The Caging of America

The inmates on death row in Texas are called men in “timeless time,” because they alone aren’t serving time...

A prison is a trap for catching time.

---from Adam Gopnik's brilliant New Yorker article, The Caging of America.

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Everyone likes a good survivor story...the man or woman who comes out of all the mire clean, at peace with themselves, not bitter but thankful. Of course, that helps deflect any criticism of the system. Focus on the individual case of redemption and not the damned in hell or about who helped put them there. Is this really just segregation by another name?

Who hasn't america been afraid of? Gooks, Chinks, the Yellow Peril, the Red Man, reds under the bed, niggers, joos, faggots, dikes, sodomites, muzzies, witches, drunkards, crack-heads towel-heads, catholics, Mongolians, the Irish; popery, fundamentalism, socialism, pro-lifers, anti-lifers, losers, liberals, drop-outs, people, the people, gun-carrying loners, big government, any government, high-finance, no finance, the insane, the U.N....

There is something, however, about the faces of these people which causes you to immediately think of one word: dignity.

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America has more than 6 million people in jail, on probation (or parole).

3 % of the adult population.

700/100, 000 (which is 4 or 5 times the European average)

But that's just an average figure. For black men it is:6850/100,000