Blago symptomatic of incarceration crazed US justice system

The United States is incarceration crazy, containing 4.4% of the world's population, but housing 22% of the world's prisoners. We have the highest incarceration rate at 716 per 100,000 and the highest percentage of convicted criminals who are jailed. At about $35,000 per inmate, total annual cost exceeds $80 billion.

It hasn't always been this way. Beginning under Nixon in 70's and Reagan in the 80's, the US became incarceration obsessed. Nixon, through aide John Halderman, admitted he used draconian drug violation sentencing to jail minorities and leftists in massive numbers for political gain. Reagan followed suit, resulting in a seven fold increase in state prisoners since then.

Nearly fifty years on, jailing non-violent, non habitual criminals is still the knee jerk response to criminal conviction. Many thousands languish behind bars for trivial drug possession, inability to make bail, trumped up or wrongful convictions among a host of excuses for needless incarceration. Draconian minimum sentencing and life without parole are adding to the staggering prison population.

That brings us to former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, sentenced to 14 years in federal prison for essentially cynical governance and thumbing his nose at the political power structure. Query a hundred citizens and nearly all will glaze over in cluelessness of his wrongdoing. Blago didn't make a dime from his political shenanigans and did infinitely less damage to the needy of Illinois than the current governor who legally withheld a budget for three years, causing severe economic hardship that will take years to redress, if ever. Sadly, pols and pundits push back on calls to release a harmless fool based mainly on his refusal to admit guilt and show remorse. That's simply cutting off one's economic nose to spite one's fiscal face. If Blago must remain inmate number 2,300,000 in the world's largest people cage, those folks looking for remorse should cough up the 35 grand to cage Blago for another year.