In filling Boston Harbor with over 300 chests of British tea on a cold day in 1773, Samuel Adams and his fellow patriots unwittingly created a universal symbol for protest.

Some believe its time has come around again.

The "21st Century Tea Party", a grassroots organization of self-styled activists, plans to hold a Tea Party of its own this Independence Day by organizing a mass-mailing of tea bags to legislators and other government officials as a protest against rates of incarceration and prison conditions in the United States. Each letter will enclose a tea bag as a symbol of the protest and as an indication of the number of communications sent by members and supporters of the group.

The United States now keeps over 2.3 million prisoners behind bars, more than any other nation (indeed, more than the prison population of the #2 and #3 nations combined!). According to the 2008 Pew Report On The States, one in 99.1 Americans is currently behind bars. Department of Justice reports indicate that one American in 15 will spend time in prison during his or her lifetime. In some sectors of society, one in three Americans is already in jail, or on parole or probation. We incarcerate more people, and a higher percentage of our population, than China, Russian, and Iran combined. Nevertheless, violent crime continues to rise.

We will always need prisons for violent offenders, but that is not what they are being used for. As many as 30% of those now in prison landed there for nothing other than being unable to afford the services of a competent attorney-many of that 30% are innocent of any crime. Another 30% are serving draconian sentences for non-violent drug offenses. Thanks to "the war on drugs", possession of a small amount of a controlled substance can and will get you a longer prison sentence than attempted murder.

America's prisons are overcrowded, many of them in poor repair. Living conditions in some facilities are so poor that officials from other nations have stated that animals would be guaranteed better living quarters by law in their countries. China recently attacked the United States' human rights record, citing our prison system and rate of incarceration among the reasons for criticism.

The idea of rehabilitation has become lost in the American prison system. Those released from prison are rarely provided with job training or education or even assistance in returning to society. The results are predictable-by some estimates,

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