... and Throw Away the Key

Here is an essay from Boston Review by economist Glenn Loury - hardly a pinko - on the deplorable, lopsided rates of incarceration in the United States. Loury rightly suggests that the causal story is not that we have more crime, hence more criminals, hence more convicts but rather that we are simply more punitive, more ready to lock people up (especially poor black or brown men) and throw away the key. As a result, Loury notes: "Never before has a supposedly free country denied basic liberty to so many of its citizens."