America and Texas Are #1 But Not In A Good Way

In last Sunday's Parade magazine Virginia Senator Jim Webb wrote an article about the disgrace of America's prison system and incarceration rate.

America has by far the World's highest rate of incarceration. We have only 5% of the World's population, yet we jail almost 25% of the World's prisoners.

That is just embarrassing. Are we the World's most criminal country? Or as Senator Webb put it, "Either we are the most evil people on earth or we are doing something very wrong."

I don't think we are the most evil people on earth, I opt out for the doing something very wrong option.

As in putting way too many people in jail for crimes that don't seem jail-worthy. Like, as satisfying as it may have seemed to see Martha Stewart do jail time. Did her supposed "crime" really deserve that drastic punishment? I don't think so.

I think only those who commit crimes such as murder, attempted murder, armed robbery, rape, child abuse (of any sort), treason, vehicular homicide due to drugs or alcohol, and maybe a few other type crimes I'm not thinking of right now, should be locked up, many for life.

But, economic crimes, as in embezzlement, swindling, stock manipulating, being caught with marijuana, crimes where no one has been physically hurt, those crimes should not be punished with jail time. Big fines. Yes. House arrest for a period of time. Maybe.

But to take so many citizens away from being productive and making them temporary wards of the state is just plain stupid.

And then we have those convicted and jailed erroneously. Just last week, more than a dozen men who had spent, collectively, more than 200 years behind bars for crimes they did not commit, went to Austin, Texas to sadly and angrily ask the state legislature to pass laws to improve eyewitness testimony, expand post-conviction appeals and DNA testing. And to pay more compensation to those wrongly convicted.

As former inmate Billy James Smith said, "I'm still not completely free. I'll never be completely free." Smith spent 20 years in prison for aggravated sexual assault. He was exonerated by DNA testing in 2006.

In Texas DNA testing has freed 36 wrongly convicted citizens. Texas leads America in the number of wrongly convicted people freed by DNA testing. Yet one more #1 ranking to make us in Texas feel proud.

So, we've got people in jail for very minor crimes. Like an out of control Robert Powell-like cop throws a person in the pokey for walking across the crosswalk against the light (happened in Dallas). You've got young kids, with ruined lives, due to being thrown in jail for being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time with a lit up marijuana cigarette. You have all sorts of people, for all sorts of very minor "supposed" crimes, doing time, for no good reason.

And it's a mystery why America leads the World in number of people behind bars? One in every 31 Americans is in jail or on supervised release, such as house arrest.

What sort of hit does the economy take with this type of idiotic dislocation of its citizens? A certain percentage are productive adults (Martha Stewart) thrown in jail, their business taking a hit. Even though it's on a much more minor scale, a McDonald's working kid, incarcerated for 6 months, due to being caught with a drug, also causes the economy a hit.

Local, State and Federal spending on jailing Americans adds up to around $68 billion a year. That is nuts. We need a massive release of prisoners doing time for non-violent crimes. And DNA testing done wherever it may prove an American innocent.