From My Cell I Scent the Reeking Soul of U.S. Justice

Conrad Black, the former newspaper magnate but current federal inmate, wrote in a column yesterday (poetically entitled "From my cell I scent the reeking soul of US justice") that he now sees the flaws in the American prison complex:

The US is now a carceral state that imprisons eight to 12 times more people (2.5m) per capita than the UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany or Japan. US justice has become a command economy based on the avarice of private prison companies, a gigantic prison service industry and politically influential correctional officers’ unions that agitate for an unlimited increase in the number of prosecutions and the length of sentences. The entire “war on drugs”, by contrast, is a classic illustration of supply-side economics: a trillion taxpayers’ dollars squandered and 1m small fry imprisoned at a cost of $50 billion a year; as supply of and demand for illegal drugs have increased, prices have fallen and product quality has improved.

Black pledges to get to work on prison reform when he gets back to the UK (after his 78-month sentence is up, or his case is overturned or he gets a pardon from Bush). But Andrew Sullivan points out that it took the inside of a cell to get Black talking about prison reform.

If only a few of our politicans could get a personal experience inside a cell, perhaps the drug war would become clear for the huge mistake it is.