An Unenviable Eminence.

A British newspaper has just published an article remarking that these United States have the unenviable distinction of the largest prison population, convicts per million population, in the world; second is Russia, where the president is an ex-police-chief, and third is China, which does not even pretend to be a free country.

Americans are highly ethical people; why else does this country always have the safest highways, approached only by two other common-law countries, Britain and Canada? Thus the prison-population phenomenon must have a sociological, rather than a psychological, explanation.

And this explanation is not hard to find; think back a few weeks to the Duke University lacrosse team furore. The entry level to the political theater is the district or county prosecutor, and the prosecutors get their names in the papers, and on the screen, by accusing people and, if possible, trying them.

The voters are, obviously, mistaken in voting for exhibitionist prosecutors; convicting someone means that se will suddenly cease to collaborate with hir equals in the market place, and instead become an expense to them. However, the prosecutors are, somehow, getting away with the ridiculous pretence that they do not need a unanimous grand jury to indict: this is the most pathetic, most transparent of lies – if the prosecution case is good beyond a reasonable doubt after the defense has contested it, then it must be beyond even unreasonable doubt to a jury that has not heard the defense.

Also, the distinction between a misdemeanor and a felony has become obscure. Arizona has, or rather had, an incriminating statute holding that a misdemeanor committed in disguise is a felony: if it had also held that a felony committed in one’s own name is only a misdemeanor, there would have been a plausible criterion establishing what crimes can incur imprisonment.

However, what we really need is a system that eliminates indiscriminate prosecution. What happens at present is that county, or district, prosecutors try cases before county, or district, courts, but the convicts are imprisoned in state prisons: the cost of “correcting” them is shared by all the taxpayers of the state. If, instead, the prison would accept convicts only if the county, or district, sent also a U.S. bond, good for the duration of the sentence and yielding a dividend sufficient to pay the cost of imprisonment, then the citizens of the county, or district, would suffer the expense of their conviction. Jurors would go in fear of the wrath of their neighbors, as well as that of God.