LAND OF THE 99% FREE

In The United States of America, Land of the Free, one in every hundred adults are in prison. With less than 5% of the world's population, America has nearly a quarter of the world's prison population. What's up with us? Are we that much more prone to being criminals than the rest of the world? Are there simply too many things against the law here? Or, barring that, too many things that are against the law that require incarceration as the only possible punishment rather than, say, a stern talking to?

It seems that it America, anything worth doing is worth overdoing, and the results don't always reflect the frenetic effort. Our prisons are now part of a vast industry, with 1% of our population serving as the raw material and most of them doubling as the end product. And that end product is hardly worth bragging about; petty criminals becoming better criminals, troubled youngsters emerging as hardened sociopaths, the costs of maintaining one in a hundred people in jail bankrupting our society both financially and morally. And for what? Half the time it's drug violations, hardly something worthy of a jail sentence, not when there's all these drunks running around free as a bird.

The only difference between drugs and alcohol is the laws on the books around here. This is a nation that at one time outlawed alcohol, thus rendering 90% of the population potential felons. That didn't work out at all, what with everybody flouting that law and vast organized crime networks becoming wealthy by providing the nation with booze. The same sort of murderous thugs are the people supplying America with drugs, while alcohol is sold by mostly mild-mannered store clerks, with the nation's various state, local and federal governments taking the lion's share of the proceeds in taxes on alcoholic beverages.

By making drinking legal again, exactly no extra alcoholics were created. It's the same with drugs. Make them legal and there won't be a single extra junky in America next year and the government will reap untold billions in sales taxes on recreational drugs. The way it works is this: approximately 10% of the population is afflicted with the disease of addiction, no matter what the status of the laws governing their substance of choice. 10% of the people in the United States consume 90% of all alcoholic beverages. It's no different with drugs. That same 10%, most of them increasingly cross-addicted, consume 90% of the illegal drugs.

Which is not to say it's a desirable state of affairs to be a raging alcoholic, just that it's a legal state of affairs and a pragmatic choice in America for booze to be legal so that you wouldn't have to lock up 10% of the people instead of just the 1. And locking people up in prison ought to be reserved for only the most dangerous criminals, those who pose a real danger to people and society. In every society there's no shortage of those: Killers, rapists, bank robbers, burglars, embezzlers, kidnappers, arsonists, con men, the ultra-violent, the incorrigible thieves and the corrupt business and political leaders who subvert our society.

There should not be anybody in prison for having fun, so long a that fun harms no one else. Prostitution is a good example. When we have the arrogance to think we can legislate and incarcerate the world's oldest profession out of existence it's time for a reality check and a major reassessment of our decision making skills. Turns out we're not a nation of Solomons in the meting-out-of-justice department. Hell, didn't Solomon, Mr. Justice Personified, have himself a vast harem of women, many of whom he purchased? What are we not getting here in America that we have the balls to lock up one in every 100 people?

Must be a huge hangover from our Puritan beginnings. Couple that with the existence of a whole lot of fire-and-brimstone judgmental and fundamental Christians in the halls of power and you've got a prison system designed not to reform anybody, but to send them to a mini-hell in the absence of the Divine power to consign them to the actual fiery depths. And there are too many among us who would gladly do just that if they could only convince God to delegate that authority to them. Burn your sinning ass for all eternity! If that's not a criminal impulse, then what is? And if you are poor or a minority citizen, your odds of being sent to mini-hell are far greater than one in a hundred. If you are rich the chances of you ever seeing the inside of anything other than a holding cell after your arrest are remote. So the whole process is skewed and Justice isn't blind, she's on the take, for sale to the highest bidder like the prostitutes we like to put in the slammer.

As far as nations go, we're still relatively young one, but we've reached our adulthood so it's time to act like grown-ups and not try to punish everybody who doesn't like to play the same games we do like some petulant brat. Most of what other people do is their own damned business so long as it's not harming others or being shoved down your throat. As far as addicts go, there's treatment available for what is identified by medical authorities as a disease, not a crime. For the murderous drug dealers, sure. Lock them up, they've murdered somebody.

But if you make drugs legal, there won't be any more drug cartels or violent street gangs selling drugs to minors. There will be mild mannered clerks in stores selling the drugs and paying big taxes and checking their customers I.D., just like in the liquor stores. Make prostitution and pornography legal too, except of course the child varieties. If you don't happen to like drugs, prostitution or pornography, fine. Then don't participate! It's not like pornographers and harlots take one look at you and can't wait to get a piece of that action! Don't flatter yourself. Maybe there's something you like to do that others find distasteful but harms no one else. Should you go to jail too when popular opinion turns against your particular pastime?

In some nations the people who own guns go to jail, whether or not they commit crimes with them. Imagine how many Americans would get locked up if that were the case here? In this country you probably know fewer people that don't own guns than do. So maybe it's time to tell our legislators to stop creating so many damned laws and start earnestly repealing a bunch of them. One in a hundred citizens in prison in unconscionable and way too expensive.

A society can and must regulate morals to a degree and has an obligation to establish courts of law and protect society from the harm that criminals do. But we don't get to outlaw homosexuality, prostitution or addiction any more than we get to outlaw freckles or being left-handed. That's an impossiblity. Let's just grow the hell up already and recognize we're a large nation in a large world and there's bound to be a lot of things that get on our nerves. There's just not a lot of these things that we can lock in a steel box and pretend they've gone away. No, we've made it a lot worse with our criminal academies. We've spent too much money, hurt too many people and created a monster we must now dismantle. Tear down those walls, America.