The Land of the Free?

ALCATRAZ--The wandering naturalist appreciates her freedom to wander--I've had the chance to travel in Europe, Asia, and Central America, and to live in Japan and Germany as well as the United States. American citizenship has its privileges.

Many American citizens and residents have lost that freedom, though, because the U.S. has more of its residents behind bars than any other country. The current prison population (local, state, and Federal) is over 2 million inmates. The total U.S. population is 286 million, so the ratio is about one in every 142 U.S. residents. This number does not count Guantanamo Bay, jails in Iraq, or other military or immigration detention centers.

If you're like my husband, you're saying, What about China? What about Russia? Nope. China has 1.4 million prisoners, even though the total population is four times greater than the States. Russia has 920,000 prisoners. In fact, 25% of the world's prisoners are in U.S. jails, though the U.S. makes up only 5% of the global population.

Out of those over 2 million prisoners, about 1.3 million are imprisoned for nonviolent offenses, usually drug-related. The War on Drugs in the 1980s with its mandatory minimum sentencing, and "Three Strikes" laws in many states have contributed to the rapid prison population increase.

As to demographics, a division of the U.S. Justice Department predicted in 1997 that 1 in every 11 men born in the U.S. will be imprisoned during his lifetime. If you happen to be born African-American, your chance increases to 1 in 4. Right now, 1 of every 3 African-American men in his 20s is in prison, on probation, or on parole. For white men the same age, it's 1 in 15.

What about women? Well, this is just another area where we are underrepresented. I think it's pretty unfair that our taxes go to support prisons when we make up only 7% of the prison population. But at least one celebrity has taken up the cause for more equal representation: my hero Martha Stewart.

I spend my afternoons and evenings here on Alcatraz, where prisoners are only a memory and a tourist attraction. I wander home at night, unlike so many Americans whose physical perimeters are limited by bars. I guess that's just set my mind to wandering, and wondering about whether I really do live in the Land of the Free.


Bibliography: BBC News website, Feb. 15, 2000; April 7, 2003
Bureau of Justice Statistics website, Dec. 31, 2003
Hallinan, Joseph T., Going up the River. New York: Random House, 2001.