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Sunday, August 25th, 2013

2.7 Million Children Under the Age of 18 Have a Parent in Prison or Jail – We Need Criminal Justice Reform Now

Author:     MICHAEL LEO OWENS
Source:     AlterNet (U.S.)
Publication Date:     19-Aug-13
 Link: 2.7 Million Children Under the Age of 18 Have a Parent in Prison or Jail – We Need Criminal Justice Reform Now
Stephan:   One always has to keep in mind that the American Gulag is the largest in world history. We have five per cent of the world's population and 25 per cent of the world's prisoners. It is all part of the profit oriented emerging police state. But it is not without social cost, and a fungus in our social tree is slowly but persistently sapping our social well-being, as this report makes clear.

Reform criminal justice now. That was the core message US Attorney General Eric Holder delivered recently to the American Bar Association [3]and our nation. He declared that ‘too many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long, and for no truly good law enforcement reason’ and at great public expense.

Seeking to cut imprisonment rates and spending while protecting the public, Holder has directed the Justice Department to charge non-violent drug offenders with less severe federal crimes. Beyond reducing the use of mandatory minimum sentences and shortening prison times for lower-level drug felons, while reserving more serious charges and longer sentences for violent and higher-ranking drug traffickers, the Justice Department supports sentencing more people to rehab than (re-)imprisonment for crimes rooted in drug abuse and addiction.

Those reforms, among others, according to Holder, will do more for ‘the lives being harmed, not helped, by a criminal justice system that doesn’t serve the American people as well as it should’. There is one group of Americans that couldn’t agree more – the children [4] of the imprisoned.

Most prisoners are parents of children under 18 years of age [5]. Two-thirds of incarcerated parents are nonviolent offenders, often locked up on minor drug-related […]

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