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U.S. Overflowing Prisons Spur Call for Reform Commission
NEW YORK - Despite the lackluster performance of so-called "blue ribbon commissions" in the United States over the years, sponsors of the latest proposal - the National Criminal Justice Commission - are optimistic that it will become a reality and that its recommendations will be taken seriously by the president, Congress and the U.S. public.
Initial contacts with police officers are often driven by racial profiling and other racially tainted practices, and the disparities exist through the sentencing phase: African Americans routinely receive more jail time and harsher punishments. (photo by Flickr user Sirkullay) The reason, says its sponsor, Senator Jim Webb, a Democrat from Virginia, is that "America's criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace".
He added, "We are wasting billions of dollars and diminishing millions of lives. We need to fix the system. Doing so will require a major nationwide recalculation of who goes to prison and for how long and of how we address the long-term consequences of incarceration."
Given the checkered history of blue ribbon commissions in the nation's capital, a spokesman for Sen. Webb told IPS that "with nearly 40 Democratic and Republican cosponsors, there is a strong likelihood of success".
In the past, Congressionally-appointed commissions are typically set up, staffed, complete their investigative and analytical work, make recommendations that are received by a senior official, a press release is issued, and then the commission's report is consigned to a shelf where it gathers dust.
Throughout U.S. history, there have been relatively few bodies that have gained the notoriety, media coverage, and attention from Congress and the president as the 9/11 Commission, established in the wake of the terrorist attacks if Sept. 11, 2001.
Over time, most of its recommendations were implemented. One reason was the severity of the issue - almost 3,000 deaths. Another was ongoing, well-organized, effective support from the families of the 9/11 victims.
A prison commission has none of those attributes - and prisoners can't vote. So the political incentive appears minimal.
But the issue is not. Statistics compiled by the Congressional Research Service begin to tell the story.
The United States has the highest incarceration rate on the planet - five times the world's average. A total of 2,380,000 people are now in prison. The U.S. has five percent of the world's population, but 25 percent of the world's prison population.
Minorities make up a disproportionately large share of inmates. Black males have a 32 percent chance of serving time in prison at some point in their lives; Hispanic males have a 17 percent chance; white males have a six percent chance.
African American men and boys are grossly over-represented at every stage of the judicial process. Although African Americans make up just over 12 percent of the national population, 42 percent of those currently on death row are African American.
African American women have the highest rate of incarceration among women in the U.S. - four times higher than that of white women.
Initial contacts with police officers are often driven by racial profiling and other racially tainted practices, and the disparities exist through the sentencing phase: African Americans routinely receive more jail time and harsher punishments.
Cocaine laws in particular disproportionately affect African Americans, who account for 25 percent of total crack cocaine users, yet who comprised 81 percent of those convicted of federal crack cocaine offenses in 2007.
Drug offenders in prisons and jails have increased 1200 percent since 1980. Nearly a half million persons are in federal or state prison or local jail for a drug offense, compared to an estimated 41,100 in 1980. A significant percentage of these offenders have no history of violence or high-level drug selling activity.
As a result, spending on corrections rose 127 percent at the state level while higher education expenditures rose just 21 percent.
Prisons and jails have also become holding facilities for the mentally ill. There are an estimated 350,000 men and women prisoners with serious mental disorders - four times the number in mental health hospitals.
It is against this background that Sen. Webb introduced the National Criminal Justice Act, authorizing the Commission. There has been no in-depth or comprehensive study of the entire criminal justice system since The President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration and Justice, impaneled in 1965.
A companion to the Webb bill has been introduced in the House of Representatives with bipartisan sponsorship. The Senate Judiciary Committee has approved the proposal with strong bipartisan support. The legislation is now awaiting action by the full Senate and is pending in the House.
The Commission would carry out a comprehensive review of the criminal justice system, and make reform recommendations to improve public safety, cost-effectiveness, overall prison administration, and fairness in the implementation of the criminal justice system.
It "would also be charged with looking at how we have arrived at this convoluted mess, how many of our problems are interrelated and often feed off of one another, and how we can correct a system that is badly in need of a new course," Sen. Webb said.
Other powerful actors agree. Among them is Hilary O. Shelton, director of the Washington Bureau of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
In a telephone interview, Shelton told IPS, "At every stage of the criminal justice process serious problems undermine basic tenets of fairness and equity, as well as the public's expectations for safety."
"Perhaps the most glaring problem inherent in today's system is the number of racial and ethnic minorities who are disproportionately treated more harshly and more often by our nation's criminal justice system," he noted. "From initial contact to sentencing to the challenges facing those reentering the community after incarceration, racial and ethnic minorities are disproportionately represented in the number of people stopped, arrested, tried, convicted and incarcerated."
The Commission would include members appointed by the president and by federal and state politicians, as well as private sector specialists in law enforcement, criminal justice, national security, prison administration, prisoner reentry, public health, including drug addiction and mental health, victims' rights, and social services.
The bill has also been endorsed by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the largest organization of police executives.
- Posted in
57 Comments so far
Show AllThe only group under-represented in our prison system are the rich crooks. In our magnificent system if you have a lot of money you get off.
It's a joke that Don Blankenship of Massey energy is a free man while a poor sap caught smoking a joint is rotting in prison.
Webb's right it is a disgrace.
"The only group under-represented in our prison system are the rich crooks..."
And white poeple.
The US incarcerates far more people (total numbers) than any country in the world - even a particular non-democratic republic known for "law and order" with 5 times the US population.
It is not a national disgrace, it is a world disgrace.
Tolstoy said that a nation's values can be best judged by visoting it's prisons.
The rich want us to believe we all hate anyone of a different race, that we are racial bigots and its the root cause of our great disparity in wealth and our class divided society. So above paid actor comes here to brainwash us.
AMBITION DICTATORSHIP
1% High Society has 80% of wealth and super high ambition.
10% Country Club class has 10% of wealth and way above average ambition.
40% Intelligent middleclass has 10% of wealth and better then average ambition.
49% laboring class has not the ambition to get a high school diploma.
And so, why should we be enslaves by those more ambitious?
Ambition Dictatorship?? Im sorry but thats bull.
It's not ambition thats the problem, it's income, it's the exposure to resources, ambitions dont count for crap, if you cant afford to do it.
It's environment, when you aren't exposed to different ideas, concepts and in an environment which fosters goals, strives for personal achivevement and betterment; you suffer
Just because you are wealthy, doesn't mean you are a harder worker than an impoverished person, it just means, you had access to resources, talent, and capital that other people wouldn't start out having.
- So please, just spare us with the ambition argument, it doesn't hold water.
"Tolstoy said that a nation's values can be best judged by visoting it's prisons." SaboCat
Close..."The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons." Fyodor Dostoevsky
Thanks to Michelle Alexander for putting enough public face
on this issue to finally make Congress respond.
However, I have very little faith in Congress to do much
to address this other than window dressing.
First of all....The manufacturing base has been stripped in
this country other than what supports the MIC., which which
produces little bang for the buck in job creation.
None of the Senators will address this corp of the problem,
and continue to blame it on drug cartels.
To change this epidemic, our whole economic system and structure has to be readdressed, not likely.
While he professes some populist ideas, Webb usually falls
lock and step with the status quo.
I see no more than a band-aid coming from inside the Beltway.
I just don't see this happening. As prison privatization expands, the profit motive for incarceration expands with it, and most of us here know that once an interest like that gets entrenched, there's almost no dislodging it in the new America.
There's another piece today floating around the progressive ethersphere about the court ruling on indefinite detention now for sex offenders. Our reasons for putting people in cages and keeping them there continues to expand.
Our prisons are posters for barbarism, but I suppose that's helped power out. Most people don't want to get stuck in them for any reason, and that's a good way to keep your people very quiet and obedient.
No need is there now for us slow thinking laboring men, Mexicans and the Chinese do our work faster and at a forth of the cost. Surely, and all we do is procreate slow thinking babies.
And so, jails, prisons and divorce court, that is the state of our police state.
Broken. Like your mind.
I wondered when the rich would send their paid actors to turn up the heat. A bit slow on the draw today.
All I can tell you is that those rich bums are late with the paycheck. I mean, seriously, I'm out here hustling for them and the least you think they could do is pay me on time!
Btw, you are absolutely, utterly batshit crazy.
Drone- I noticed you used a term, "New America". I've seen that term a few times within the last few days, and I'm just curious, why did you call our country that? If anyone can explain that to me, I'd appreciate the explanation. Thanks
A warehouse to store the underclass. Let's call it what it is.
Most every "crime" committed ultimately comes as an outcome of growing up in desperate conditions. Note the the paranthese's (sp?) used at the word crime.
Another class of "crime" is created to protect the imperative of property.
Of course very few of these acts are actually criminal when a broad context is applied and virtually none of these so-called acts of crime can even begin to approach the level of depradations of our ruling class, the acts of colossal banditry practiced on a global scale every day by the pluotcrats, or the acts of wholesale slaughter sanctioned by The State for it's purposes of raw power.
Here's a short bit from Angela Davis:
Masked Racism:
Reflections on the
Prison Industrial Complex
by Angela Davis
Imprisonment has become the response of first resort to far too many of the social problems that burden people who are ensconced in poverty. These problems often are veiled by being conveniently grouped together under the category "crime" and by the automatic attribution of criminal behavior to people of color. Homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy are only a few of the problems that disappear from public view when the human beings contending with them are relegated to cages.
...
The Color of Imprisonment
Almost two million people are currently locked up in the immense network of U.S. prisons and jails. More than 70 percent of the imprisoned population are people of color. It is rarely acknowledged that the fastest growing group of prisoners are black women and that Native American
prisoners are the largest group per capita. Approximately five million people -- including those on probation and parole -- are directly under the surveillance of the criminal justice system.
...
To deliver up bodies destined for profitable punishment, the political economy of prisons relies on racialized assumptions of criminality -- such as images of black welfare mothers reproducing criminal children -- and on racist practices in arrest, conviction, and sentencing patterns.
Colored bodies constitute the main human raw material in this vast experiment to disappear the major social problems of our time. Once the aura of magic is stripped away from the imprisonment solution, what is revealed is racism, class bias, and the parasitic seduction of capitalist
profit. The prison industrial system materially and morally impoverishes its inhabitants and devours the social wealth needed to address the very problems that have led to spiraling numbers of prisoners.
...
The Prison Industrial Complex
But private prison companies are only the most visible component of the increasing corporatization of punishment. Government contracts to build prisons have bolstered the construction industry. The architectural community has identified prison design as a major new niche. Technology developed for the military by companies like Westinghouse are being marketed for use in law enforcement and punishment.
Moreover, corporations that appear to be far removed from the business of punishment are intimately involved in the expansion of the prison industrial complex. Prison construction bonds are one of the many sources of profitable investment for leading financiers such as Merrill Lynch.
MCI charges prisoners and their families outrageous prices for the precious telephone calls which are often the only contact prisoners have with the free world.
...
By segregating people labeled as criminals, prison simultaneously fortifies and conceals the structural racism of the U.S. economy. Claims of low unemployment rates -- even in black communities -- make sense only if one assumes that the vast numbers of people in prison have really disappeared and thus have no legitimate claims to jobs. The numbers of black and Latino men currently incarcerated amount to two percent of the male labor force. According to criminologist David Downes, "[t]reating incarceration as a type of hidden unemployment may raise the jobless
rate for men by about one-third, to 8 percent. The effect on the black labor force is greater still, raising the [black] male unemployment rate from 11 percent to 19 percent."
...
Black, Latino, Native American, and many Asian youth are portrayed as the purveyors of violence, traffickers of drugs, and as envious of commodities that they have no right to possess. Young black and Latina women are represented as sexually promiscuous and as indiscriminately propagating babies and poverty. Criminality and deviance are racialized. Surveillance is thus focused on communities of color, immigrants, the unemployed, the undereducated, the homeless, and in general on those who have a diminishing claim to social resources. Their claim to social resources continues to diminish in large part because law enforcement and penal measures increasingly devour these resources. The prison industrial complex has thus created a vicious cycle of punishment which only further impoverishes those whose impoverishment is supposedly "solved" by imprisonment.
Therefore, as the emphasis of government policy shifts from social welfare to crime control, racism sinks more deeply into the economic and ideological structures of U.S. society. Meanwhile, conservative crusaders against affirmative action and bilingual education proclaim the end of
racism, while their opponents suggest that racism's remnants can be dispelled through dialogue and conversation. But conversations about "race relations" will hardly dismantle a prison industrial complex that thrives on and nourishes the racism hidden within the deep structures of our society.
The emergence of a U.S. prison industrial complex within a context of cascading conservatism marks a new historical moment, whose dangers are unprecedented. But so are its opportunities. Considering the impressive number of grassroots projects that continue to resist the expansion
of the punishment industry, it ought to be possible to bring these efforts together to create radical and nationally visible movements that can legitimize anti-capitalist critiques of the prison industrial complex. It ought to be possible to build movements in defense of prisoners' human
rights and movements that persuasively argue that what we need is not new prisons, but new health care, housing, education, drug programs, jobs, and education. To safeguard a democratic future, it is possible and necessary to weave together the many and increasing strands of resistance to the prison industrial complex into a powerful movement for social transformation.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Prison_System/Masked_Racism_ADavis.html
No, its not race warfare, but class warfare
PRISONERS
70% black laboring men
20% latino laboring men
10% white laboring men
LABORING MEN
Men without 12 years of education.
Sorry, but racism exists and is a dominant force in US society.
I grew up in the Slums of Milwaukee, Minneapolis and LA,
what intelligent middleclass neighborhood did you live
all your life in?
And if your not a paid actor working for the rich,
where are your statistics? Your correct percentages
of who is in what class, their income, their education?
I grew up in the notorious projects in the Bronx. I can tell you that racism made a difference even among the poorest of the poor. Nah nah. My street cred trumps yours.
Joe
95% OF PRISONERS -- LABORING MEN
Yes 25% of all prisoners on earth are in our jails
and prisons, but what class and sex are they?
If you were to poll everyone in America and ask them above question, virtually none would know that 95% are men. Also virtually none would know that 95% of them are laboring men, men without a high school diploma.
And for an absolute, if you could give 90% of them a steady job, they would never again commit a crime.
Problem is, the rich have turned our nation into mostly a manual labor free society, what with free trade agreements with nations south of the border, and what with massive amounts of laboring jobs, clerical jobs and software jobs being exported to nations like India and China.
Surely, only because of no jobs for laboring men, only because of this are 90% of those in our jails and prisons rotting behind bars.
We need to release the innocent and make room for Obama and Congress. Wars of aggression are crimes.
And then find more 6'X12' cells for the elite of BP, Halliburton, Blackwater, the bankers, the Pentagon, Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, the neocons, a variety of CEO's and many others of their kind.
Confiscating their ill-gotten wealth will pay for their incarceration. The surplus will be devoted to the poor.
Blackout solitary confinement will be reserved for those who have no remorse.
A better way, prison walls around all the grand mansions in America, cut off all their communications and let them out only to work at manual labor jobs.
"U.S. Overflowing Prisons Spur Call for Reform Commission"
A lame-ass initiative for sure. An obvious pretext for doing nothing.
The US prison system is one big corporate slave-labor camp. E.g. all the helmets made for the US army are produced by prisoners earning nothing.
The system's too profitable for too many interests at this point, to be dismantled - however obviously unjust and counterproductive (meaning the penal system produces more criminals rather than producing law-abiding citizens).
The easiest way to fix the system would be to 1) legalize all drugs and subject them to a publicly monitored distribution system, government supplying or controlling the drugs supplied, and 2) introduce gun registration and control.
Reintroducing habeas corpus and due process for all crimes, including terrorism, is also a good idea.
This is what it takes. It won't happen, without a revolution. But it might be a quiet revolution, with people en masse refusing to serve the federal government any longer.
But you missed an essential element in your grand scheme of things. For if we did as you propose, 90% of those in jails and prisons would be released, and they all being laboring men, all would be walking the streets with no hope of a job. A better way:
(1) Do like the Great Depression, give all laboring men jobs, housing and a living wage.
(2) Release 90% of prisoners on condition they stay employed and keep good attendance.
I agree very much with you.
Since we don't have any in the mainstream
media to help, the only silent revolution
feasible is an economic one. We need to quit
buying, throw cell phones away, ect. This is
probably preaching to the choir at CD, to bad
Hedges, Scheer and other types that have access
to reach large audiences don't call for
economic boycotts.
SaboCat
"'The only group under-represented in our prison
system are the rich crooks' and white people.”
Pure fiction, for rich want us to believe that we hate anyone of a different race, that we are racial bigots and its the root cause of our great disparity in wealth and our class divided society. So above paid actor comes here to brainwash us.
AMBITION DICTATORSHIP
1% High Society has 80% of wealth and super high ambition.
10% Country Club class has 10% of wealth and way above average ambition.
40% Intelligent middleclass has 10% of wealth and better then average ambition.
49% laboring class has not the ambition to get a high school diploma.
And so, why should we be enslaves by those more ambitious?
Ah yes, I fondly remember Dr. Fruitcake's study of ambition. I'm sure those who funded the program were delighted to learn that a very rich person shows more ambition sunning by the pool and collecting dividends than 10 poor people (I believe they were called 'peons' in the study) working all week in the fields.
I never quite understood how he measured ambition. Perhaps you can enlighten me.
There are five parameters of our society that correlate in near perfect harmony, ambition, ability to achieve, wealth, education and class.
1% High Society has 80% of wealth
10% Country Club class has 10% of wealth
40% Intelligent middleclass has 10% of wealth, as all have great jobs and terrific homes
49% laboring class has 100% of debt
Why do you list wealth and class separately?
I highly recommend The New Jim Crow - Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. She discusses the racial caste system that has developed via the "justice" system in America. Our prison system has replaced slavery and Jim Crow. It is appalling what we are doing to people of color in this country, yet many people believe we are a post racial society with the election of Obama. This book really opened my eyes.
AMBITION DICTATORSHIP
1% High Society has 80% of wealth and super high ambition.
10% Country Club class has 10% of wealth and way above average ambition.
40% Intelligent middleclass has 10% of wealth and better then average ambition.
49% laboring class has not the ambition to get a high school diploma.
And so, why should we be slaves
to the next class more ambitious?
"""Throughout U.S. history, there have been relatively few bodies that have gained the notoriety, media coverage, and attention from Congress and the president as the 9/11 Commission, established in the wake of the terrorist attacks if Sept. 11, 2001.
Over time, most of its recommendations were implemented. One reason was the severity of the issue - almost 3,000 deaths. Another was ongoing, well-organized, effective support from the families of the 9/11 victims."""
****************
Hold it right there!!! No sense going further most especially if there will not be a thorough and precise investigation of the whole attack(s) on 9/11. Because if there isn't, the same innocent people being 'stockpiled' in prisons now will just continue and the real perpetrators of 9/11 are still walking around free here in the U.S.A. as if they earned the privilege of freedom for 'a job well done'.
As much as I admire you Senator Webb, this has to take a high priority in any commission's proceedings. Otherwise, if you make it into retirement at a ripe old age, the people may finally get that investigation and you may just be arrested for obstruction of justice. I still say you should have shoved w's nose back up into what little brain he had for snidely asking how your son in Iraq was doing.
US incarceration rate, increased from 500,000 1980 to 2,500,000 now.
Whites wants black males off the street, and the prison guard union and the prison industry knows how to play the race card.
RACE -- A SMOKE SCREEN
Don't let all the paid actors fool you here, for the rich keep their excessive wealth only so long as they keep us brainwashed into thinking the great difference in wealth is because of our race hatred.
1% High Society has 80% of wealth
10% Country Club class has 10% of wealth
40% Intelligent middleclass has 10% of wealth, as all have great jobs and terrific homes
49% laboring class has 100% of debt
You have mande you personal, off-topic opinions known here and when posting elsewhere, many-many times. Please refrain from repeating youself over and over when commenting in the future. Thanks.
Hear, hear.
Poster above and below are paid actors hired by the rich to destroy this place. Actually I should say paid actor, as their both the same teenage boy working out of Asia. Better believe he gets less then minimum wage, would you believe $0.25 an hour?
Gee, where does one apply for a sweet job like that? Paid to post...wow.
I've heard that: there is no war but the class war, but racism does tend to play out in rates of incarceration, life spans, standards of living, home ownership, home foreclosures, education levels, so forth. I wish it were otherwise.
Yes blacks are much more enslaved then whites, but that is only because blacks are the most friendly, cooperative, nonviolent, non aggressive, hard working and easy to enslave race on earth.
But in regards to our prisoners, 95% are laboring men without a high school diploma.
Truth and Light:
Your comment on the Nature of the African American:
We Have Been Believers
By Margaret Walker
Listen
land, believing in the secrets of the seeress and the
magic of the charmers and the power of the devil's evil
ones.
And in the white gods of a new land we have been believers
believing in the mercy of our masters and the beauty of
our brothers, believing in the conjure of the humble
and the faithful and the pure.
Neither the slaves' whip nor the lynchers' rope nor the
bayonet could kill our black belief. In our hunger we
beheld the welcome table and in our nakedness the
glory of a long white robe. We have been believers in
the new Jerusalem.
We have been believers feeding greedy grinning gods, like a
Moloch demanding our sons and our daughters, our
strength and our wills and our spirits of pain. We have
been believers, silent and stolid and stubborn and
strong.
We have been believers yielding substance for the world.
With our hands have we fed a people and out of our
strength have they wrung the necessities of a nation.
Our song has filled the twilight and our hope has
heralded the dawn.
Now we stand ready for the touch of one fiery iron, for the
cleansing breath of many molten truths, that the eyes
of the blind may see and the ears of the deaf may hear
and the tongues of the people be filled with living fire.
Where are our gods that they leave us asleep? Surely the
priests and the preachers and the powers will hear.
Surely now that our hands are empty and our hearts too
full to pray they will understand. Surely the sires of
the people will send us a sign.
We have been believers believing in our burdens and our
demigods too long. Now the needy no longer weep and
pray; the long-suffering arise, and our fists bleed
against the bars with a strange insistency
Prisons are BIG business before and after they are built. And last I checked most prisoners are there for non violent crimes. Not to mention a majority are school drop outs who when they get out, dont do well, and thus return to prison.
We need to get more serious about quality education for all kids. Quality being learning things one can use to get and keep a job. Not everyone needs college. Fund tech schools more.
And lets get serious about drugs. Meth is #1 and alive and well in rural communities. What are we doing to make drugs less attractive?
Just forget about drugs. This is a manufactured problem created to divert attention from poverty.
Drugs are also an excellent excuse to put people in cages for profit. I could never see the logic in this drug war.
recently obama world announced it has the right to kill any u.s. citzen suspected of terrorism....that should help with prison overcrowding....peace (?)
On ABC news tonight, they mentioned that it costs about $64,000 a year to keep a prisoner. With that number in mind, I think the private sector prison lobbyists will be working overtime to derail any reasonable reform.
Even better, taxpayers are being soaked for $64K a year to incarcerate people for "crimes" like smoking a joint. All this while the country is heading for bankruptcy.
P.S. That $64K number doesn't take into account the income taxes that these folks would be paying if they were not in jail.
If we would just give most of those non-violent, impoverished, hopeless folks $50,000, so that they can afford food, school, transportation, they would be able to live a new life, a life without poverty, and a life without crime, and we'd all save $14,000 per person the first year, and since they most likely won't be back to jail after being given a real chance at success, we will end up saving $64,000 per person per year thereafter. That is a huge savings, and since people need money to make money, it would actually chip away at the poverty issue, as well. I'm not saying that we should reward people for crime, but "crime" is a very general term. We should work on eliminating poverty, because it would cost less in the long run than all of this incarceration.
Also, since the government and their corporate f.k buddies seem to be able to get away with all of the loot every time, perhaps it's time to pull some of our hard earned money back from their greedy clutches, and give it back to people that really need it, in order to rebuild our country.
We can't let the corporations decide where all of our money goes. We need people to be out of jail and working. We need people to go to school, we need them to care for their children. We need them to know that they have an opportunity to learn how to contribute to society, we need people to feel supported by their communities...not locked in cages.
Many of the people in jails and prisons are actually victims, and many of their "crimes" have no victims. Many of them have illness and mental illness. Why should taxpayers who are otherwise good and hardworking people have to pay $64,000 per person per year to further damage people that might, with a little community support, become (or continue to be) active members of society? It's affecting our collective karma to allow this to continue.
It's true, if people who are never respected, loved, or given a chance are finally given a chance to succeed, through education, service to others, community support, they will be more likely to stay out of jail and contribute to society in a positive manner.
We are suffering from a gross misappropriation of funds here in the U.S. and the rich are getting richer, the poor are starving(have you ever had to try to live on food stamps and food banks? It might make you crazy, not to mention malnourished...)
and there are not enough paying jobs that people can make a living on...(have you ever tried to support a family of 4 on a minimum wage job? It might make you crazy, not to mention homeless and desperate.)
I wish we could just once see a little bit of actual compassion from our leaders in gov't. Compassion for the people that are suffering most from the effects of the corporate greed extravaganza. If they want to funnel all of the federal reserve currency into their own accounts, then they could at least thank us a little, instead of shitting on all of our heads every day.
Abu Ghraib did not surprise me and would not surprise anyone familiar with the conditions inside American prisons and jails.
Step one should be legalizing marijuana. Los Angeles effectively legalized marijuana a few years ago and, while it may just be a coincidence, violent crime dropped more than it ever has over the same period.
Actually step one should be to guaranteed jobs for all laboring men, just like in the Great Depression.
For 95% of our prisoners are laboring men without a high school diploma, and 80% of them if given a permanent job, not again would they commit crime.
TRUE EMOTIONS OF LOVE
We are all given a different ability to earn income, so that everyone may experience the true emotions of love. With those of a higher class experiencing compassion, pity and benevolence toward those less fortunate. With those of a lower class experiencing a grateful heart toward those who saved them from ignorance, unemployment and starvation.
Comes now Empire USA to be class slavery, with most everyone so greedy as to enrich themselves upon the misery of a lower class. With everyone worshiping the brains and sex appeal of those in a higher class.
For the purpose of this world is to see what happens when a self-absorbed society works in the reverse of the way it is in all the heavenly realms.
How did the Tribes ever live for 1000's and 1000's of years without you?
Post-Standard Syracuse , N.Y. front page headline:"Pregnant inmate died after hours of agony"
The woman, Chuniece Patterson was suffering from an ectopic pregnancy and was left to die without medical attention. A State Commission is investigating.A similar death occurred in the county jail 14 years ago.
When the conservatives took over America in the 1980's with the contract against Americans , punishment not compassion became the greatest of virtues. If they had their way the jails would be overflowing with young girls who are pregnant and smoked or had a glass of wine, or who had an abortion regardless of the justifiable reason, such as the girl or woman's life was at risk. How can they be so self righteous and think they know what is best for people they do not know? They did not know what was best for Chuniece Patterson.
I'm going to take an overview. If we are one nation, government by the people and government for the people, then every citizen should have an inalienable right to a fair chance at earning a good living for their whole life. Given a fair chance, every sane person will work at that chance.
"Les Miserables" character Jean Valjean got 20 years for stealing a loaf of bread. That's what happens when a sane person has no chance at earning a good living. Today it costs the rest of us taxpayers $50k/year ($64k if you want) for locking up someone for stealing a loaf of bread, or for dealing as a shortcut to wealth, or whatever crime.
My first complaint is that we track millions of otherwise rather sane men (and a few women) into committing crimes. Then we pay through the nose to keep them all in human zoos for 50 years or so. Is this stupid?
Some will complain that centralized schools are schools for bullying and later schools for gang recruitment. Some will complain that we teach to the stupid test, not to raise new citizens. Some will complain that the only McJobs to be had by downcity male teenagers of color are McJokes. Some ideologues will complain that we hired the wrong teachers, but they can't point to the right teachers.
Anyways, the prisons are schools for dependency on more prisons, which is how we get lifers who are too afraid of going back out into the big bad world. No other country on earth is half as stupid as that.
If people can't manage to kick narcotics, then just give these people some daily narcotics maintenance supply somewhere in the desert, not in the city where it causes trouble for the rest of us, and offer them some so-so jobs out there, and career skills too. All the while, don't stop helping them to kick. That treatment would beat a life in prison. The goal is to turn sane men into taxpayers and citizens, not expensive wards of the state. Otherwise, if drugs are the lure for certain people, get rid of the side effects of the lure.
This may sound obvious, but don't let the cons run the joint. Cons do not have an inalienable right to watch violent movies every night, not even on black and white TVs.
Cons should not be in huge central lockups where they can bully the weak people among them. Jail rape should not be a reward for good behavior. If you cut the bullying for certain cons, they get out.
Certain programs have had 0% recidivism rates. Anyone with a bit of curiosity would ask if these programs can be replicated, saving taxpayers lots of money.
In general, the American sociological science of turning kids into citizens has advanced little since Leonard Bernstein wrote "Gee, Officer Krupke". The rest of the world is doing great. I think American legislators have been eating lead paint chips.