Today is a special day for 1,600 American men and women: they are being released from a state or federal prison. Tomorrow will be a special day for another 1,600 people. As will be the day after that. Some 600,000 inmates will leave prison this year╚Dmore than the population of Washington, DC. After quadrupling its imprisonment rate in just 30 years―America now has 700 people in every 100,000 under lock and key, five times the proportion in Britain, the toughest sen-tencer in Western Europe―the world's most aggressive jailer must now confront the iron law of imprisonment: that those who go in almost always come out. The result is a society that, statistically at least, is beginning to look a little like early Australia. Nearly one in eight American men has been convicted of a felony-and thus, in many states, has been automatically deprived of numerous rights, including the right to vote. One in 20 men has been to jail. The average is much higher among some groups (one black man in five has been to prison, one in three has been convicted of a felony). These convicts, particularly those who have been to prison, contribute little good to the places where they live. Two-thirds of ex-prisoners are rearrested within three years. Prisons are a breeding-ground for terrible diseases, both medical (such as AIDS) and social (the Aryan Brotherhood), that soon spread to the outside world.
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