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How to Waste Money and Lives: The American Prison System
In 1970, fewer than 200,000 Americans were incarcerated. Today, with some 2.3 million in prison or jail, the US has more people and a higher percentage of its population locked up than any other country. Adding those on probation and parole, over seven million are under penal supervision. Although much of the growth stems from tougher drug laws, increased sentencing for most offenses has played a large role, too. According to criminologist Todd Clear, prison sentences in the US today average almost twice as long as thirty years ago. American prisoners now endure sentences twice those of the English, four times those of the Dutch, and five to ten times those of the French for the same crimes.
Our penal system affects more middle-class white Americans than we might realize, yet the impact on them is tiny compared with that on minorities – especially young black men from impoverished urban neighborhoods. Over 90 percent of inmates are male, and while 12 percent of the U.S. population is African-American, over 40 percent of prisoners with sentences longer than one year are black. The toll on black families has been incalculable. From the end of slavery until 1970, most black children lived in a two-parent household; now, the majority are cared for only by women. While not the only factor at play, the numbers of black men behind bars have left an entire cohort of girlfriends, wives, and female relatives to raise their kids alone. In minority urban ghettos, where the effects are concentrated, so many men are incarcerated that children think of this as a normal part of adult male life. Many barely know imprisoned fathers. With most prisoners sent off more than 100 miles from home, family visits can be next to impossible. An added irony is that the prisons support the economies of distant, mainly rural and white locales, while the inner cities bearing the brunt of crime remain impoverished.
The costs of our incarceration binge fly in the face of economic sense. From 1982 to 2006, the amount spent on corrections rose by 660 percent. The 2009 bill for jails and prisons was over $60 billion; New Jersey, where I live, spent about $39,000 on each state prisoner in 2009, far more than the cost of tuition at a state college. Some states have cut corrections budgets in response to the economic crisis, but others have increased them, as has the federal government. Our enthusiasm for locking up people raises important moral questions about ourselves. Dostoyevsky was right on the mark when he wrote, “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” But even if we focus only on dollars and cents, we must consider the lost opportunities to invest resources in schools, free clinics, afterschool programs, transportation, and other public goods. Politicians and the media have everyone in a frenzy about deficits. Two obvious ways to balance government budgets are to tax the rich and cut defense spending, but it would certainly help if we reduced the populations behind prison walls. Some states have made small moves in this direction, aided by recent declines in crime. But politicians are generally fearful that if they advocate policies to reduce prison populations, they will appear soft on crime.
Despite our harsh prison sentences, however, most released inmates are rearrested within three years. Many get charged with parole violations, but the majority with new crimes. If incarceration is supposed to deter people from illegal behavior, it is not working for ex-prisoners. One reason is that most return to the jobless inner cities they came from, where criminal activity can seem the only way to make a living. Another is how corrections budgets are allocated.
I tell students in my medieval history classes that for all our lip service to rehabilitating offenders, it is striking how much less this goal seems reflected in our penal policies than in those of European communities in the early Middle Ages, from about 500 to 1100. This is not to deny that early medieval justice could be brutal. Kings and lords condemned countless enemies to execution and dependants to be branded, blinded, or lose noses or ears. Judicial courts ordered torture and threw offenders into dungeons, where they might stay in chains until they died. It is no wonder the era is often called the Dark Age. Yet offsetting this nasty picture was the widespread practice of addressing an array of offenses, sometimes even murder, not through arbitrary judgment but as if they were disputes requiring negotiations. In these cases, negotiators worried less about formal law than restoring the peace by reconciling offenders with victims, victims’ representatives, and anyone else who felt wronged. Offenders were punished, but a key aim of the punishment was rehabilitation. This might require that they pay reparations, undergo penance, or perform a public ritual of humiliation. Such penalties were designed to repair the broken social bonds and ease the offenders’ reintegration into their communities.
By contrast, criminal justice in the twenty-first century US gives rehabilitation short shrift. Many inmates suffer from mental illness and addictions, yet treatment programs for them are underfunded. So, too, is education; yet education may be the single most effective means to rehabilitate offenders.
While not every prisoner needs substance abuse treatment, all could benefit from education. Most prisons have education programs, but they reach a fraction of their populations and average only 1 to 3 percent of state corrections budgets. The Center for Prison Outreach and Education that I co-direct provides college programming in New Jersey prisons thanks to federal grants and private benefactors; most notably, we have generous support from Doris Buffett’s Sunshine Lady Foundation. It has taken a lot of work to collect this extra funding. Despite the reluctance of state governments to fund prison education adequately, dollar for dollar, educating inmates is a more effective tool of crime reduction than building new prisons. Ex-prisoners face major barriers upon release; education increases their ability to navigate the hurdles and makes them more employable. One study estimates it lessens recidivism by 29%. Another revealed a 44 percent drop in recidivism for inmates who earned college degrees. Another suggests that $962 spent on academic education for inmates saved $5306 in future criminal justice costs. Along the way, educational programs also reduce violence inside prisons, improving security for both inmates and staff.
African-American men who do not finish high school have almost 60 per cent chance of doing time by age forty. For those with high school diplomas, the rate plummets to 18 percent, and for those with some college education the chances are less than 5 percent. If we genuinely want to enhance public safety, help poor minority families, AND have more money to spend on public services for everyone, a truly cost-effective strategy would be to put substantial energy and resources into prisoner education.
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68 Comments so far
Show Allthe for profit, privatized prison industrial complex and the crooked criminal justice system that lawyers believe exists solely to enrich them (not to dispense actual justice)
are the cause
ie this occurs for profits
"Over 90 percent of inmates are male, and while 12 percent of the U.S. population is African-American, over 40 percent of prisoners with sentences longer than one year are black. The toll on black families has been incalculable. From the end of slavery until 1970, most black children lived in a two-parent household; now, the majority are cared for only by women. While not the only factor at play, the numbers of black men behind bars have left an entire cohort of girlfriends, wives, and female relatives to raise their kids alone. In minority urban ghettos, where the effects are concentrated, so many men are incarcerated that children think of this as a normal part of adult male life. Many barely know imprisoned fathers."
If these folks behaved themselves, they wouldn't be in prison. Treating Black criminals as victims is ridiculous. There is a long-standing break-down in the Black community, where the illigitimacy rate is about 80% and many Black children wouldn't know their fathers in any event because their mothers don't either.
Of course, when Daniel Patrick Moynihan drew attention to the collapse of the Black family in the United States as U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Department of Labor in its report, "The Negro Family:The Case For National Action," (March 1965), see http://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/history/webid-meynihan.htm, he was vilified as a racist blaming the Blacks. None of the liberals ever suggested Blacks should take greater responsibility for their own condition. Even today, when public figures like Bill Cosby make that point, they are routinely reviled as Uncle Toms.
There's a prison problem. We incarcerate many more than we should have to, but incarceration is immobilization and protects the law-abiding citizens from further crimes that would be committed by those committed to prison.
Your statement is what is ridiculous and the fact that you "blame the black guy" for his own condition when he can't even get his head out of the gutter long enough to breathe. Your position is part of the problem and not the solution. But I rather suspect that you're a privileged blonde, blude-eyed Amerikan, therefore, you don't know what it's like to walk thru life with black or brown skin, having everybody look at you and assume that you're already guilty of something you haven't even done.
Your statement is, in addition to racist and offensive, simplistic, way off base and a poor excuse for the racism that is inherent in the nation. A nation that was built on the genocide of its aboriginal population just because of their skin color. A nation that kidnapped darker fellows from another continent and enslaved them when they had slaughtered all the other fellers. And then, when they had to liberate those, it welcomed immigrants from other countries and made semi-slaves out of them. Yep. That'd be your nation. I suppose that nothing else can be expected of you though but to blame the victim for the evil that you have done.
And I'm not even going to go into your infamous War of Drugs which really is the culprit behind this phenomenon. I'd simply like to address your apology for racism comment.
"Legal Scholar Michelle Alexander on “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness”"
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/3/11/legal_scholar_michelle_alexander_on_the
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgM5NAq6cGI
"Michelle Alexander on the New Jim Crow"
http://www.radioproject.org/2011/02/michelle-alexander-on-the-new-jim-crow/
Did the slave traders "kidnap" the slaves or buy them in open slave markets in Africa after they had lost tribal wars and had been sold into slavery by their Black brothers?
So because some people sold out their own people, the actual criminals have no responsibility? Would you, for an extreme example, even dare to make this same type of absolutely fucked up and disgusting argument about sellout Jews and the Holocaust on a Jewish forum? What the fuck are you? Not a human being for sure
I didn't say any of those things. I was just commenting on your tired, left-wing echo chamber use of the term "kidnap".
So tell me, by what incredible logic does paying a third party for a human being change the fact that blacks were taken against their will? And what was your goal with this comment if not to shift the moral blame from white slave traders and owners to black chieftains?
I've had my fair share of nitpicking, sophistry, manipulative and faulty arguments in discussions and you're not really very good at this. Way too transparent. The "I didn't say it explicitly" argument and cherrypicking the points you have ready-made (but still bullshit) arguments for while ignoring the rest is pretty typical. Maybe it works for some people, but this kind of dishonesty and absolute lack of integrity just pisses me off. I personally take it as an explicit declaration that your goals are not discussion and debate, but manipulation, lying and spreading bullshit.
Glad to hear it.
I took earlier posted advice regarding Horace. He is not here to help think things out...merely to distract and prevent the thread from continuing it's topic. Thanks again, Horace.
You should take advice on spelling.
Two things: I find both the "responsibility" and "integration" arguments absolutely disgusting.
The first one, because white America (and Europe too, really, it's not just the US) has not yet taken responsibility, and doesn't even admit that it has any, for this situation. Blacks are, as a group, still the victims of the disgusting history of Western civilisation. Without admitting this guilt, without letting them shape society and without compensation for historical wrongs, no one has *any fucking right* to demand that they live like whites. Let them start again on an equal footage, and, say, fifty or a hundred years after that, you can have your moral outrage. That blacks are finally allowed to get on the same buses as whites is not really the ultimate goal.
The second thing, the more important one imo, what I call the "integration" argument, is basically about the idiotic outrage about people daring to be different from us. Thing is, we've always forced our culture on these people and they were always on the worse end. They never ever had any input on what any Western society should look like - and Western societies, whether Europe or America, despite all the pretend "multiculturalism", simply can't accept any kind of difference - unless, of course, it's really extremely shallow and purely decorative. We want total control. One economic system. One political system. One type of justice. Submit to OUR rules, do what WE want, live like WHITES do. Forget your past and give up hope on creating your own future. If you become completely like us, we might accept you (except of course you'll never be like us, because we're superior).
But, you know, how's the society and culture we so admire and want minorities to be another cog in? Isn't it the culture that produced the largest wars in history, that kills the most efficiently, that poisons the world most creatively, that turns kids into dumbass jingoists and consumers? Why would we want all other types of cultures and societies to be exactly like us? To do more destructive work, pollute more, kill more? Is our culture really the best in the world? Isn't it our fault that the world is getting fucked up? So where the fuck do you or does anyone get the courage to lecture these people on how to live?
"So where the fuck do you or does anyone get the courage to lecture these people on how to live?"
I didn't lecture anyone. I just rejected the fallacious notion of Black victimhood, which many left wingnuts use to justify Black criminality and to criticise American society.
What do you think of Blacks who revile and ostracize other Blacks for "acting white" when they study hard in school, pass their courses, go to college and prepare to succeed in life? Where is that leading?
Who are the Black role models? Black gangsta rappers? Have you listened to any of that "art": glorifying violence, dehumanizing Black women as "ho's", etc.?
BTW, how do you apply your left-wing echo chamber description of racist American society to the election of Barack Obama?
"I didn't lecture anyone. I just rejected the fallacious notion of Black victimhood, which many left wingnuts use to justify Black criminality and to criticise American society."
So what exactly is this: "If these folks behaved themselves, they wouldn't be in prison." if not lecturing? It can't be stating a fact, because it's false and a lie, seeing, for example, how blacks are much more likely to get prison terms for the same drug "crimes" that whites easily get away with.
"What do you think of Blacks who revile and ostracize other Blacks for "acting white" when they study hard in school, pass their courses, go to college and prepare to succeed in life? Where is that leading?"
I understand them and agree with them to an extent, but of course not completely. I understand the hate for the token blacks - because not everyone has the same chances and opportunities. I understand their anti-educational view and so on. It's pretty rational and has a lot of truth behind it, seeing how good tools token better-doing blacks are to show off racial "equality". But if it's all just a way to sell a lie, your lie, which it is, it's understandable if you're pissed off at the people you may see as sellouts. Also, maybe, just maybe, there are other ways of life, not just the white Western picture of "success", mostly consisting of wasting a life on clearly meaningless and destructive "work"
"Who are the Black role models? Black gangsta rappers? Have you listened to any of that "art": glorifying violence, dehumanizing Black women as "ho's", etc.?"
Do you know any of the history behind hip hop? Do you think it's the same street culture now as it was before white business, our disgusting "culture industry" hijacked it? Read up on this issue before you talk your uninformed bullshit. Do you think that whites have nothing to do with what it turned into? That the distortion by white-owned mass media has nothing to do with that? And how the hell is it different from the entire white Hollywood culture of glorifying violence and dehumanising women? It's certainly more honest about it, but the values are exactly the same basic Western values.
"BTW, how do you apply your left-wing echo chamber description of racist American society to the election of Barack Obama?"
He was simply a very marketable product. Black, but not too black, with white values and lifestyle, and, afaics, not much connection to the actual majority black experience. A good product to show off, that's all. But the backlash might be worse than the "progress" this meant.
Finally, make sure that you know what the "left wing echo chamber" says, because it has simple answers to all the "issues" you raised. Which are, all of them, worthless and meaningless fake arguments that can be taken apart in five seconds.
You haven't done so, despite your left-wing ranting and cursing.
One of my reasons for using swear words, or rather not editing all of them out of my posts, which I used to do, beside being generally foul mouthed and angry irl, is to give people like you a pretext to cop out.
Your poor diction and lack of control are the hallmark of the under-educated. Did you graduate from high school?
No, I'm just not a native speaker. I speak several languages in addition to English though. Classy ad hominems btw, keep it up, they're certainly your strong point, along with strawmen and non sequiturs.
Don't waste your time or energy on this one. He has all ready admitted to spending his whole day, every day, on this site in order to stir people up. His real name is Horse's Ass, he's a trailer park republican, totally pathetic, boring, self absorbed, utterly without imagination, compassion, or empathy.
I rather think you're the trailer trash on this site.
I'm sure that you would "rather".
"So what exactly is this: 'If these folks behaved themselves, they wouldn't be in prison.' if not lecturing? It can't be stating a fact, because it's false and a lie, seeing, for example, how blacks are much more likely to get prison terms for the same drug 'crimes' that whites easily get away with."
So while we're at it, in your "discussion and debate", you are treating as a lie an obvious truth, that those who behave themselves stay out of prison. If it is true that Blacks who commit crimes are more likely to be caught, prosecuted, convicted and incarcerated than Whites (and do you have statistical data to back up that broadsided claim?), that doesn't disprove the fact that those, Black and White, who avoid committing crimes don't go to prison, which is the point I made and that you, in your blind rage and left-wing delusion, characterized as a lie.
Drug "crime" is committed by whites at an equal or modestly higher rate then by blacks. And there's a lot more white folks. Just not as many in jail. Street crime as a whole costs just a few billions of dollars, while corporate, health industry and financial crimes cost trillions in dollars to the economy and many more lives. But they're not in jail in any numbers commensurate with their crimes. While black "gangsters" are vilified, white(ish) criminals are glorified. I include Obama in that category.
But the police are not trolling college campuses and Wall Street, throwing every white guy they see up against a wall. They do that in East New York, Oakland, and Chicago's Englewood-Gresham. In New York, 600,000+ young men from lower income and black neighborhoods are illegally stopped searched, and entered into a police database every year. Just living in certain places makes you subject to arrest, even on your way to school, work or the store. Voila, black criminals.
And fools like Horace that believe everything they are spoon-fed from the television.
No personal responsibility of course, for criminal behavior. They're j'es poor folks who get arrested while playing hopscotch on their way to church school.
So "they" should behave themselves should they? Or could the problem be a two tiered justices system...one that exists for those who have enough money to buy the lawmakers and retroactively erase their crimes by making them legal (Bu$h's illegal spying on U.S.citizens per the FISA law is a felony, to which he openly admitted to, with a penalty of 5 years in prison and a $20,000 fine PER CHARGE yet he walks, ppre-emptive war is the number one crime on the Geneva Conventions as a war crime, yet he walks, Cheney outed an active CIA agent while on duty, thus endangering her life and blowing her cover - TREASON, punishable by death, Scooter Libby perjured himself and was tried and convicted, yet pardoned as a political favor by Bu$h, torturing ANYONE is a war crime and is a felony under federal law, yet the entire Bu$h administration bragged of waterboarding and the Obama administration is as we speak torturing an American citizen and soldier (Bradley Manning) without so much as a charge being filed (that's illegal by the way) and I haven't even touched on the Wall Street gang and their fraud. Behave themselves? You have got to be kidding.
The elite can do no wrong (Horace, I suspect you are a wannabe elite...not the real deal) but let a ni**er steal a purse or get caught with a coupla rocks...throw him in prison and toss the keys. He is a scourge on society and spreads immorailty just like AIDS huh??????????
The "elite" scum have stolen the lives of countless Americans, yet the majority tend to call themselves Christians.
Horace, you and the scum you identify with are the most outrageous hypocrites to ever walk the face of this planet. Frankly, someday and someday soon, I hope to see you and your ilk sweat and ask yourself how you could have been so selfish and stupid.
It's time for your meds again. We're increasing the dose and changing to Thorazine this time.
Perhaps, the author is unaware of what is really behind the prison plague. One word: privatization. And when I say the "P" word, I also mean privatizing the labor of those behind bars. The Prison Industrial Complex - much like it's older brother the Military Industrial Complex - has figured out a way to profit from human suffering. There is much wrong with Amerika today (hell, there's nothing right with Amerika today!) but this one is right up there in the Richter Scale of Capitalism gone rogue.
"Prisoners Help Build Patriot Missiles"
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/03/prisoners-help-build-patriot-missiles/
"American prison labor blossoms as we criticize Chinese slave labor"
http://www.lookingglassnews.org/viewstory.php?storyid=6706
"Cheap labor as close as the nearest jail"
http://www.lookingglassnews.org/viewstory.php?storyid=6706
One thing not addressed by the article is the fact that a number of prisons retain the Pell Grants that are made available to the incarcerated student - yes, even if the "student" is incarcerated for a drug related crime.
Humans are simple vehicles for commodities. Running products..drugs, foods & other liquids through their bodies. Filling prisons, fashion/clothing, generally slaves to the system, (house = sales of furniture, electronics, carpet, cars, etc.) not to mention illegal slaves which are used to harvest our crops...at the end of the day, the money goes right back into the system where fewer and fewer reap the profits (e.g. need I say it?...big banks). After Hollywood is through selling blacks on "hoodisim" (you've seen the videos), after the violent seeds are sown, they're sent to prison to make someone else rich. Nice, eh? Environment is everything.
This is raw America capitalism at work. While African-Americans are getting the worst deal, the rest of us are still slaves to the few at the top. A slave is a slave.
"If these folks behaved themselves, they wouldn't be in prison." LOL! Horace you are killing me here today!
Of course this is what EVERY government says to its people. Follow the laws we make and we will leave you alone! Of course if the laws are unfair or unjust, too bad. "Just follow them, we are the bosses", they say.
Of course the form of cocaine that is usually used by whites, should be punished with much lighter sentences than the form usually used by blacks (crack). This makes perfect sense to the white legislators that wrote those laws, don't question it. http://www.sentencingproject.org/CRACKREFORM/
IMHO when you see one race of people being locked up at a much higher rate, and having other social issues than other races, reasonable minds would ask themselves why? African families (From which we ALL originally came from) have been doing just fine in Africa for somewhere around 2 million years. So what happened when these same people were brought over to the new world as white peoples "house guests"? What caused their families to break down after 1,999,900 and some odd years? Was it something in the water? Obviously it couldn't have been Jim Crow laws, segregation, and racism, no it must have been the water. Or maybe it was the Sun. America is further north than Africa, so they get less Sun. Yea that's it, less sunlight causes the males of that race to abandon their families. Damn you Sun. After all we KNOW the Sun is what's causing global climate change, so it probably caused the break down of the African American family too.
I shake my fist skyward, (Cobert style) , and curse that damned Sun!
The PIC, prison industrial complex, is all about corruption. It works like this. The prison industry bribes legislators to pass laws which will result with incarceration. Then the pretend christians lobby, after being bribed, the legislators to enact the laws . The duration of prison sentences is to increase the PIC profits. The privatized prisons bribe the legislators to pass more laws and bribe judges to send offenders to jail. Just recently 2 juvenile court judges in Pennsylvania were found guilty of receiving bribes of $7,200,000 to send juveniles to jail. Then their are the privatized services after sentencing, contracts awarded to the PIC. This is the American version, the Christian Taliban, prisons for profits, bribery and corruption. The fact that more is spend on prisons than on education is significant. The bribery and corruption is missing from the educational system except for the misnamed online universities, supposedly accredited. The students from these institutions are not hired because the online system is a sham. The students sign for loans, the proceeds given to the online universities, the students default on the loans and they are not eligible for bankruptcy relief even though they didn't get the money. The public education system is then blamed for what the private universities did, which is the graft and corruption of legislators to pass the laws that benefit the private universities.
p.s., The PIC doesn't rehabilitate prisoners to keep the recidivism rate high. You know, return business.
The PIC is a 'system', infected or paying out on every level...a real money maker, it just 'business as unusual these days' as countless other corrupted systems also intensify under mismanagement. The author of the article sited NJ state $39,000/prisoner/year..a lot of money. I have estimated $430,000/prisoner/year, when you enter the federal level of PIC.
So its interesting to remember, within this intensified PIC system...anyone is worth very much more incarcerated, than being a productive member of society. Its all part of the game.
What if we had 'a game' ...lets round up a bunch of people, from Iraq & Afganistan..wherever, hahaha....and we incarcerate them at a level higher and more profitable (they don't call em high value detainees for nothing) than even the Federal level....and the point of the game is 'getting paid'.
I think a few years ago...it was so funny to watch the 'mayors & governors' ...demanding 'to get paid, upfront' ... just to hold a trial for the 'high value detainees' in their fair city. The point really isn't about justice or 911, or fair venue...the point of the game is 'getting paid'.
whocares;)
Your genius is outstanding. Your recommendation that the real secret to productivity is prison incarceration is so astute that the economists will be able to create new economic systems based on the realization that real productivity lies in huge prison incarceration rates which will automatically solve all of our financial and economic problems.
Give that man an honorary degree for his astuteness!
'your genius is outstanding', & 'honourary astuteness accommodation' cha~ching tyty! hahaaaha....
to your point bogi666 "...realization that real productivity lies in huge prison incarceration" its the truth, even obvious, as it stands now in these United States. It becomes painfully obvious, when I see family member hauled off to the pokie, on the lamest prosecution that DOJ can muster. I look at it from the economics viewpoint, because that monetary value, seemed important at the time...I thought an hired defense attorney, for $25K...would be able to muster some semblance of defense, ~~not so!... in this PIC system, innocents are proven guilty...often. Now for the funny part: the 'family member' paid the $25K to his attorney, then he went in the pokie for the next 10 yrs. with 'additional sanctions, even lifelong sanctions'. hahahaha rofl... He paid to go to jail! gawwwwwwwwd, something seems quite wrong with that scenario, considering the lame proof, and the judge...oh yeah the judge was happy to rubberstamp, the economic reality. The family member got railroaded, its not a new thing, its economics in the USA.
To your point bogi666: "automatically solve all of our financial and economic problems"...it has and does solve economic problems, in the USA, not based on the actual value of money...hahaha... rather, the value of sweet systemic corruption. The Federal dollars force, the corrupted to make their performances, bring home the bacon, and all under the cover of: justice....hahahaha rofl.
whocares;)
ps. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704050204576219073867182108.html
Celia,
Thank you for a beautifully written, informative article. As someone whose husband committed suicide in jail - a Korean war veteran and alcoholic - leaving me with 2 small children, I empathize with all those who have loved ones in jail. Yes, sometimes for a very few, jail can have a protective function (from oneself and for others), but most often it is a brutal, inhumane answer to infractions committed and falls heaviest on those who can least afford it, making their lives tougher than ever. My husband was a brilliant, compassionate and troubled man who belonged in a treatment center, not a jail. With two small babies, there was little I could do to offer him support. Private for profit jails constitute the worst of the worst, corrupting police and judges with kickbacks and encouragement for more and more incarceration. We are indeed a very sick society, but thank you for your efforts to restore some sense of humaneness. Keep up your good work and I hope to be able to contribute soon.
I feel very sad for you and your children having had to go though what you have gone through. The comments I made above are not aimed at blaming you personally or your husband. I do think the author of the article ignores the fact that some people actually deserve to be in prison. It is clear that prisons are a horrible place to be, particularly for those who need treatment. A friend who is a psychiatrist at a maximum security prison told me that probably 60% of the inmates are mentally ill, often psychotic. That doesn't excuse the criminality that got them there, but it does help to explain why prisons are so brutal and inhumane.
Mentally ill perple (depending on the degree of mental illness) cannot always be held responsible for crimes they commit. This applies doubly to substance abuse by the menatally ill as most often they are simply using the substance to self medicate their symptoms away.
Ronald Reagan, the father of our troubles, begin by kicking the menatlly ill out onto the streets of California in an effort to reduce the budget to make him more politically attractive. Many of those booted from treatment programs were Viet Nam vets suffering PTSD due to the horrers of the war they were forced to participate in.
Ya know...I don't personally believe in heaven or hell...but if there is truly a hell, Satan has to be a republican.
Then there's Teddy Kennedy (the bubbles finally have stopped rising in Chappaquidick), Bobby Kennedy (the all-to-eager acolyte who, together with Roy Cohn, served as legislative aides to Senator Joseph McCarthy), John Edwards (need I say more) . . .
Geez Leweeze. A car accident coverup is SOOO akin to deliberately creating policy to deny sick people health services. Sexual piccadillos are the equivalent of direct destruction of the rights Americans fought for over decades. Working as an aide to a party leader just because he happens to be in a position of leadership when you are entering poitics (teacher/student relationship) is the same as advocating said teacher's philosophy..... I think NOT!
We're talking humans here?
A car accident coverup where the driver was drunk and a young woman, probably is mistress, was killed and he didn't go for help to get her out before the bubbles stopped rising (anyone other than a Kennedy would have gone to prison for years for that little caper)? A husband who, while his wife was dying of cancer, ran around with another woman and then claimed he wasn't the father of her illegitimate child? An acolyte of Joe McCarthy (if it were a Republican, you'd say he was an amoral, opportunistic beast)?
Prisons are being used to house the mentally ill. They make good consumers for the PIC because their recidivism rates are probably high as well. They will purposely be denied any medical care as it may decrease their return business and the productivity derived from being incarcerated, GDP, will suffer.
-
We can't be "soft" on crime! There's no jobs out here anyway! Lock everybody up, it'll solve the crime problem - at least on the outside. Hmmm - what's wrong with this picture???
Building prisons to stop crime is like building hospitals to stop bubonic plague.
Even assuming the "crimes" we imprison people for are deserving of imprisonment.
While incarcerated, the prisoners aren't doing any more raping, burglaring, mugging, etc. Those of us who have behaved ourselves are safer as a result.
what did you not understand about we have more prisoners than anyone in world
if you are one of those profiteering from the corrupt wall street crowd then it is probably you, not the young kids who smoked pot, who deserve to spend decades is jail
whoever you are, you certainly have no compassion
Do you know any "young kids who smoked pot and spent "decades in jail" as a result?
I heard tell the other day that if you can sing and play the guitar you just might get a get out of jail free card for a pot charge. Hey it worked for one person. The whole thing about this PIC is gut wrenching. Yes, there are some that get what they deserve but there are others with talents wasting away or that are unrealized. There is just too much money being made across the board. Another example of the upside down universe we live in. "Welcome my son, welcome to the machine."
Republican Gov. Scott Walker in Florida wants to privatize prisons. The War on Drugs will keep these filled and providing "earnings" to prison corporation owners while taking out the "unproductive" or dangerous members of the society of rich, white wage-slavemasters and keeping these safe and free to profit from pollution, human suffering and death.
That's the problem with liberals and progressives. We care about these injustices. It puts us at a real disadvantage against our ruthless conservative oligarchy who claims faith in their religions and the free market they control will eventually fix things. The former after we die and the latter sometime afterwards
Did he do that while on vacation from Wisconsin?