that is 4.5 times larger than the US population, has 30% fewer total prisoners than the US. China's per capita rate is a small fraction of the US rate.The US prison population per capita is three times higher than that "axis of evil" country Iran.
One out of every 142 Americans is in prison (and this does not include military prisons or Immigration and Naturalisation Service detention centres).

Britain's enthusiasm for locking up its citizens is actually quite restrained compared with America. In the UK , the Parliament Justice Committee recently released a report urging the prison populations in England and Wales to be reduced by a third. The committee found that incarceration is a relatively ineffective way of reducing crime except for serious offenders, and the amount of repeat offenders could be more efficiently reduced through rehabilitation programs such as housing, employment, education, and drug and alcohol services. It's an incredible idea that incarcerating for long periods men and women who fall foul of the law, in a cramped and dehumanising environment, will result in them emerging as model citizens.

Attempts to explain the prison population are soon confronted with the fact that the property rights of capitalism make for a huge cobweb of repression and denial of access to human resources. Within that, as symptoms of class society, there is the fact that the incidence of crime can go up or down in response to a number of influences. One of them is that working lives and survival are as stressful, if not more so, than they have been for a long time.Prison is an indictment of the capitalist system. Prison means punishment, generally punishment for the infraction of property laws. In the more exceptional cases of punishment for personal crimes, it results in the further alienation of already psychologically damaged individuals, who need treatment not punishment. Socialism offers to end the social conditions that cause that breakdown and necessitate enforced discipline, offering instead self-worth, and freedom of association in production, a strong inclusive social identity. The prison is not merely a symbol of capitalism. Capitalism IS the prison, and it is for us to try and break out of it.

"Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free." - Eugene Debs