One of the most disturbing aspects of the federal government’s criminalization of business since 2001 has been the delight that many people in American society took in having various businesspeople hauled off to prison. The sociology of that reaction is complicated, but my anecdotal experience is that people who have either experienced prison themselves or have had a loved one imprisoned are far less likely to revel in such a fate for another.
Along those lines, this Luke Mullins/American.com article provides an excellent description of the desultory nature of life even in the best of America’s prisons. The willingness of many Americans to impose these conditions even where reasonable doubt exists that a crime has occurred — as well as the troubling trend in the U.S. to criminalize almost everything — is a disturbing development within our body politic.