ACL Live at the Moody Theater
There Is a Long-Existing Form of Indefinite Detention
RECEIVED Thu., Jan. 26, 2012
Dear Editor,
In response to “Letters at 3AM: NDAA: Obama's Betrayal” [Jan. 27]: What I find interesting about all the uproar over the indefinite detention provision in NDAA is that critics of it seem to forget that this is really nothing new. Even before Bush signed the Authorization for Use of Military Force in 2001, we had a long-existing form of indefinite detention – it's called our prison and jail system.
As of 2009, 3.1% of the U.S. population was under correctional supervision. That’s a higher rate than in any other country, including Russia and China. Sixty percent of the incarcerated population are nonviolent offenders.
With programs for rehabilitation and prison reentry programs slashed to the bone, we created a system of de facto, indefinite detention for millions of Americans.
And it’s a system of indefinite detention that targets not so much the very rare foreign or domestic terrorist but rather the poor, the communities of color, the people who can’t afford a good lawyer.
Maybe to prevent more legislation like the NDAA we need to zap the problem at its source: a general acceptance by Americans of incarceration as a remedy for all infractions against the law.
And then we may need to turn a very bright light on our own indifference to the plights of those we don’t quite relate to.
It's possible that NDAA is not the sudden betrayal to the Bill of Rights that it might appear to be, but is rather the result of a systemic, chronic condition found in this country as far back as the Sedition Act. And that we, by our indifference to overincarceration here at home, are as much traitors to our own best interests as any politician has ever been.
In response to “Letters at 3AM: NDAA: Obama's Betrayal” [Jan. 27]: What I find interesting about all the uproar over the indefinite detention provision in NDAA is that critics of it seem to forget that this is really nothing new. Even before Bush signed the Authorization for Use of Military Force in 2001, we had a long-existing form of indefinite detention – it's called our prison and jail system.
As of 2009, 3.1% of the U.S. population was under correctional supervision. That’s a higher rate than in any other country, including Russia and China. Sixty percent of the incarcerated population are nonviolent offenders.
With programs for rehabilitation and prison reentry programs slashed to the bone, we created a system of de facto, indefinite detention for millions of Americans.
And it’s a system of indefinite detention that targets not so much the very rare foreign or domestic terrorist but rather the poor, the communities of color, the people who can’t afford a good lawyer.
Maybe to prevent more legislation like the NDAA we need to zap the problem at its source: a general acceptance by Americans of incarceration as a remedy for all infractions against the law.
And then we may need to turn a very bright light on our own indifference to the plights of those we don’t quite relate to.
It's possible that NDAA is not the sudden betrayal to the Bill of Rights that it might appear to be, but is rather the result of a systemic, chronic condition found in this country as far back as the Sedition Act. And that we, by our indifference to overincarceration here at home, are as much traitors to our own best interests as any politician has ever been.
Kathryn Dean
