Probable Cause

On page one of today’s San Francisco Chronicle, above the fold, is another article concerning California’s prisons.  If I did the math right, California’s prisons hold 7.2% of the nation’s prisoners, which currently number about 2.29 million.  (Today, with more than two-and-a-quarter million prisoners, the United States has the world’s highest documented incarceration rate. Even with its supposedly-high level of political oppression, China is number two with only 1.5 million.  The United States holds just 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s incarcerated population.)

Why so much?

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Like about a bazillion other people, I’ve often wondered why we kill people to show that killing people is wrong.

Not surprisingly, the political beliefs of those in power have a lot to do with it.  But I was a bit surprised to learn that neither the severity of the crime, nor the race of the individual, mattered as much as the level of education of the convicted individual.

Before starting this post, let me point out that for years I was a card-carrying registered Republican. My beliefs about the Democratic Party are such that even after coming to the sad conclusion that I could no longer support the Republicans, I registered as “No Preference.” For reasons mostly relating to time, I won’t go into all the reasons for this right now.

However, I miss the old Republican Party. If we had truth-in-­­advertising laws, the new Republican Party would change its name to the “Let’s See If We Can Destroy America” Party. Then maybe we could have a real Republican Party again.

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