After decades of pursuing lock-’em-up policies, states are scrambling to reduce their prison populations in the face of tight budgets, making fundamental changes to their criminal justice systems as they try to save money.
Some states are revising mandatory-sentencing laws that locked up nonviolent offenders; others are recalculating the way prison time is counted.
Maybe they shouldn’t have locked them in the first place.
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Legalize it, tax it commercially, and stop providing incentives to law enforcement to waste their time prosecuting users. Abuse is a social problem. Making it a legal problem is one of the biggest mistakes America ever made.
I guess the two punks who robbed my son at gunpoint two separate times last year weren’t “violent” because they only threatened to kill him, but didn’t. I am sure no judge in the Bay Area would send these poor victims of society to jail. And I am sure you bleeding heart liberals would agree. If I could get away with it, I would grease each of them in a heartbeat. I wish they would try to rob ME, actually. They would not be leaving the scene of the crime.
#3–Faxon==who is more violent. A who threatens to kill but doesn’t, or B who does kill?
If A or B must be released from jail who would you rather have released?
So… hopefully this makes people realize that Non-Violent drug offenders smoking pot don’t deserve to be locked up for 2-3 joints and the fact they are poor and in bad neighborhoods.
NO COMMENT
“Maybe they shouldn’t have locked them in the first place.” Maybe we should read our post before we post it.
#5… Nobody goes to prison (that’s a sentence over 1 year) for 2-3 splifs. I love how libs make it seem that all these poor saps are unjustly sitting in jail/prison. Aww… they’re just trying to make a living for their families. Most of them are bangers that need to be locked down for your sake. I’m sorry that most bangers are minorities… that’s just the way it is.
I don’t know how it is where #3 lives, but any crime with a gun in my state (PA) is considered a violent offense and subject to a mandatory 5 years.
Armed robbery, possession of an unlicensed fire-arm (most likely), assault with a deadly weapon, and whatever else the D.A. likes, will not get those punks on the ‘soon to be released list’.
#11–shane==”you blithering idiot”
The majority of federal prison inmates are incarcerated for drug law violations …… and one-third are non-violent offenders with little or no criminal history.
http://drugpolicy.org/library/research/prison.cfm
Its informed repuglicans like yourself that are bankrupting our country with your bankrupt morality.
ISNT it encouraging that ALL these people..
State and federal senates,
Are willing to CUT everything possible, EXCEPT
Their own wages??
The idea: Lock a (relatively) large number of the people in prison. Wait for a very serious global recession and then release them en masse at the worst possible time for inmates (read: criminals) to straighten out their lives and try to rehabilitate.
How silly.
This started during the Reagan Regime, where he let all the crazy people out of the hospitals because it was “too expensive” (but Iran Contra was a bargain!), locked up marijuana offenders, and stopped putting financial criminals in jail (His biggest campaign contributors).
If only this happened in states who elected GOP senators.
I see it’s hard for the Republicans to admit that “Git Tuff On Crime” has blown up our faces, and us liberals were right all along.
Hell, they can’t even admit that Obama was elected president. 🙂
# 4 bobbo, nice when cost and effectiveness coincide said,
“#3–Faxon==who is more violent. A who threatens to kill but doesn’t, or B who does kill?”
Answer: A, if it is Faxon’s scenario.
I’d rather see Faxon walking the street after putting two to both the dirtbags head.
I’d rather put two in Faxon…
#22–HEY ALFIE!!!!! Good example of your christian republican caring attitude. Yes, it oozes out when you think you are only being funny.
HEY ALFIE!!!!! Whats it all about?
expand the death penalty to include politicians
#8 Alfred1
“Somehow this all reminds me of President Obama”
You don’t say… [much eye rolling]
This means fewer tossed salads.
Speaking of young gang bangers, I recently and accidentally pissed all over one in the airport bathroom. You know how sometimes you have to take a whiz so bad your back teeth are floating?
Well I ran into this bathroom and there were no dividers between the urinals. I whipped it out and was pissing uncontrollably and pissed all over this kid. All I could do was look straight ahead and act like it didn’t happen but I couldn’t help buy LMAO. The kid didn’t say a word and left. He’s probably in jail now tossing salads. http://tinyurl.com/na6tzh
Oh, great idea! Now that you screwed ‘Joe Dopesmoker’ with a criminal record. You put him on the street and tell him to get a job. Unfortunately, most employers would rather have an illegal mexican – so they can pay less than minimum wage. His family won’t help him, he still owes them legal fees. So he’s gonna end up homeless and eating at the local soup kitchen, if such things still exsist, they saved my homeless ass back in the 80’s. Lucky Joe, they’re gonna set him free.
We spend money for law enforcement to arrest them and then we set them free to do it all over again! Brilliant! Does anybody else see a bigger problem with America then just the recession? Are we not becoming the worthless, selfish and unemployed people of the world?
It’s not so much the pot smokers are in jail. Most of them aren’t. It’s the resources spent arresting them, taking them to court, and then only charging them $200. Plus all the agencies that out their trying to keep the stuff off the streets.
If we were to get rid of these stupid laws, the money spent to arrest them, prosecute them, and processing the $200 check could be spent on keeping the violent ones locked up.
Off-Topic —
What’s violent? Anything that intrudes on the rights of others — putting a gun in someone’s face, taking their property, taking their life.
I consider fraud to be in the “taking their property” column. I consider fraud a violent crime as it directly affects someone’s ability to maintain their standard of living through means other than honest competition, just like taking their car or jewelry or their life.
I find the notion that stealing someone’s life savings via fraud to be somehow less serious then robbing a house at gunpoint revolting.
Neither perpetrator is a man, but an animal surviving on instinct with no sense of morality.
Diminishing justice for economics. Now there should be no reason not to do the same for court trials.
RBG
When oil takes off we will see chain gangs starting back up again, working farms.
So you want to legalize and tax, armed robbery, assault and battery, driving under the influence, rape, domestic assault, crack, meth, and car jacking?
Gun sales are going through the roof as are alternatives to same. I’m getting used to joggers with ball bats though I suppose those are mainly for all those dogs people claim won’t bite and don’t keep chained.
# 30 jescott418:
“We spend money for law enforcement to arrest them and then we set them free to do it all over again! Brilliant!”
So, what? Should _all_ jail sentences be forever, no one who goes to jail for any reason at all should ever, ever, ever be released?