For too long, too many judges have been too quiet about an evil of which we are a part: the mass imprisonment of people in the United States today. It is time that more of us spoke out. The basic facts are not in dispute. More than 2.2 million people are currently incarcerated in US jails and prisons, a 500 percent increase over the past forty years. Although the United States accounts for about 5 percent of the world's population, it houses nearly 25 percent of the world's prison population. The per capita imprisonment rate in the US is about one and a half times that of second-place Rwanda and third-place Russia, and more than six times the rate of neighboring Canada.
    Most of the increase in imprisonment has been for nonviolent offenses, such as drug possession. And even though crime rates in the United States have declined consistently for twenty-four years, the number of imprisoned persons has continued to rise over most of that period, both because more people are being sent to prison for offenses that once were punished with other measures and because the sentences are longer.
    On one issue—opposition to mandatory minimum laws—the Federal Judiciary has been consistent in its opposition and clear in its message. As for Congress, while occasionally approving reductions in the guidelines of minimum imprisonment recommended by the Sentencing Commission, it has much more often required the Sentencing Commission to increase the prison time reflected in those guidelines, thereby further supporting mass imprisonment.
    Yet even within the judiciary there is some modest cause for hope. Several brave federal district judges have for some time openly denounced the policy of mass imprisonment. More recently, a federal appellate judge, Gerard Lynch of New York, expressed his argument, "this idea of total imprisonment just isn't working," adding that in many instances it would be wiser to assign offenders to probation or other supervised release programs. Yet his willingness to confront publicly even some of the evils of mass imprisonment should be an inspiration to all other judges so inclined.
    In many respects, the people of the United States can be proud of the progress we have made over the past half-century in promoting racial equality. More haltingly, we have also made some progress in our treatment of the poor and disadvantaged. But the big, glaring exception to both these improvements is how we treat those guilty of crimes. Basically, we treat them like dirt. And while this treatment is mandated by the legislature, it is we judges who mete it out. Unless we judges make more effort to speak out against this inhumanity, how can we call ourselves instruments of justice?  It can be inferred from Paragraph 1 that ______.