The USA locks up more people than anywhere in the world

Yellow Cab,

You are making a lot of sense. A lot of people could learn positive life lessons much better outside the pen working for the public good either after work or instead of work.
Some of the crime ridden neighborhoods won't teach those lessons on their own, of course. The convicts will need guidance and a place to make a fresh start, but prison is just Crime University for them. Drug rehab, certainly too.

I am not talking about violent offenders. We deserve to be protected from them, but that's not who most inmates are, at least at first.

 

The main thing that they would need to do is rethink their rather backwards prohibition policies.
You'd have thought that they'd have learnt from when they tried that with alcohol...
Any system where people are forced to illegally pay criminals to get their drugs is bound to end in failure, crime and excessive convictions.

Many other nations are ahead of the US on the sensible sentences and rehabilitation front, with relatively positive results (sadly not so much on the drugs/crime link though).

 

Yes it would be cool if those in charge could ever think of such a thing. And I'm not talking about picking up shit on the side of the road, but learning a real skill for those who lack. It certainly beats the revolving door system thats not been working for... Like you said prison is just a school to make better criminals.

 

Rethink !

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My republican friend says--"whudy ya mean no room in prison? Just keep shoving 'em in the front 'till one squirts out the back and then you know there's no room"! Novel idea ,I suppose,but I've always felt that if people could get a decent job with a living wage,crime would be drastically reduced. Imagine if Nike and all the rest of the companies that go to other countries to exploit cheap labor actually cared about this country--they could do the right thing and come home and help our workers and the country in general.

 

The problem is that all of these programs to rehabilitate and integrate offenders cost money, and require time and organization. It's always a questions of the $$$ in this world.

I agree though with yellowcab. Nonviolent offenders should not be locked up. They are often worse when they come out, not too mention every job application has a "have you ever been convicted of a crime" section. What use is serving a sentence if it hangs over your head the rest of your life and puts you into bad situations that send you right back.

Scratcho: Unfortunately, money makes the world go round. I can't remember exact details of the story, but I'll substitute in other details for the sake of telling it.

There was a man producing zippers in Mexico for $.50 per zipper. One day, China opened up economic zones for foreign capital. That exact same day, the man closed down his factory, picked up and moved operations to China, where he began manufacturing zippers for $.10 per zipper. He didn't care about all of those workers in Mexico. He wanted to maximize profits while minimizing the costs of production. The capitalist pursuit of maximizing profits.

We are approaching a day when money/capital is allowed to move between countries, but people are not.

Got kind of off topic at the end there

 

It's not always a question of $$$. This nation has a "lock um up and throw away the key" mentality with no regard for cost, yet the same people scream when congress wants to pass a bill to help kids go to college when a degreed person is far less likely to end up in prison.

The cost to house one prisoner for one year is between $20,000 and $50,000 depending on the state. The cost of an education at the University of Alabama is $7,000 per year and Harvard is $31,000 per year. It costs about $175,000 to house one death row inmate for one year and they are usually there for 10 to 20 years, and this does not include the expenses for their appeals and attorneys.

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Excellent points. Let me revise my statement. It's all about who's hands the $$$ is in.

I'm curious what your stance is on legalizing marijuana? Good idea or bad?

There are obviously some things that need to be addressed, but I don't think anything bad would come from devoting those funds and efforts used to fight marijuana towards fighting harsher crimes and more destructive drugs.

 

Personally, I'm all for anything that will bring down the price. Since I retired my income is rather limited. I used to grow my own, till I got busted. Socially speaking, I don't believe in victim-less crimes.

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The entire war on drugs is a massive waste of taxpayers money. It is a total failure and actually causes more problems than its solving. We have had posts here of all the various reasons for its failure, but the bottom line is the government simply cannot afford to prosecute, incarcerate or place on probation the legions of non violent drug offenders anymore. The tax money lost to the black market by itself would go a long way to solving other more pressing social problems. People could grow their own without fear of being busted and use money now spent on weed on other consumer good, stimulating the economy. I could go on and on, the positives far outweigh the negatives and the tide seems to slowly turning.

 

i dont know why it is always "money" with americans.
"lets not like people up because it costs too much". "lets get out of viet nam because we cant afford it. "
"lets get out of iraq, because it costs alot".
what about let's get out of iraq, because we don't want to see u.s. soldiers murdering innocent iraqis? what happened to the humanity? how about stop locking people up in cages because we just dont want to be cruel to people and lock them up like animals at a zoo?

 

Uh I think the human toll was far more important than monetary issues in the opposition to both Iraq and Vietnam. Regardless a trillion dollars is a lot of money and deserves discussing, especially when your country can't provide health care to its people and your nation's infrastructure is either crumbling 1930's WPA era stuff or shitty 1970's/80's stuff.

 

The funny thing is if you read the posts over at FreeRepublic, most of them there also agree the system needs to be reformed and there's too many people in jail. I mean granted they believe it in a "Argh, too many laws, too much money spent on jails, god damn government" kind of way vs any kind of moral, societal benefit type of way, it's still pretty funny when progressives and freerepublic agree on something. You know you have a problem at that point.

Nothing will ever change though, gotta be tough on crime!!! Hurrrr.

 

I agree that it should not always be about the money. Jesus said that the love of money is the root of all evil. I think he meant that in a very broad sense, but when you investigate white collar crime, cops always stress, "follow the money".

If being cruel to people would lead them to abandon their selfish ways and learn skills to help society, I'd consider it, but we all know that it only serves to make things worse.

As for US soldiers murdering innocent Iraqis, I know that most are not there to murder, but to protect the innocent from tribal warfare. If you have 100,000 troops over there, it is statistically likely that a few will disgrace our country and commit acts of violence against the innocent. I have met enough troops to know that most are there to serve and help.

It is also true that there are people caught in the crossfire of these tribal battles who die from stray bullets or mistaken identity. There are some people who have been duped by Jihadist propaganda that all Americans are their enemy. So instead of trying to build a peaceful Iraq, they think they have a duty to kill everyone who is not part of their particular religious group.
Thankfully we are seeing less of that than we used to because our military finally met with Sunni tribal leaders and worked with them and talked to them instead of shooting first.
I look forward to the day when we can get out completely. Ultimately the Iraqi people must choose to live in peace after we have gone, whether they are Kurd, Sunni, Shiite, Jew or Christian, Bahai, or secular.

But though I digress, some of the same tactics work with our own people in our own criminal justice system.

Violent criminals should be locked up for our protection. If they can be rehabilitated, then great! Parole them, but only when they show evidence of a changed heart. Then fund adequate monitoring and counseling to help them stay straight.

A few mentally ill criminals should never get out. Charlie Manson is one example of someone who is both cunning, likely insane and dangerously violent. Do you want Charlie running loose in your neighborhood?

However most inmates are non violent. The non-violent offenders should not be locked up, but in a well-supervised transitional mentoring program. There should definitely be restitution to the victims. It will be expensive, but our loose parole system is costing us more monetarily and socially than a better staffed, more rehabilitation-focused system would.

 

From your posts I've read you seem to be here for the sole purpose of criticizing Americans, yet you have chosen to hide where you live. Isn't that a bit unfair?

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E7wgFcCefE"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E7wgFcCefE

 

Lets get out of prison!!!! Wait no riot we cant afford living on the streets..