In recent remarks Chris Patten, the former British governor of Hong Kong, expressed shock that the U.S., once the gold standard for human rights, is sliding in its long-avowed opposition to torture. But this slide has occurred on several other fronts: The list below gives a rough notion of how far into brutal punishment we have descended, even with the current McCain amendment banning military toture:
America leads the world in executing criminals and is among the few Western countries that still retain the death penalty.
We have among the harshest sentencing guidelines for non-violent felonies, including the three-strike law in several states, mandatory drug sentencing, and a federal policy (as ordered by former Attorney General John Ashcroft) that forces prosecutors to seek maximum penalties without leeway for plea bargaining.
More than half the prison population is being held for drug-related offenses, often for draconian periods of time--see the Rockefeller laws in New York where a few marijuana plants can land someone in jail for a decade or more . This, despite the well-documented research on the medical harmlessness of marijuana if used recreationally, the way millions of people use alcohol.
We imprison a far higher proportion of our population than any other Western country and perhaps more than any country in the world. On a state-by-state basis, Texas is in a class by itself, with 120 new prisons, for a growth of 706 percent over the 21 years. US prison boom creates an Orwellian world
Recently a responder was outraged when I mentioned that the U.S. has a higher proportion of its citizens behind bars than Stalin put into the Gulag. I wasn't comparing the two systems, though our maximum security facilities, such as Pelican Bay in California, are incredibly inhumane by any standard except a concentration camp. Conditions at these facilities, where inmates are confined in isolation with the lights on around the clock, deprived of human contact, and allowed to leave their cells for one or two hours a day, regularly create psychotic symptoms.
Finally, there is the shameful detainment of suspected terrorists in isolation for months or years at a time without habeas corpus and the benefit of proper counsel. The vast majority of these imprisonments occur without charges being brought. The government's arbitrary and high-handed treatment of captured military prisoners in Guantanamo also runs strongly against our stand on civil rights and humane values.
Without even touching on the horrors at Abu Ghraib and the alleged secret prisons operated in Eastern Europe, this generation of Americans has a long way to go before we return to the gold standard in the eyes of the world.
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