Public Intelligence Blog

Here we see the latest in the New American Slavery trend. In the South particularly a culture for the poor of school-to-prison is developing, pushed by the privatization of the prison system. All of this is creating a growing number of disaffected people who feel they have little or no stake in social stability. Additionally, as a result of these trends, the U.S. is beginning to appear internationally, as a Fascist polic! e state. Dealing with this is going to be one of the tests the Obama Administration will face, and history will not be kind to him if he fails.

Human Rights Watch decries U.S. prison system

The NGO's World Report criticizes mass incarceration and U.S. record of torture and extrajudicial killing

By Natasha Lennard

Salon, Thursday, Jan 31, 2013 10:25 AM EST

Human Rights Watch Thursday published its annual World Report, in which it lays out a pointed critique of the U.S. prison system. The enormous prison population  — the largest in the world at 1.6million — “partly reflects harsh sentencing practices contrary to international law,” notes the report.

The 2013 World Report, a 665-page tome which assesses human rights progress in the past year in 90 countries, highlights particular issues undergirding the U.S.’s blighted carceral system. It notes that “practices contrary to human rights principles, such as the death penalty, juvenile life-without-parole sentences, and solitary confinement are common and often marked by racial disparities.” Via HRW:

Research in 2012 found that the massive over-incarceration includes a growing number of elderly people whom prisons are ill-equipped to handle, and an estimated 93,000 youth under age 18 in adult jails and another 2,200 in adult prisons. Hundreds of children are subjected to solitary confinement. Racial and ethnic minorities remain disproportionately represented in the prison population.

HRW cite statistics often used to show racial disparities in the U.S. prison system. For example, while whites, African Americans and Latinos have comparable rates of drug use, African Americans are arrested for drug offenses, including possession, at three times the rate of white men.

“The United States has shown little interest in tackling abusive practices that have contributed to the country’s huge prison population,” said Maria McFarland, deputy U.S. program director at Human Rights Watch. “Unfortunately, it is society’s most vulnerable – racial and ethnic minorities, low-income people, immigrants, children, and the elderly – who are most likely to suffer from injustices in the criminal justice system.”

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