ATTICA is certainly not the worst of the 4,770 American prisons and jails. It has too much competition. But it is, nonetheless, fairly typical of a penal system that almost everyone agrees is a disgrace. Almost everyone, that is, but Vice President Spiro Agnew, who, in a spasm of Podsnappery, argued on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times last week that "our penal system remains among the most humane and advanced in the world." By and large, the penologists—not to mention the prisoners and ex-convicts—would go along with Senator Edmund Muskie,...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
