Disturbing statistic

The other day I heard a report on Maine Things Considered (that's the local news that folds into All Things Considered, the afternoon public radio news show), that said only one in 350 Maine adults is behind bars (yikes!), which is much better than the national average, which is 1 in 100! That can't be true, I thought. But, on Googling around, I found the published study in the New York Times, which states that fully one percent of American adults is incarcerated!

Hey folks! That's atrocious! That means that legislators, and courts, and prosecutors, and the legal profession, the police, and probably families and society in general have FAILED! A representative legal system which finds one percent of its constituency so far out of the norm they must be jailed is, simply, wrong. We (the people... a quaint concept, I know) have lost control of the legal system in this country.

I have a few observations, and then I'll shut up:

1. Too many people are jailed for victimless crimes (drug possession is the best example).
2. Adequate legal representation has become a money and class issue. OJ can walk because he paid a fortune for lawyers. Most petty criminals can't do that, so many settle for a guilty plea on a reduced charge because they just can't afford a vigorous defense.
   
3. Legislatures have become too quick to "express their outrage" with new laws, or "pile on" penalties, or prescribe minimum mandatory punishment for crimes which already have heavy penalties. One outcome of this is a whole set of jailable offenses which only apply to people who've committed other crimes in the past.
   
4. Too many property crimes, especially those perpetrated against corporations, are being criminalized. Even having a bad credit rating can have dire ramifications for employment, education, and future financial success. And remember, once you've been convicted of one crime (kiting a check, or lying on an application, for example), there's a new set of laws with harsher penalties to which you'll be subject.
   
5. The lifestyles of more and more people fall outside of a prescribed "norm," making them targets for over-zealous law enforcement.
   
6. Once a person enters the legal system, it is harder and harder to get out-- see the recent press about sanctions (jobs and voting, for example) against convicted felons. Even worse, consider the plight of persons convicted of sexual crimes. I don't condone them, but you have to admit the post-penal penalties are draconian.
   
7. Incarceration is starting to become a societal "norm." Witness the recent celebrity jailings of Martha Stewart, Paris Hilton, Kiefer Sutherland. Publicly tossing someone in jail who has a fortune (and excellent job prospects on release) just serves to blind society to the very real life disaster that incarceration holds for an average person. For many (perhaps the majority) who are jailed once, they will never get out of the system permanently.
   
8. Guns, guns, guns. I won't even start on that.
   

We live in a society of laws, and they are what define us as a society. Our legal system is a living process, which allows us to adapt to new and emerging realities. When the legal system has disenfranchised one in one hundred of its constituents, I believe it's time to re-evaluate the mechanism. Our legal system must acknowledge this statistic as a failure, and take steps to fix it.