Why do we lock up so many people?(newyorker.com)

http://newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/01/30/120130crat_atlarge_gopnik

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"Prison rape is so endemic more than seventy thousand prisoners are raped each year that it is routinely held out as a threat, part of the punishment to be expected. The subject is standard fodder for comedy, and an uncoöperative suspect being threatened with rape in prison is now represented, every night on television, as an ordinary and rather lovable bit of policing. The normalization of prison rape like eighteenth-century japery about watching men struggle as they die on the gallows will surely strike our descendants as chillingly sadistic, incomprehensible on the part of people who thought themselves civilized."

I found that quote to be particularly insightful.

Ron Paul thinks it would be a good idea to pardon all non-violent (violence includes theft) drug offenders.