Saturday, April 09, 2016

No jail time for Denny

Denny Hastert should not become US prison member two million, two hundred thousand and one. We've already got that many souls languishing in 6,125 joints consisting of state, federal, Indian, local and juvenile facilities. While the US has just 4.4% of the world's population it warehouses 22% of the worlds prisoners. Our incarceration rate of 716 per 100,000 is second highest in the world, only exceeded by Seychelles' 899 per hundred thousand. But with a population of just 83,000, Seychelles has a mere 746 prisoners.

US prison population exploded in the 1980's and 90's, largely due to draconian crime and sentencing guidelines that were essentially racist and class based. The legacy of those policies is an $80 billion annual price tag that exceeds the GDP of 133 nations. Even worse is the catastrophic effect those policies have had on minority and poor communities; a stain on any claim we make for the righteousness of our society.

Jail should be reserved only for those who represent a physical or financial threat to society by their inability to control their criminal impulses. All others can be handled in less costly and more humane ways such as home confinement except for time out for community service.

Regardless of the heinousness of Hastert's behavior 35 to 50 years ago, imprisoning the shell of a man broken in body and spirit, unable to care for basic human functions and quite likely near death, does nothing sitting in a prison hospital wheel chair except waste money and show the ignorance and callousness of our society.

The Denny Hastert who was two heartbeats away from the presidency became a prisoner of his own making ten months ago upon his indictment. The man who know every soul in his small town of Yorkville, IL has vanished within the recesses of his own tortured soul.

That is punishment enough.

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