The origin of our prison 'problem: re NYT Brooks column.

The prison problem is a direct consequence of the 'great' Repblican President:Ronald Reagan: "Lock them up and throw away the key." This presumptive Christian with no Church affiliation, had the term "rehabilitation" removed from the Prison laws. It was ok to punish and over punish prisoners. Remember all the jokes about 'prison rape'. And the fact that half of them were by the guards! So the moral-majority came and punished all the poor blacks and Latinos with 3 time the punishment meted out whites. It was the Christian thing to do. Then came the Republican anti-poor, anti-black, and anti-Latino wave of 'Conservatism'. But the finishing blow was the political payoff system for the rural Republican supporters: build prisons in their community, give the locals all the guard and executive and health care jobs in the prisons and build a base of "good Christian prison employees" who knew who buttered their bread. The Republicans recently talked about the blacks voting democratic to 'get something' from the government. The Republicans gave jobs and more jobs to the raw uneducated and untrained rural workers, turning them into indentured servants of their party, and the new 'moral' government supported Republican voters who were propagandized into hating those 'animals' - once called human beings. Our Representative Government excessively imprisoned three generations of poor and downtrodden for prison worker votes, giving prison worker jobs in return. The good old USA!