Justice Behind Bars

IT also happens here. For all the chest-thumping and self-doubt that have accompanied revelations of prison abuse over 6,000 miles away in Iraq, America faces plenty of problems in its own 2 million-person correctional system. “The only difference is that we don’t take as many pictures in American prisons,” says University of Delaware corrections expert Ken Haas.

Haas exaggerates a bit; American prisons and jails are better than the ones the military runs in Iraq. Overt, public humiliation of prisoners and outright guard-on prisoner brutality rarely take place. Most prison guards treat inmates with cold courtesy and, for the minority of prisoners who want to, it’s not difficult to find a new religion, get into shape, or take literacy classes behind bars. Our prisons serve America well, insofar as they keep past and would-be-again criminals behind bars: The U.S. has an imprisonment rate almost three times that of any other developed nation and, not coincidentally, the lowest overall crime rate among major Western countries that report statistics to the United Nations.

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Eli Lehrer

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IT also happens here. For all the chest-thumping and self-doubt that have accompanied revelations of prison abuse over 6,000 miles away in Iraq, America faces plenty of problems in its own 2 million-person correctional system. “The only difference is that we don’t take as many pictures in American prisons,” says University of Delaware corrections expert Ken Haas.

Haas exaggerates a bit; American prisons and jails are better than the ones the military runs in Iraq. Overt, public humiliation of prisoners and outright guard-on prisoner brutality rarely take place. Most prison guards treat inmates with cold courtesy and, for the minority of prisoners who want to, it’s not difficult to find a new religion, get into shape, or take literacy classes behind bars. Our prisons serve America well, insofar as they keep past and would-be-again criminals behind bars: The U.S. has an imprisonment rate almost three times that of any other developed nation and, not coincidentally, the lowest overall crime rate among major Western countries that report statistics to the United Nations.