The crime wave of the 1970s scared the United States. And when scared, Americans often overreact and enact bad legislation. What followed was a spate of laws relating to drugs and crime that have given police and prosecutors far too much power and the accused too few protections and too little dignity. The zeal to lock people up has spawned a vast “prison-industrial complex” that lobbies aggressively for its own special interests — which, of course, means more prisoners and, thus, prisons.
The Anglo-American system of law was historically defined by its focus on the rights of the accused, not the powers of the prosecutor. That was how it differed from those in most of the rest of the world. In describing that system, the great English jurist William Blackstone said, “Better that 10 guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.” We have strayed very far from that core conviction in the United States today. ...FareedZakaria,WaPo
If you have have a stake in for-profit prisons, it's a bonanza to turn whole populations into prisoners.
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When Freddie Gray was 22 months old, he had a tested blood lead level of 37 micrograms per deciliter. This is an absolutely astronomical amount. Freddie never even had the slightest chance of growing up normally. Lead poisoning doomed him from the start to a life of heightened aggression, poor learning abilities, and weak impulse control. His life was a tragedy set in motion the day he was born.
... I want to make a short, sharp point about this that goes far beyond just Gray's personal tragedy. It's this: thanks both to lead paint and leaded gasoline, there were lots of teenagers like Freddie Gray in the 90s. This created a huge and genuinely scary wave of violent crime, and in response we turned many of our urban police forces into occupying armies. ...KevinDrum,Mojo
