The New Gulag: If the War on Drugs gave the War on Terror, who will fill the the prisons?

As our nations prison population nears 2 million, shouldn’t we be asking ourselves why we are locking up our own citizens when there are so many threats from abroad? And the majority of the people in prison in the US are not murderers, rapists or mobsters. They are drug offenders, over 30 percent of them first time, non-violent offenders. In the federal system alone over half of the prison population are in for drug convictions.

Since Congress enacted the mandatory minimums and sentencing guidelines in 1989, the Bureau of Prisons has become one of the fattest growing arms of the federal government. The population has exploded from less than 30,000 prisoners in the 1980’s to over 165,000 today. The bureau’s budget has skyrocketed from $330 million in 1980 to over $4.5 billion today. Why is our federal government spending so much money locking up our own citizens when they could be spending that money ensuring the safety of our country’s people and our way of life? Especially when the majority of the prisoners warehoused are non-violent offenders?

The federal prison system reigns supreme now as the largest in the nation. Overtaking the oft-criticized and draconian California and Texas state systems. But where will it end? Would our government have you believe that locking up first-time, non-violent drug offenders is more important that preventing terrorist acts? Maybe so, considering they were to busy locking up American citizens in the War on Drugs crusade to recognize and stop the actions which led up to 9/11.

Is America slowly evolving in to a police state that practices Gestapo-like tactics? Will the U.S. PATRIOT Act result in even more Americans being locked up? Will there be another Red Scare? With neighbors spying on neighbors to uncover domestic terrorism plots? Will Congress pass more legislation in the name of safety and security to further dilute the edicts of the US Constitution?

The huge, sprawling criminal justice system that has been erected over the last few decades will not just cease to exist. The legislation which has expanded federal jurisdiction will not just go away. The spiraling bureaucracy has been set in motion, but who knows which way it will spin, if it is not already spinning out of control. As the prison cells are built, bodies will be found to fill them. But if the War on Drugs is giving way to the War on Terror, who will fill the prisons? Already, one-third of the federal inmates are non-citizens and INS detainees. The Bureau of Prisons is bursting at the seams with the Drug War prisoners who are serving decades of their lives for low-level drug offenses and the new influxes of immigrants whose papers are out of order. With the overcrowding, the prison’s administrators are now employing triple-bunks in units---housing three prisoners in a cell meant for only one.

The horror stories that once leaked out from behind the Iron Curtain are now taking place on our own shores. As our government attempts to preserve our freedoms and liberty with ever-increasing restrictions, are they really reverting to Orwellian 1984 tactics? Has the American prison system become the new gulag?

Seth Ferranti can be contacted at: info@gorillaconvict.com