Welcome attention to prison reform

Three bloggers at The Atlantic -- Ross Douthat (a conservative), Matt Yglesias (a progressive), and Andrew Sullivan (a political mutt) -- raise their voices in favor of reform of the hopelessly broken American prison system.  I've actually only posted once on this topic on the blog, but I've got at least a half dozen half-baked ideas for posts related to prisons and gangs that I can't ever get fully written.  I have a clear idea on how to approach a lot of political issues, but prison reform is one that just stumps me.  Ross notes that this is one area where nearly all political forces conspire to enforce the status quo, with few countervailing winds to try to sail.

The two greatest arguments I can make against the current prisons system are, one, the sheer brutality of it should offend our sensibilities, even if it does not, and two, that as I've noted elsewhere, our prisons frequently serve as little more than state-run gang recruitment centers.  All of the other moral arguments about rehabilitation, forgiveness, human rights, and human decency all seem to fall flat when it comes to talking about convicts, and we get more and more "get tough" rhetoric, which usually only serves to make things worse.

Given that my readership is a fraction of those of the Atlantic blogs, maybe this marks the start of some actual political movement on the issue.

Late Update: Reader CC e-mailed me this link to a story in the Denver Westword about ADX Florence, home of some of America's most notorious convicts.  Since September 11, there have been 100 media requests for access to any aspect of the prison, all of which have been denied. The article also mentions that Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser is working on a book about prison reform, which I think is fantastic.  (I'll admit to never having read FFN, but I know a lot of folks who have.  Which if nothing else means that Schlosser has the ability to write with a fair amount of mass appeal, something which is critical for any push to get anywhere.)

Comments

[Bull City Rising]

Ross Douthat has his own blog? As though the tripe he wrote for the Harvard Salient wasn't bad enough. Ye Gods.

[Michael Bacon]

Yeah, he's far from my favorite writer. There was the time last year that in looking at old campaign commercial, he pointed out how reasonable George Wallace sounded. Someone had to point out to him that the commercial saying he would give local school districts "complete control" over districting was actually about segregation. To which he basically replied, "oh, yeah... huh..."

But he's raising this issue, and I'm not going to knock him for that...