MSNBC's Predators Online should be REQUIRED watching for

The enormity of the commitment on the part of the American economic, political, and civil establishment at all its levels (Federal, State, and local---and mothers for the penal colony) to the deprivation of the freedoms of some of its residents, as well as to instituting a sort of half-panopticonized, half-Big Brother way of life, becomes evident. Nor is there any denying it. When one factors in the number of people on probation and parole, which stood at 4,848,575 by the end of 2003---in other words, when one gets one's hands around the totality of the "adult correctional population," as the Bureau of Justice Statistics likes to describe this huge caste of Americans---the total number of U.S. residents screwed daily by the American penal colony must have reached the seven-million mark by now.

Let there be no mistake about it: This is a fascistic state and civil dynamic we've got running here.

Nor is there anything friendly about it.

Postscript (May 28): According to Jerome G. Miller ("American Gulag," 2000):

While most people assume jail overcrowding results from rising crime rates, increased violence, or general population growth, that is seldom the case. Here, in order of importance, are the major contributors to jail overcrowding:

1. The number of police officers
2. The number of judges
3. The number of courtrooms
4. The size of the district attorney’s staff
5. Policies of the state’s attorney’s office concerning which crimes deserve the most attention
6. The size of the staff of the entire court system
7. The number of beds available in the local jail
8. The willingness of victims to report crimes
9. Police department policies concerning arrest
10. The arrest rate within the police department
11. The actual amount of crime committed

How lovely, if you think about it. An ever-more deeply entrenched, self-sustaining law enforcement, prosecutorial, judicial, sentencing, and "correctional" bureaucracy acting so as to construct a vast array of crime and criminals, as a way of fulfilling its societal purpose and maintaining its power (etc.). And of all of the factors which go into this social complex as a whole, the one that deserves the smallest weight, in Miller's estimate, is the actual amount of crime committed!