Scared stiff of ourselves…

Via Talk Left...

A new government report shows our prison population is soaring.

○ 1 of every 138 U.S. residents are in jail
○ The prison population grew by 900 inmates per week between 2003 and 2004.
○ 8,000 more prisoners were admitted to federal prisons than were released
○ 2.1 million people are housed in our prisons and jails.

8 counties had double digit increases, the largest being Clark County, Nevada; Fulton County, Georgia; and Orange County, California, all of which were up by 20 percent.

Seems to me the tendency to solve problems by locking up more people longer is just a natural consequence of the politics of fear the radical destructionists have used in their atack on the Constitution. Right now they're laying every cultural ill at the foot of the courts, who insist on using the standard of law rather than the will of the Republican Congress as the basis for their decisions. I expect, though, that before its over there will be similar attacks on decisions like Miranda and any decision that shows respect for 4th and 5th Amendment rights...