Huge industrial style poultry farms, where birds are locked in cages in close quarters, are the perfect environment for disease spread. What about locked up people? Two million of them. Two million.
The US locks up more of its population than any nation on earth. By a long way:
This is not something we've always done in the US. It's shockingly recent, within the lifetimes of virtually everyone who is reading this. It really took off with the Reagan counter-revolution and has continued until today, slowing only because states can no longer afford it:
source: Crooked Timber
Since 1980 the rates of incarceration have more than quadrupled. Do you feel safer?
What do you think is going to happen to those millions of incarcerated people if there is an influenza pandemic?
[St. Louis University School of Public Health researcher Rachel] Schwartz and fellow researchers studied research and protocols from the Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization and other governments to identify what plans were in place for prisons should an infectious disease break out.
Many of the correctional facilities that Schwartz and colleagues studied have acknowledged they don't have an adequate plan to deal with a pandemic or similar health crisis. Schwartz says there's reluctance among government leaders to provide prisoners with medical care, such as flu vaccines.
"The thinking is that there won't be enough for the general public, and that they should get the shots first," she says. "We tend to think of all inmates as being violent offenders, but the average length of incarceration is only 48 hours. Many are not convicted criminals, but rather people merely accused of crimes and awaiting trial.
"We know that illness among prisoners will eventually spread and cause illness in society, so we must address this now." (Science Daily)
Prisoners won't be first in line for vaccines or antivirals. They probably won't be in line at all. If the guards and jail staff are out sick, who will look after them? They will be sick an abandoned to die, under lock and key with no system to unlock the door and no system to care for them. It will be Katrina on steroids.
With our own fears for family, business and everything else, it's hard to summon up sympathy or even a little forethought for prisoners. It takes moral leadership to make that happen.
Not a good prognosis.
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Why does the US lock up more people than the countries listed?
Are there differences in average length of incarceration among the different nations?
Does it have any relationship with the "War on Drugs" and associated mandatory minimum sentences?
With our own fears for family, business and everything else, it's hard to summon up sympathy or even a little forethought for prisoners.
Alas, we forget that prisoners are someone's family. I am trying to imagine if a loved one of mine were in prison, what would I/could I do?
Over the last 20 years there has been an apparently huge increase in the number of actions and possessions that are "illegal". In the same time period, has anything be decriminalized? I'm quite disturbed to find myself honestly beginning to consider the notion that they want everyone to be a criminal so they'll always have an excuse to throw anyone in jail that they (meaning 'whoever is running the government at the time' - I don't think this is limited to one political party brand-name) want...
At this point, I think the "war on drugs", the "war on terror", and the "war on intellectual property violations" should just be combined into a single "war on freedom", since - as they are currently implemented (that is, badly) - that seems to be what they really are.
The biggest motivator for this kind of mass incarceration for nearly 30 years has been the War on Drugs. While our percentage of violent criminals incarcerated is probably on a par with most of the rest of the "free" world; we have the largest tsyr non-violent incarcerations of any free, and most modern totalitarian/dictatorships in the world. It's a truly horrible situation that destroying American society far more effectively than all the demonized drug use ever could; and it's only getting worse. And as the article points out, it is on the knife edge of creating a catastrophe of potentially epic proportions.
One only needs to look at the history of Stalin's Gulags or Mao's re-education camps to see the potential for diseases to wipe out massive numbers of people in a very short time. This is particularly frightening when you realized that new strains of Tuberculosis which are highly resistent to antibiotics have recently been discovered. There is a good chance we could see not only a killer-flu epidemic in our prisons, but a really nasty TB epidemic as well.
I think a couple of reason that other counries don't stack up to the US are that they can't afford to, or that they don't have to (not that we actually have to). The US has been able to afford this tally, and we do have the prohibition and prison industries to support after all.
A good analogy or test case might be the present Russian and ex-Soviet jail system, in which drug-resistant TB arose and has been spread. Public health must include prisoners, because they don't stay inside forever...
The consequences of "locking up" as a measure of quarantine against influenza is vividly described in Thomas Mullen's new novel, The Last Town on Earth.
When you lock people up for 26 years to life for lying to the Department of Motor Vehicles (after they try to take the exam for someone else), you can't help but greatly increase the rate of incarceration.
It will also be interesting to see how quarantines of the non-incarcerated might be accomplished in America, and how willing people will be to abide by such quarantines when they begin to run out of food and there is no garbage pick-up and no paycheck coming in.
We might not see it with this particular flu, but when the powers that be choose mandatory quarantine as their primary strategy, and refuse to devote resources to preparing adequate immunization programs, it is clear that ANY epidemic will be treated as a military exercise, not a public health matter, within the prisons or not.
We end up releasing violent criminals early to make room for those convicted of non violent crimes, and victimless crimes (eg. possession of drugs for personal use).
The government (state and federal) should consider to use penalties that do not involve detention in a prison for victimless and other non violent crimes more often. Most prisons are wonderful training grounds for prisoners to learn new skills for committing new crimes upon their release.
In a pandemic, you know those in prison will have higher infection and fatality rates, and most officials will consider this a blessing to eliminate the overcrowding. There will not be much effort to minimize the effect of a pandemic on the prison population, partly because it is understood the limited resources will best be spent on non-criminals.
We do not need a pandemic to reduce overcrowding in prisons, just some good horse sense and political backbone. Unfortunately, both of these are lacking in government.
Home detention, fines handed out based on the crime and your ability to pay in lieu of prison , community service,
are all examples of sensible measures we can take to minimize the numbers of those incarcerated and to keep those violent criminals in jail longer. They are being used to some extent today but not anywhere near where they should be.
This is pretty sad because many of the people in jail
had drug problems and what we do here in the USA is
put them in jail and not get the the help they need.
This is all a part of out FAILED war on drugs...
OR should I say war on our own people...
When it became apparent that H5N1 was coming I spoke to my state senator and two representatives about it. I posed nearly the exact situation to them. I suggested to them immediate enabling law that would turn them into workers during the pandemic. Provide them with equipment and training now to work during the bug blitz. Motivation-work your way back to freedom. Give all non violent offenders the right to risk their lives to work their way out of the Hell they are in, by working in Hell to get out. Even some of the violent offenders. Point out to them that if they work for one year during this with no walk offs AND return to prison for one year afterwards or extend their time on the streets working with people then they are free with a caveat. NO offenses for five years post of this and they are free. Else reimpostion of the original sentence.Thats seven years and the average that they will be spending behind bars during their lifetimes. With time served it will be about 14, more than enough to get their attention. Yes, some will die but many will live. What would you pay for your freedom? They liked it mostly because I also pointed out that we will not be able to pay to store them.
It takes an ugly situation to get people onto the right track and having to work in the area where they came from and burying family will do it. Else they will as a rule never see them again because one or the other will be dying. We either release them under a program like this or they die pure and simple in prison. That to me even though it would be legal would be murder. Judges in 1918 were reluctant to send people to jail because of this. Can we do more, or just less? The other alternative is to euthanize them as many propose on a good day to do. One camp will want to do that but trying to maintain order in a prison will mean troops who will react differently. Their answer to everything will be that you have the right to be dead, no right to an attorney even if you could afford one, and you can exercise your free speech by yelling as you are executed.
The US prison system is a moral error almost on par with slavery. And with the privatization of prisons it is acquiring a life of its own: the prison-industrial complex as it were.
I don't see China on your list though, and that would be the one country that might rival us. No good data?
epistemology: Good question. Data are from Justice Dept. Maybe they didn't have any data. But China is so huge that population rates might not be that large, although the prisoner population might still be gigantic.
I like your ideas Randy, but have one concern. If there is a pandemic, and at such a scale as would require the choice of either euthanizing or releasing prisoners to help with things like keeping vital infrastructures running, (garbage pick up, drinking water and food distribution, burying dead, perhaps some health care aid, etc.) how would anyone supervise or keep track of them to be sure they were actually doing these jobs in order to credit them for the early release? Would it be the "honor system"?
M in H. Thats a detail I would leave up to the electeds. Euthanization by injection or bird flu is the question. Regardless of what we are left with afterwards society always comes back in some form. I for one would NOT leave them in prison just to die because thats the law. Thats crap. I would put them with detachments of soldiers and guardsmen and give them the option to enlist. Most of them never had an opportunity to become anything in their lives or some just blew the chances that they got. I would never put more than two or three per squad, but I would always give the military the option to shoot.
In a pandemic that the military is involved with it requires federal control of those troops. Good example is New Orleans. While the city drowned Gov. Blanco demanded that federal troops be put under her control. Bush rather than ripping her, just said no. These would be state controlled troops until the situation just went to the dogs and those prisoners too. I would grant pardons if it were up to me. But as I said thats an administrative detail.
Honor system? I saw an assessment report that stated what the system would do if it went to even 15% mortality in this country. It wasnt pretty. I think looking at the numbers we would all be on the honor system.
Back this spring, I remember a conversation with a GP who went on the radio with me to discuss bird flu. The question came up about euthanasia for those patients we knew would die. I don't think either of us in truth could imagine doing such a thing. On the other hand, neither of us can imagine what a severe pandemic might be like in terms of treating patients.
The US incarceration rate is even worse if you single out the incarceration rates for black males. The US currently imprisons its black males at a rate five times higher than that of South Africa under apartheid.
(851 black males per 100,000 imprisoned in South Africa 1993 vs. 4,919 black males per 100,000 in the U.S today)
...and Mr Bush is at the UN today lecturing us all about freedom!
Okay Name, I guess Bush is responsible for them breaking into houses, killing each other, and basically black on black crime. Memphis has more people (black) in jail than some countries. Its also a black controlled city 65%. Police Department is 73% black. So I guess its ole whitey GWB in DC thats responsible for all of those black people being in jail.
I wonder if its really because they violated the law? Oh the horror. We MIGHT just have to acknowlege that the people breaking the law are black and its not some right wing conspiracy. I think you need to take color out of the equation because your insinuation that its the Presidents fault is crap. Everyone has the right not to break the law and get an education, make something out of themselves, break the mold. Thats 40 years of the left wing telling people its all because of the Republicans that they are poor. 40 years and believe it or not 140 trillion dollars in social programs...didnt change a thing.