S. during 2004 were actually at the lowest level in over three decades (U.S.). Given the growing prison population, U.S. legal experts are urging policy-makers to reconsider current sentencing policies, in an effort to avoid expensive incarceration costs and to invest in more productive prevention and treatment approaches to crime (U.S.).

Many believe that prisons and incarceration have become the panacea for all of society's ills, and where once the U.S. looked to the welfare state to alleviate social problems, today it simply looks to prisons, and in particular the phenomenon of the prison-industrial complex, where capitalism flourishes from locking people in cages (History). Prison has become not only a class weapon, but an instrument of control, in particular the control of 'alien' populations, populations that were formerly colonized peoples, such as former slaves, Native Americans, Latin Americans, Asians, and Pacific Islanders, who all too often have been considered the internal enemy (Buck). Despite the stereotype of country club atmosphere, prisons have become a system of inhumanity and cruelty, in which the mentally ill are warehoused...

Prison rape is common, both rape by guards of female prisoners, and by predatory male prisoners on other male prisoners, a condition frequently given free reign by guards (Buck).
Works Cited

Buck, Marilyn. "The U.S. Prison State." The Monthly Review. February 2004. Retrieved November 05, 2005 at http://www.monthlyreview.org/0204buck.htm

Corrections Statistics: Bureau of Justice Statistics. Retrieved November 05 from The United States Department of Justice Web site: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/correct.htm

The History of Critical Resistance." Social Justice. September 22, 2000.

Retrieved November 05, 2005 from HighBeam Research Library Web site.

Prison Statistics: Bureau of Justice Statistics. Retrieved November 05, 2005 from The United States Department of Justice Web site: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm

U.S. prison population largest in world: Justice Department."

Xinhua News Agency. Retrieved November 05, 2005 from HighBeam Research Library Web…