from OurFuture.org:
Good NewsBy Ben Shepard
July 23rd, 2008 - 11:45am ET
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It's time for some good news about architecture. No more sinkholes or collapsing bridges. It turns out that conservative ideology is good for one, very specific kind of public construction. See if you can guess. The answer comes after the break.
You got it: Prisons.
2.3 million Americans are incarcerated-- that's about 762 per 100,000 people. We're the top in the world, both in absolute and relative. (In case you are interested, China has the second most absolute, and Belarus the second most relative ) And that number has increased four times since 1980.
But statistics are easy. Too often, progressives rely on mantra-like repetition of a numbers to make an point. But saying that 1% of the worlds population earns more than the other 60% is not an argument about inequality. It's a brute fact. So, if we want to understand the prison boom, we have to get beyond the stats.
And that's what makes the recent issue of the Boston Review -- focused on prisons -- so useful. The BR site has three good essays up; but if you're going to read one, check out Guarded Hope, by Robert Perkinson.
Perkinson details the origins of the current prison boom in the response to the crime boom in the late 60s, and traces it forward into the Reagan period, to today. He examines several different explanations of the prison explosion -- American fear-culture, post-industrial economic structures, broader policy paradigms, revanchism against civil rights. All of this is far more exciting than it sounds. ......(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/good-news