Prisoners of Sentencing Politics

[Joanne98]

With odious sanctimony, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice released the annual State Department human rights report. She praised people around the world who work “to hold their leaders accountable and to achieve equal justice under the law.”

The report knocked Russia’s “selectivity in enforcement of the law,” Burma’s “abysmal” level of “indefinite detentions,” Iran’s “arbitrary arrests,” Syria’s trying of “political prisoners in criminal courts,” and China’s “20 percent increase over 2006 in convictions of citizens under China’s overly broad state security law.”In specific numbers, the report cited China’s 1.8 million inmates and Russia’s 889,600 prisoners, the latter of whom languish in “extremely harsh” and “overcrowded” facilities where “one in 25 was HIV-positive.” Rice wrote in the report’s preface, “Leaders who are insufficiently committed to reform may revert to authoritarian habits or take disastrous detours from the rule of law.”

Missing from the State Department report was the disastrous detour of our own nation. Our inflexible reforms have for two decades turned nonviolent criminals into prisoners of politics.

The United States is the world’s leading prison state. For the first time in our history, more than one out of every 100 adults is behind bars. We have 2.3 million people in jail or prison, according to a Pew Center on the States study released last month. Our rate of imprisonment easily beats second-place Russia and is six times the rate of China, seven times the rate of Germany or France, 10 times the rate of Italy, and 12 times the rate of Japan.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/15/7704/

[Peace Patriot]

1. The hypocrisy of our fascist liars is truly mind-boggling. nt

[psychmommy]

2. don't you love the irony

of condi praising people around the world for holding their leaders accountable. we need a little of that here. does anyone see the total irony of this administration judging other countries after all of the bs we do?

[flashl]

3. U.S. Prisoners counts as 'phantom constituents'

International committee urged to scrutinize U.S. Census practices that dilute vote of minority populations

The United States Census practice of counting prisoners in their districts of incarceration rather than their home districts for the purpose of establishing electoral and Congressional representation is a violation of international treaty. This month, the non-partisan public policy and advocacy centers Demos and the Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) submitted their analysis to the Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) in Geneva.

Demos and PPI urged the committee to scrutinize the racially discriminatory redistricting practice of crediting rural white counties with additional population based on the presence of disenfranchised prisoners in violation of Article 5 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

Prisoners of Census