While liberals have known this for a long, long time, conservatives will be disappointed. They do so want to believe administering punishment is… Wait… Just because something doesn’t work doesn’t mean we have to abandon it, right? Just like the war. Sweet!
US prison system ‘costly failure’
The US prison population has risen eight-fold since 1970, with little impact on crime but at great cost to the taxpayer, researchers say.
There are more than 1.5 million people in US state and federal jails, a report by a Washington-based criminal justice research group, the JFA Institute says.
Inmate numbers are projected to rise by 192,000 in five years, costing $27.5bn (£13.44bn) to build and run jails.
The JFA recommends reducing the number and length of sentences.
[…]
“There is no evidence that keeping people in prison longer makes us any safer,” said JFA president James Austin.
The report said that every year hundreds of thousands of Americans are sent to jail “for crimes that pose little if any danger or harm to society”.
It cited several examples including a Florida woman’s two-year sentence for throwing a cup of coffee at another car in a traffic row.
I suppose it’s no big surprise that there are more people in jail — there are a whole lot more people today. Wish I could find some stats on percentage of population incarcerated in 1970 vs. 2007.
Aren’t there people still serving sentences from 1977 for a 1 oz. bag of pot? That must have an effect, too.
No impact on crime? Guess what? If you are behind bars then you ain’t preying on my family.
Build more prisons, hire more guards, get more judges, and lock ’em ALL up!
I guess Foucault hasn’t been a big hit among these people…?
Politicians don’t get elected on logic, rather on passion. People want to hear the tough on crime message. They write draconian laws that takes discretion out the hands of jurist. Yeah, it’s the war on drugs. To much money is being made fighting the war on drugs, for little or no effect. Too many conservative religious voters to publicly admit it’s best to de-criminalize most street drugs.
I agree with number 2…. build more prisons.. lock everyone up. If you make less than 50,000 a year you go straight to prison. Then the only crime left would be white collar.
Need a ditch dug? Just get a chain gang on it.
U-S-A U-S-A U-S-A-!!!!!
The prison system has been an incredible SUCCESS – for the companies that build and run the prisons. They are making $$BILLION$$. That is why we have so many prisons, and so many prisoners.
No impact on crime? Guess what? If you are behind bars then you ain’t preying on my family.
You’re living in a fantasy world.
Despite your wet dreams to the contrary, most “criminals” aren’t sent to prison for life. When they get out, society has done nothing to rehabilitate them. (That whole “rehabilitation” idea went out a LONG time ago.) So here they are, back on the street, no job, a criminal record, and a new set of friends who are, incidentally, not upstanding productive citizens either. Think that person will re-offend?
Meanwhile (also) while someone is in prison, it’s one more breadwinner gone, one more absent father, one more bad example without any chance of redemption.
Yeah, we’re a LOT better off that way.
whatever — these things make conservatives salivate:
1.) locking people up
2.) torturing people
3.) killing people
4.) stopping education
and they are very very hungry — good luck stopping their get-tough, take-no-shit, might-makes-right mentality
all you have to do is submit.
hehehe, it didn’t take long for the bleeding-heart, pro-criminal whackjobs to rush to the defense of murderers and child molesters!
Most who go to prison were shitheads before they got in, are shithead in prison and will continue to be shitheads when they get out. The benefit is that while they are locked up, society doesn’t have to deal with them. So if you ask me it sounds like a good deal.
#10 didn’t take too long for the whackjob conservatives to assume that their government is perfect and infallible
i wish i could trust the government so completely, that must be nice.
#2, ScruffyDan, I was looking for something better than the JFA institute’s say so. I don’t totally doubt their numbers, but I don’t like single sources either. Here’s their web page.
http://www.jfa-associates.com/
Not much time to research it today, I was hoping someone might have better data available — I’m not intimately knowledgeable about the prison system and I hope it stays that way.
#11 and the other who aren’t shithead? fuck’em right? niiiiice great morals there chief, great morals.
#11. et al
I would point out that not only are you dealing with them, you are paying for their food, clothing, shelter, health care and education — and forcing me to do so as well.
Oddly though, you are not getting a good return on your investment since recidivism rates require you to care for these people almost for the rest of their lives since your beloved prison system is not rehabilitating the inmates.
Surely a smart man such as yourself would see that finding ways to turn criminals around would be a far less expensive option.
#10 – hehehe, it didn’t take long for the bleeding-heart, pro-criminal whackjobs to rush to the defense of murderers and child molesters!
It’s nice that in America, we all get a voice, no matter how stupid that voice is. Murderers and child molesters are horrible. They are also not the issue and you goddamn well know it. Our prisons are chock full of non-violent drug offenders. These are the people we are wasting money on.
> Our prisons are chock full of non-violent drug offenders. These are
> the people we are wasting money on.
You got that right. Victimless Crimes account for over half of the people in prison:
http://mypage.direct.ca/w/writer/prisons.html
“Drug criminals account for 75% of new federal prison admissions and 20% of new state prison admissions.”
http://faculty.ncwc.edu/TOConnor/111/111lect15.htm
I am sure there are many other sources out there if you search.
“New York currently has […] 20 times the penal capacity it had in 1937, although the state’s population has only doubled since then.”
–The Emperor Wears No Clothes
1937 about when the US “got serious” about the war on drugs.
Freeing those non violent drug offenders would free up a lot of deserved space.
#12 gronk,
Where do I state I am a “conservative?”
Answer: I didn’t. You made it up; hence you are untrustworthy.
We all have come to understand why prison does not work. Just take a look at the parole system. As it became evident with the Hollywood stars, their actual time in prison (jail) was reduced from months to days and in some cases hours.
The parole system for convicted prisoners is the same. They know that a 5 year sentence will be reduced to a cake walk if they keep their noses clean. The prison release system is not controlled by the judges who hand down the sentences.
Dr. Rabbitfoot >> No impact on crime? Guess what? If you are behind bars then you ain’t preying on my family. Build more prisons, hire more guards, get more judges, and lock ‘em ALL up!
Are you one of those guys with a simplistic conservative brain?
The problem with “locking them up” is that our current justice system jails youthful “soft core” offenders with hardcore criminals who teach them to be hardened criminals.
It’s a vicious cycle that is costing us untold BILLIONS of our tax dollars to make more criminals.
My liberal brain tells me that it would be far better to spend some money on rehabilitation of youthful offenders to ultimately spend much less money on long-term incarceration.
#19,
#12 gronk,
Where do I state I am a “conservative?”
Answer: I didn’t. You made it up; hence you are untrustworthy.
Comment by Dr. Rabbitfoot — 11/19/2007 @ 4:35 pm
Where did grog say you were a conservative. It appears to me that you are a total slimeball jerk. But that is just my opinion.
#20, jbenson,
As it became evident with the Hollywood stars, their actual time in prison (jail) was reduced from months to days and in some cases hours.
Care to point out ONE person who’s actual time in prison was reduced from months to days or hours?
#7, you’re exactly right. It’s BIG business to build and staff prisons. It was surprising to me to learn that the prison workers’ lobby is considered to be the most powerful political force in CA.
It’s generally easy to pass yet another bond initiative to fund a prison using scare tactics. The argument goes that if you don’t pay up they’ll release violent sex offenders from prison and locate them into your neighborhood.
No impact on crime? You guys are even worse than that Fox Butterfield who would write articles for The New York Times titled Prison population increases despite drop in crime.
4% of the population are psychopaths
1% are in prison; the rest are in management.
What liberals haven’t known for a long time is that they have no power.
Like you, Dave. You’re an idiot.
Owned.
Mr. Fusion: Paris Hilton comes to mind, as does Lindsey Lohan, but I think that reflects more on our wealth based double standard of justice than some fault in the parole system.
As for the utlitiy of locking up all of these people, might I point out that the USA does not have significantly higher crime rates than other areas of the world (if you count crime as being negative actions towards another person), and yet our prison population is far higher per capita than any of those nations that have what we would call an authoritarian government, let alone our peers amongst representative democracies. What is the utility of this behavior if so many other nations get along fine without incarcerating millions of people? Wouldn’t it be more logical and fiscally sound to work towards job training and rehab as so many other countries have done, to great success?
Now, if crimes against others are going down, while the prison population is going up, does that not mean that non-violent or self-destructive ‘crimes’ are filling up the system? Most self destructive actions do not harm others, and they have their own built in punishment, so why waste money destroying peoples lives to prevent them from destroying it themselves? Should we destroy the village in order to save it? And don’t give me that ‘impaired driving’ crap, as if it is a counter, because that is behavior that clearly does hurt others, and there are specific statutes dealing with it. The simple fact is that we incarcerate far too many people, and frankly a lot of it has to do with profit and race relations: profit, in that many of our prisons are private and highly profitable per inmate (the owners often contribute to re-elect hanging judges too, BTW, to line their own pockets) and race relations, in that minorities in prison cannot vote, often for life, and in this light discrepancies like differences in sentencing between powder and crack cocaine makes a lot more sense.
There’s going to be a lot of people who aren’t the traditional profile of criminals coming out of the prison system eventually. I imagine a fair number of them are above the average IQ of the traditional criminal element. I also imagine a fair percentage of theses guys that got imprisoned for something a lot less harmful than armed robbery or kidnapping or such, just because they were selling or growing some weed are going to be pretty pissed. Especially when they are forced to take the kind of employment for shit wages and be bossed over by some pinhead with half their IQ just because they have a prison record. They aren’t likely to take kindly to their life on the outside. Look for “smart crimes” to make a big upturn. The kind of crimes that they don’t catch people for, that go unsolved. Maybe even the kind of crimes that the police will increasingly be afraid to investigate very thoroughly. It might not be too safe to be a major stockholder in some of our new privately owned prison systems.