OSV's editorial board slams America's slammers in a March 1 editorial:
It pains us to say this, but justice in America these days is more crippled than blind, and the entire system seems to be lurching toward collapse.
It isn't just the inequity of the system that allows those with legal counsel and resources to defer or avoid prison. It is how we treat those who are incarcerated.
Exhibit 1 is California's prison system. Despite the fact that the state has been building prisons at a manic rate since 1970, the entire system is so overcrowded and inhumane that a federal court has ordered it to reduce the number of its prisoners by one-third.
Violent and gang-riddled, with the system at twice its maximum capacity, the California system is not so much a house of correction as it is a breeding ground of pestilence. It contains 156,000 inmates (with another 20,000 farmed out to other states). Federal judges have tentatively ordered the California system to be capped at 101,000, which means that 55,000 prisoners must be released. Read more.
