1 in 100 Adults Now in Prison
2,319,258 Americans Behind Bars in 2008, Most of Any Nation
For the first time in U.S. history, more than one in every 100 adults are in jail or prison, according to a new report documenting America’s rank as the world’s No. 1 incarcerator. It urges states to curtail corrections spending by placing fewer low-risk offenders behind bars.
Using state-by-state data, the report says 2,319,258 Americans were in jail or prison at the start of 2008 - one in 99.1 adults. Whether per capita or in raw numbers, it’s more than any other nation.The report, released yesterday by the Pew Center on the States, said the 50 states spent more than $49 billion on corrections last year, up from less than $11 billion 20 years earlier. The rate of increase for prison costs was six times greater than for higher education spending, the report said.
The steadily growing inmate population “is saddling cash-strapped states with soaring costs they can ill afford and failing to have a clear impact either on recidivism or overall crime,” the report said.
Susan Urahn, managing director of the Pew Center on the States, said budget woes are pressuring many states to consider cost-saving corrections policies that might have been shunned in the past for fear of appearing soft on crime.
“We’re seeing more and more states being creative because of tight budgets,” she said. “They want to be tough on crime. They want to be a law-and-order state. But they also want to save money, and they want to be effective.”
Some Maryland lawmakers said they hope the report will spur reforms in drug-sentencing laws.
“We’ve been pounding the governor and chairmen of committees with this information for almost five years,” said Del. Curtis Anderson, a Baltimore Democrat who has sponsored several bills that would lower maximum sentences for nonviolent drug offenses. “The fact that somebody else is saying it and it’s a national report might help us wake them up to this issue.”
There are 23,342 people incarcerated in Maryland, according to the Pew report. “And roughly 70 percent of them are in prison for drug or drug-related offenses,” Anderson said. “And of that 70 percent, 92 percent are African-American.”
Anderson said the Pew report was not surprising. “We have the highest incarceration rate of every country in the world, including backward and despotic countries like Cuba,” he said. “The problem is that the folks we put in jail aren’t violent offenders or dangerous to society, but mainly low-level drug users or drug dealers. The way we should be dealing with these people is to put them into treatment, which is far less expensive and much more effective.”
Anderson, chairman of the city’s legislative delegation, has proposed a bill this session that would reduce mandatory sentences for some drug offenses from 20 years to 10 years. The General Assembly passed a similar bill last year, but it was vetoed by Gov. Martin O’Malley. Anderson said he has been collaborating on a new bill with O’Malley’s staff and is hopeful it will be signed into law this year.
The Pew report noted Kansas and Texas as states that have acted decisively to slow the growth of their inmate populations. They are making greater use of community supervision for low-risk offenders and employing sanctions other than imprisonment for offenders who commit technical violations of parole and probation rules.
“The new approach, born of bipartisan leadership, is allowing the two states to ensure they have enough prison beds for violent offenders while helping less-dangerous lawbreakers become productive, taxpaying citizens,” the report said.
While many state governments have shown bipartisan interest in curbing prison growth, there also are persistent calls to proceed cautiously.
“We need to be smarter,” said David Muhlhausen, a criminal justice expert with the conservative Heritage Foundation. “We’re not incarcerating all the people who commit serious crimes. But we’re also probably incarcerating people who don’t need to be.”
According to the report, the inmate population increased last year in 36 states and the federal prison system.
The largest percentage increase - 12 percent - was in Kentucky, where Gov. Steve Beshear highlighted the cost of corrections in his budget speech last month. He noted that the state’s crime rate had increased only about 3 percent in the past 30 years, while the state’s inmate population has increased 600 percent.
The report was compiled by the Pew Center’s Public Safety Performance Project, which is working with 13 states on developing programs to divert offenders from prison without jeopardizing public safety.
“Getting tough on criminals has gotten tough on taxpayers,” said the project’s director, Adam Gelb.
According to the report, the average annual cost per prisoner was $23,876, with Rhode Island spending the most ($44,860) and Louisiana the least ($13,009).
It said California - which faces a $16 billion budget shortfall - spent $8.8 billion on corrections last year, while Texas, which has slightly more inmates, was a distant second, spending $3.3 billion.
On average, states spend 6.8 percent of their general fund dollars on corrections, the report said Oregon had the highest spending rate, at 10.9 percent; Alabama was lowest at 2.6 percent.
Four states - Vermont, Michigan, Oregon and Connecticut - spend more on corrections than on higher education, the report said.
“These sad facts reflect a very distorted set of national priorities,” said Sen. Bernard Sanders, an independent from Vermont, referring to the report. “Perhaps, if we adequately invested in our children and in education, kids who now grow up to be criminals could become productive workers and taxpayers.”
The report said prison growth and higher incarceration rates do not reflect an increase in the nation’s population. Instead, it said, more people are behind bars mainly because of tough sentencing measures, such as “three-strikes” laws, that result in longer prison stays.
“For some groups, the incarceration numbers are especially startling,” the report said.
“While one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars, for black males in that age group the figure is one in nine.”
The racial disparity for women is also stark. One in 355 white women ages 35 to 39 is behind bars, compared with one in 100 black women in that age group.
The nationwide figures, as of Jan. 1, include 1,596,127 people in state and federal prisons and 723,131 in local jails. That’s out of nearly 230 million American adults.
The report said the United States incarcerates more people than any other nation, far ahead of more populous China, with 1.5 million people behind bars.
It also said the United States is the leader in inmates per capita (750 per 100,000 people), ahead of Russia (628 per 100,000) and other former Soviet bloc nations, which round out the top 10.
The United States also is among the world leaders in capital punishment. According to Amnesty International, its 53 executions in 2006 were exceeded only by China, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq and Sudan.
Sun reporter Gadi Dechter contributed to this article.
Copyright © 2008, The Baltimore Sun
“Four states - Vermont, Michigan, Oregon and Connecticut - spend more on corrections than on higher education, the report said.”
That is the sentence (pardon the pun) that needs to be highlighted. What Americans don’t realize is that it is more cost effective to feed, clothe, house and educate kids. Give them a fair shake and you won’t have to pay more, later, with expensive prisons, trials and the entire social and economic cost of crime.
Of course there is another way of reducing the prison population. Just give the psychopathic mass murderers weapons and the keys to the inner parts of the jails and the overpopulation problem will be taken care of. Rule of law, smule of craw.
Really should not post this, really shouldn’t hit submit, fuck it.
These figures sure give the lie to the claim that there is anything utilitarian (greatest good for the greatest number) about the US political/economic system. It has been exposed for the umpteenth time as an amoral predatory society run by a corporate plutocracy that employs well-paid sophists to bamboozle the masses to soften resistance to the predations.
Such a dysfunctional political/economic system is obviously not sustainable for the long-term, and soon we will see more and more of the corporate elites (following Halliburton) abandoning the social/cultural sewer they created to prey on the unsuspecting elsewhere.
Gulag America, brought to you by our conservative scum.
Some prison poems at Liberation Lit, new journal - http://liblit.wordpress.com/2008/02/26/prison-poetry/
For the U.S., in times of plenty the prison populations shrinks; in times of hardship, the populations swell. Amerika uses prisons as warehousing complexes for excess labor supply.
Schools are the warehouses to rank, grade, and fast-track, slow-track or reject inputs into the machine. Like the egg rating machine in Willie Wonka’s factory, the schools determine whether one is a good or bad egg.
and the military………
maybe I or someone else will comment on this below…
And the military? It’s both the largest organ to facilitate domestic consumption, and the intermediary institution between prison and largely lower-middle class personhood.
To hell with the wealthy, priests, and military. I’m tired of being part of an exploitive social experiment gone awry. If you can, I recommend getting off the grid. If you can’t, LOOK OUT, the fall of Rome looks nigh upon us.
Good idea ~Skippy~. Here’s another that shouldn’t be submitted.
We should allow those physically able, to join Blackwater and allow them their freedom. That should reduce the inmates levels by at least 65%. It’s a win-win idea.
Would be useful to see the figures by age as well.
Take away a generation’s hope, outsource good jobs, insource trade jobs, racketeer real estate too expensive to ever be affordable, and what the hell do our leaders expect?
I wondered back in the sixties what issue these demagogic politicians were going to use once race was no longer acceptable.
How come we never see the likes of Rush l. or Betty Ford in prison? Besides, the constitution says I have the right to pursue happiness.
I think maybe drugs is an excuse to warehouse people with no money and no job skills. The ruling class is not only heartless but also stupid. It’s in their best interest to keep us placated, not miserable.
Distracting those of us who, for the moment, are not in prison with promises of keeping us safe from those drug-crazed criminals cannot last forever. Make us wretched enough and the top 1% will find out what real fear is.
Lets see, we have a couple of young hoodlums, high school dropouts, age 18, armed with hand guns, who rob a 7-11 and are finally arrested. They are tried, found to be guilty and sentenced to prison for a period of ten to twenty years. That’s a typical scenerio in almost every state.
They robbed the 7-11, to get money for crack cocaine. They hated school and dropped out in ninth grade and joined a street gang. They had previously been suspects in drive by shootings, etc. They never knew their fathers and their mothers worked two jobs just to make ends meet and survive without being homeless. Now we wonder why our prisons are full and over filled.
The initial problem is, our society is really fucked up.
They wouldn’t be in prison if they were Zionists.
But how many more people are in secret prisons? Many more will be added later this year I predict when cheney and bush invoke martial law.
Does anyone have any info on how many of these new prisons are already built or planning to be built in this country by Halliburton and other contractors? Or is this only another “conspiracy theory”?*
*Definition of conspiracy theory - anything that contradicts cheney/bush, FOX News, etc.
Perhaps most Zionists don’t drop out of school and they know who their fathere are, don’t join street gangs and rob 7-11s.
Maybe they do, I’m not an expert on Zionists.
I believe it was Tolstoy who wrote that a nation should be judged by it’s prisons, and by the number of people it imprisons.
It should also be pointed out that most of the prison population are not violent offenders. If you are black, simple posession of small amounts pot or cocaine can send you to prison. White kids get off with just a lecture from the judge.
The problem, and the solution is not complicated: just look at any western European country for how to proceed, and look at El Salvador, guatamala, or Colombia to see the result of the direction we are heading.
1. Decriminalize marijuana and cocaine posession and prostitution.
2. End the savage inequalities in funding and quality in public education between poor communities and rich ones. In places like Pennsylvania, end the whole ridiculous patchwork of rich and poor neighborhood school districts - where the poor districts are forced to dismantle public educaton in the face of their plummeting real estate tax base. Consolidate them into a countywide or even regional school school authority so all schools get the same funding.
3. Free university education to all who qualify.
4. Raise the US minimum wage to those in European countries - about $14 per hour.
5. Free healthcare for all.
6. End the war machine and free up more than enough funding for all of the above.
There are no men in this wasteland.
It has always taken men to turn boys into men.
Our culture is disfunctional and now we are paying the price. Where is FDR and his CCC when we need it?
All we ever get are the likes of CCA writing the checks and ‘laws’ for red nosed lawmakers.
Lock’m up. As for education, that, like medical care and retirement, should be a matter of personal responsibility.
If you are right with God, you will have no problems. God provides and Liberals whine.
The prison system is a booming industry. For every citizen that is culled off the street and put into a cage the prison system charges the taxpayers more than twice the cost of sending them to college. Society is “cleansed” of minorities and mentally defective people. Politicians win their tough on crime elections. Thousands of otherwise unemployable yokels find work as prison guards. Whether or not most of them are sadists or criminals themselves is not known, but it is beyond dispute that no “corrections officers” are doing any rehabilitation work for their paychecks. If the illusion of freedom is important to you, it is best not to become involved with prisoners and former prisoners and their families. A huge swamp of exploitive injustice, comparable in size and evil to the slave system, sits like an ugly tumor right in our midst, and nobody wants to look at it. No former prisoner can ever again seriously believe that anybody is protected by legal or human rights. Most do not become activists. They become very quiet people.
Yep VOX~, it costs lots more to house and feed a prisoner every day, than it costs to stay and order top level room service meals at the MGM in Las Vegas.
vox, they become quiet people because they know from experience that the system will get you if they want to.
I’m very quiet too, except when I can hide behind an alias.
Maybe I should change my name?
What strikes me most, reading the comments following the article,is the almost total absence of any comment about the fact that the Black population is nearly five times greater, percentage wise, than other races in its contribution to the problem.
This should be fertile ground for the special efforts of the Obama’s.
Heard the same thing on CNN today. This alone should be taken as warning sign that there is something terribly wrong with this country. However, this should be expected because it is directly proportional to an imbalance of wealth and the misappropriation of taxes toward militarism and other dark purposes.
The more difficulty people have in obtaining what they need, the more they resort to crime. Not only that, but it also adds more stress to their lives, and those under stress tend to be destructive, in one way or another, either to themselves, others, or both. Is this not so?
When I was 33 and became so ill out of my control I couldnt work and was turned down for any federal assistance 1996, the month after Clinton’s Congress “welfare reform”. Ha, I remember all the fat cats congratulating themselves as the numbers in the welfare rolls dramatically dropped - after they disqualified and kicked out all the “people in the margins.” Including workers who take for granted that the system will be there for them.
I knew then how simple it can be to make that leap. For someone who has no family or a poor family would do whatever it takes to eat and survive; crime, drug dealing, prostitution, whatever. I didnt have to do any of that, but I knew “in my gut” how it could be.
I find the disparity of experience between the haves and have nots in this country shocking. maybe my eyes are just open, but I see it everywhere. Youve got your Mercedes SUV set juxtaposed with black men with no belts pants falling pushing carts with cans - lots of these men and women and now I am seeing families out scavenging for cans and bottles. C’mon, how big a leap is it. 1 in a 99.1 and counting. What was that book in the 80’s about The Hundredth Monkey..
It defies logic that white collar criminals ane many other non violent offenders who pose no dangers to society should be incarcerated at tremendous expense to us. Instead they should be paroled, forced to compensate their victims, & provided with job training when appropriate.
Billy B, when top name Black entertainers, and or famous sports figures mention that, they are often attacked by Jesse Jackson and his type, who seem to want to deny the obvious.
~JONEDEN~ So by your opinion, any who are poor, any who have lost their job and can not find a decent, or any job, who are down and out, are not right with God. ___Interesting opinion. I do believe, that’s the type of people opinions, that first put Bush into public office.
At this rate it won’t be that long before no one will be left who can vote in AmeriKKKan elections. How do you Yanks live in a country like that? Looks like you all live in an insane asylum.
The justice system in this country no longer has all that much to do with “Justice”. It’s more about control, and maintaining a fear level to maintain control. (This is called “deterrence”.) Incarceration for victimless, non-violent crimes serves little purpose. Prison terms for possession of use of drugs that have been labled, for reasons not altogether clear and in many cases ridiculous, are unconscionable. And can anyone tell me who benefits from all this? Certainly not those who can’t acquire sufficient funds to fun schools, provide for the homeless, and the list goes on and on. Have we blinded ourselves with an overdose of fear and the desire for vengeance?
Maybe prisons are the new national/fascistic socialism. It’s cheaper to house/feed/control large demographics in a factory/assembly-line economy of scale.
Vox is correct, but eventually an inflection point will be reached. The number of prisoners will become a burden on taxpayers. What then? Labor camps? Factory dormitories? And how will we separate the fine line between them?
Keep in mind, gentlepersons, that social breakdown has happened before. There was once another Empire which advocated serfdom, ran its colonies despotically, and had a large prison population. That country was England — and it shipped people by the thousands to penal colonies Down Under. Where is America, apparently a new monarchical/empire, going to ship its growing population of undesirables? Back to England?
Here in KY,a former dean of gov.beshear’s old law school,and a former gov who built up much of the prison industrial system down here,have joined forces to scale it back somewhat because its strangling state government.prisoners are housed in county jails because there are no beds available at the state pen.there is also an odious,and brutal private prison system in the bluegrass which operates on the dark side. it gets ugly when the law and order lege paints the state into a corner,and all the policy contradictions come home to roost.we seem to have a prison system with a state attached to it.years of law and order demagoguery down at the lege,have painted state gov into a corner -there is little or no money for education,medicaid,the pension fund for state employees etc.the governor wants to address the crisis by bringing in casinos.’way to fight crime.
How can this be? Last year, the FBI just ran a hyped piece that insisted violent crime is down in America! Do we have too many brutal cops and Nifongs out there or are pot smokers being framed into being the cause of all the problems. I saw a local news broadcast about a dangerous guy that was pulled over and arrested for drugs and having the percursers for making meth. A wad of cash, a small bag of pot, a shotgun shell, coffee filters and baggies was enough for his over-hyped & televised arrest. If only he was a movie star or the son of a famous politician.
The growth of the prison system in the US is the fault of privitization. Make more laws, lock up more people, make more money - hey, it’s all good!!! A healthy society moves to eliminate the need for and empty the prisons, not foster them.
joneden said:
“Lock’m up. As for education, that, like medical care and retirement, should be a matter of personal responsibility.
If you are right with God, you will have no problems. God provides and Liberals whine.”
I have a better idea to reduce the prison population. Let’s tax churches into oblivion and use the money to build huge camps in the desert. We can lock up all the nutcases (like this guy) who go ballistic and turn on the establishment. THEN invite the violent criminals into the camps and give everyone a gun. After all, the motto of jesus freaks like this one has always been, “GOD, GUTS, and GUNS is what made this country great.”
skippyagogo41: your comment is sad, lacking in any compassion, the easy way out, and nasty.
“Four states - Vermont, Michigan, Oregon and Connecticut - spend more on corrections than on higher education, the report said.”
That reminds me of a breakdown of marriage of two parents who can’t put away their hatred of each other even though it jeopardises the welfare and happiness of their children.
In other words, they hate each other more than they love their children.
America.
Ruth, those same religious ‘nut cases’ who voted for Bush believed their ‘values’ were going to be represented. Now Bush and his neo-con cronies are laughing all the way to the bank, and many of them (the so-called Gawd fearing) still don’t realize they’re being played for fools. Oh, and it will be THEY who scream the loudest once the crushing boot comes around, and when everything is stolen from them that can be. At the cross, Jesus supposedly said “I thirst,” and they gave him vinegar. The self-righteous right has stockpiles of this liquid, which they gladly proffer to those they deem ‘liberal.’
62% of inmates in local jails across our land have NOT been convicted of a crime. That number was posted on the Department of Justice two years ago. I checked recently but couldn’t find a current figure for inmates that have NOT been convicted of a crime.
Land of the Free??? Not any more .. we live in a police state.
Most every body who has posted missed a vital point here.
1 in 100 Adults Now in Prison
“There are 23,342 people incarcerated in Maryland, according to the Pew report. “And roughly 70 percent of them are in prison for drug or drug-related offenses,” Anderson said. “And of that 70 percent, 92 percent are African-American.””
roughly 70 percent of them are in prison for drug or drug-related offenses
Seventy percent plus or minus a few points the amount of recreational drug users behind bars in all the states. I have spent a lot of time reading information like this for the last twenty plus years. There are a lot of people in this country-using drug recreationally. People you wouldn’t even believe are recreational drug users. People in ever occupation from judges, lawyers, cops to teachers doctors and nurses. The vast majority of people using/abusing/low level selling drugs recreationally are not committing any serious crimes. I personally know and know of people who are abusing what is supposed to be the worst drug meth. Yes they do have moment of erratic behavior but none of them to my knowledge has harmed anyone beside their selves.
It’s time to legalize recreational drug use and get the dealing out of the black market and into a market that can be controlled. Every body on this board has the intelligence to find the information about recreational drug use so I’m not going to supply you with any links. I have read studies with supporting evidence that concluded that up to eighty percent of the violent crime in this country is linked to the black market of drugs.
It’s time to end the war on drugs. It is a failed policy that hasn’t had any effect on reducing crime or reducing the number of people who do drug recreationally. The amount of money we spend on the drug war is more than enough to give us single payer health care and improve our public school system. The taxes we can collect from the drug sales would be more than enough for addiction treatment for anybody who wants it.
I have a friend who recently spent a couple of weeks in jail for a 6 year old, first and only, DUI. He didn’t pay the fine.
While he was in there, he met other men who were there because of back child support payments. And in the news at that time, a young mother just barely escaped going to jail for not having paid an overdue library fine.
Where is the sanity in all this?
Is anyone really surprised by this? If you aren’t, then why are you still sitting there?
http://www.ryanhartman.wordpress.com
mmmooo;
My comment was sarcastic, maybe with a bit of irony thrown in. I’ve always thought sweeping problems under the rug (like throwing non-violent people in jail) causes more trouble than can be justified. Only a few people leave prison and never return to it, but does anyone ask why that is? How hard is it to get a good job for normal people, add a prison record to your history and you’re fucked if you want to better yourself. For years prisons have served as a training ground for better crooks, and please note, the thieves get out quickly. Smoke weed or grow your own and you can lose all your assets and be in a cage for decades, at the end of which you’ll not have a pension, be able to rebuild what you once had, unable to vote.
At the end of my little rant here mmmooo, I think maybe I suggested (like some english guy) that the crisis could be solved if we just ate the babies.
Oh, and lets be clear on how effective the war on drugs is. Are they able to keep pot out of prisons? No, they are not able to keep pot out of the jails. Nor do the guards keep coke, heroin and booze out of the lockups. In some cases the guards are the suppliers of those commodities (traded for blowjobs or other favours). The WOD has corrupted the police and the justice system completely. Police will arrest a dealer with a pound of dope, and the charge will be for an ounce. Judges get paid off, prosecutors have cut their drug debts by having their dealers charged and locked up. The price of everything but drugs have risen these last twenty years, but idiot conservatives say “let’s lock up a few more people, we’re sure to win if we do.”
Speaking of the racial aspect of the prison population is most disturbing. Slavery may have been ended in North America by the 1880s (if you include those interesting indentured servant contracts), but what else would you call the forced confinement and forced labour that you get from prisoners? Slaves couldn’t vote either…
We will privatize the prisons and make all those out, feel like they are in prison with corporate surveillance. That is the NEOCON position that McCain will support if elected. (Look who he has been courting) The Democrats will only stand and watch unless the people begin to think and vote to push the issue. No other party will get the presidency or congress and Nader will be at best irrelevant.
We need to offer drug rehab, psychological treatment, and counseling to all who ask immediately. We need a living wage and health care for everybody.
The politicians will not offer this - it will have to be forced on them. I don’t see it happening so hang on it will be rough.
Be careful Skippyaggo— you have either been there, and or know someone very close to you that has been. And if they get you once, they have a 70% chance of getting you back (that is built into the system). That “law” is enforced by the guards–excellent job security.
About racial aspects in prison. In California it is kept to 32% black, 32% white and 32% Mexican. The other 3% are for those who don’t fit in the system like American Indians, Asians, Jews, and East Indians. By having, and playing one group off the other, the guards have a kick-back job.
How can the system control a kid that is stupid enough (like all of us) to steal a car or other stupid thing and parlay that into a “life on the installment plan”. Try rape, drugs, snitches, corrupt guards, and human nature to do it most of the time.
William1;
No, not myself. Have worked with people who did volunteer work with the John Howard Society tho…
[The United States also is among the world leaders in capital punishment. According to Amnesty International, its 53 executions in 2006 were exceeded only by China, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq and Sudan.]
That shows what kind of company we are in. It’s too bad we murdered those people {legally}, especially when many of them were innocent. But it’s worse to go afar and murder more than a million innocent people illegally, especially when there was (and is) absolutely no provocation.
Which is more cost effective which is more humane, which is more likely to result in a healthy person in a healthy community-
Intervene with support at the High Chair,
or intervene with destruction at the Electric chair.
I am told there is a computer Sim game called “Prison Tycoon”. Found Art for A CApitalist Realist Artist to display as evidence/artifact/commentary.
When I was a kid, my father used to say, ‘If owing money were a crime - there would be a prison on every corner.’ Now it seems that something akin to this IS happening.
Ameica’s New Slogan
Shooting Up?! No!
Shooting People?! Yes!
(use the graphics from the old up with people touring group for the words Up and People)
The strongest lobby group in CA are the Prison Guards.
Here’s another view of this sad, pathetic truth:
One of out every one hundred
Americans is incarcerated.
In jail. Behind bars. Right now.
1 of 100.
This is unprecedented in
in American history.
Even more shocking is the fact that
not even communist Russia or China
at the height of their dictatorships
had anywhere near as many people
in jail.
What’s going on?
We better start figuring it out
because there is every indication
that Bush & Friends want to push
those numbers even higher.
Details:
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/282.html
Welcome to the wonderful world envisioned by the prison industrial complex. It has crept on to the scene almost unnoticed and is now a prime sucker of tax money as states like California now spend more capita annually on prisoners than on college students. California’s prison guard union is the most powerful lobby in the state legislature, and politicians of both parties fear them more than a real job.
Without a doubt, it’s time to legalize all substances and re-emphasize personal responsibility. The concept is that you can do anything you like as long as there are no negative consequences to another individual or society as a whole. Translation: you can do any stupid SH#T you want to, just don’t expect any of us to pay for it, a55hole!!! A hundred years ago, I could have sent my child to the corner store to bring home cocaine and heroin. What’s changed since then? People denying personal responsibility and attempting to avoid the consequences of their actions.
Do not misunderstand me, folks, I’m as opposed to drug abuse as any self-respecting human should be. I just believe we have free will and should have the complete freedom to choose what we put into our own bodies.
Wake up, people, and smell the rot of corruption-inducing prohibitions!!
Land of the free…
You sure about that ~Dominick~? Stalin had over 25 million Russian dissidents killed. Even the guy who designed the Mig fighters was in one of Stalin’s prisons in Siberia for several years. I really doubt we know how many are jailed in Communist controlled countries. That does not mean our system is good. And I hate to think of how many are in jail here who never committed a crime in their life and some innocents have been executed.
It’s not possible to re-legalize drugs while television sets blare on about how drugs are the cause of economic decline and all life’s horrors. It is not possible to halt U.S. aggressive wars, nor is it possible to install honest leaders in government. It is not possible for the legislative branch to exercise any control whatsoever over the executive branch because it is the executive branch that controls the cops, the bullies, the military and Homeland Security.
More generally, the notion that the U.S. will recover from its current troubles and that the system will somehow right itself, or even that positive reform is possible, is completely bankrupt.
The U.S. will return to sanity only when it has been bombed, invaded and occupied by foreign armies. Between now and then, if the prison system should become financially burdensome, then a genocide will help control the costs of tyranny.
As for this shocking statistic that 1 of 100 are in prison - it’s not going to impress anyone. Would your school or business shut down because 1% of the people were out sick? No. Not even 10% absences would stop the wheels. There’s plenty of room for growth in the prison industry, and I expect the growth of the U.S. prison population to accelerate smartly over the next several years.
Great, albeit a little niave. Prisons are now owned almost entirely by the private corp. sector, and the new prisons being built (at an ever growing rate) are entirely owned by the same. It’s a billion dollar industry, and one of the cheapest sources for labor avilable. The lobby is substantial, and the future calls for the pattern to continue it’s growth as an industry. In a word, prisons of today are becoming little more than labor camps for the corporate market! Hope ya’ll look good in prison garb.
Hi Kem, well I don’t know about when Stalin was in charge and we aren’t talking about killing we are talking about the Growth of our prisons within the last several years and that article I posted with the video seems to be right on. Ever since we started the 3 strikes deal we have More people in prisons for low crime filling up our prisons at a fast rate with no rehabilitation programs for them once they get out. We have the, in Califnoia especially, the highest rate of Juveniles behind bars on tax payers money.
SO maybe you should go and view the link I posted again eh?
I also should add we have an over abundance of illegal folks, and not just Spanish speaking folks, in our prison system that should be deported not housed here.
#6 in capital punishment in the world. GOOOOOOOOOO USA!
We’re only behind China, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, AND Sudan. Tough group to keep up with.
There are several drug rehab centers which are delivering its services at reasonable charges. But some people could not bear this much amount for drug addiction treatment. In recent times many not-for-profit organizations have emerged for helping these poor people.