WHICH COUNTRY imprisons more of its population than any other in the world? South Africa perhapo, the United States of America, guardian of western aemocacy- With a prison opulation of over I millio nearly 50 per cent higher than that of South Africa. And it is expected to go up by a third in the next three years.
A disproportionate number or those imprisoned are black: If you are a black American in your twenties, you have a one in four chance of being in prison or on parole at any one time. There are now half a million black men in US prisons.
And the racism of the US justice system extends to the darkest corner of the US legal May 16. 1992 system, 'Death Row'. The death penalty in the USA was halted for five years in the 1970s because its application was so rantional. But when it was only the i letter of the law was modified - the basica were not.
Around one per cent of convicted murderers in the US are sentenced to dearn. Teopieare sentenced to death not so much for what they do but for who they are a new study of the penalty concludes. And that means, in practice, that those on Death Row are over. whelmingly black, poor and uneducated.
Now George Bush is trying to extend the death penalty, playing to the most reactionary law and order' sections of WHITES
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