NEWSMAX: … Charles Blow, a columnist with The New York Times, recently wrote of the prison system in Louisiana, where many inmates are incarcerated in for-profit private prisons. “Louisiana is the starkest, most glaring example of how our prison policies have failed,” Blow wrote. “It showcases how private prisons do not serve the public interest and how the mass incarceration as a form of job creation is an abomination of justice and civility and creates a long-term crisis by trying to create a short-term solution.”
Louisiana imprisons more of its people, per capita, than any other state. Prisons have become big business for both government and private firms across the country. The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world: 730 prisoners per 100,000 of its population, according to the International Center for Prison Studies. In China, the figure is 122 per 100,000; in Canada, 117; and in India, 30.
The sentencing system in the United States has created a prison industry and with it a permanent underclass — felons can’t get jobs, and many ex-cons wind up back in prison. And statistics show that incarceration rates unfairly strike African-Americans and other minorities… (more)
WATCHDOG: This is especially auspicious because it is written by Christopher Ruddy is CEO and editor of Newsmax Media Inc., one of the most conservative periodical and web site in the nation. Perhaps change is possible when both the right and the left share the same views.
