According to the NAACP, the U.S. Is home to 5% of the world population but imprisons 29% of world prisoners. According to NCBI, those in jails and prisons are subjected to high rates of sexual violence and resultant diseases. According to NELP, 1 in 4 of U.S. Adults have a criminal record sufficient to damage their employability.

You don't have to be a criminal to spend time in U.S. Jails. You can be arrested for minor charges, such as refusing to buy car tags or insurance or walking down the street while drunk. If you can't pay your bail plus possible fees superimposed on it by the individual jail, you may stay there until the next court session, as much as six months away. By the time you get to court for your trial your job is gone and you are evicted from your home. You can be acquitted and you have already been punished for the crime.

Think of the number of people, even the ones actually guilty of such things as writing a bad check or shoplifting, who emerge from jail traumatized, diseased and unemployable. Parole and probation involve parole or probation fees. There are fees for any corrective or rehab programs, sometime fees to reimburse the jail that imprisoned you, and more fees and fines related to the offense. All this piled onto a person who is traumatized, diseased has reduced employability.

If you were sentenced to six months probation, the actual probation continues until you have paid all those fees. Considering the impact of a jail record on you employability, it could go on for years. And each time you get behind on your payments you can be arrested and jailed for probation violation, You will sit there until you probation officer extorts some money out of your friends and family or until someone feels like granting you another day in court. It can be a long time. Inmates have told me that parole and probation officers like to pick up their arrears clientele around the Christmas holidays because it's easier to get money out of their relatives at that time of year.

If jails and prisons are supposed to be solutions to criminality they are falling badly short. Meanwhile, as federal, state and local governments systematically cripple the ability of the population to earn a decent living, is it any wonder that the entire economy is shriveling?

Go ahead, America. Lock 'em up and throw away the key. Then hold a press conference outside the jail to chastise the entire world on their sorry human rights scores.

auntieracist