the US prison population and certain peoples problem with it

[dead0man]

It's often brought up as an example of what's wrong with America.  It might very well be, but I don't understand how it has to be.  Couldn't it also be true that we're pretty good at figuring out which persons need to be in prison and then keeping them there?  Wouldn't our decreasing crime rate point more in that direction than the other?

[minionofmidas]

If it weren't so much higher than other first world nations', maybe it conceivably could.

[opebo]

Oh come on, dead0man, you know as well as I that the prison system is an assault perpetrated upon the nation by its ruling elite.  The real criminals run free about the country in private jets while their victims are immured or enslaved.

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

Oh come on, dead0man, you know as well as I that the prison system is an assault perpetrated upon the nation by its ruling elite.  The real criminals run free about the country in private jets while their victims are immured or enslaved.

this.

Most of our prison population is full of minorities who sold/possessed drugs or burglarized a convenience store.  This is not really their fault, is it? 

[Vosem]

Oh come on, dead0man, you know as well as I that the prison system is an assault perpetrated upon the nation by its ruling elite.  The real criminals run free about the country in private jets while their victims are immured or enslaved.

this.

Most of our prison population is full of minorities who sold/possessed drugs or burglarized a convenience store.  This is not really their fault, is it? 

What?

You can argue that it should be legal, but certainly it is their fault that they did something.

[TJ in Oregon]

Most of our prison population is full of minorities who sold/possessed drugs...  This is not really their fault, is it? 

Clearly, as Vosem said, if we presuppose people have free will, then it is their fault they sold/possessed drugs (excepting the possibility of being framed etc). You can argue that this behavior should be legal if it harms no one else, but:

Most of our prison population is full of minorities who ... burglarized a convenience store.  This is not really their fault, is it? 

You can't argue the same for this. Holding up a convenience store, particularly with a weapon, is not a victimless crime.

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

Oh come on, dead0man, you know as well as I that the prison system is an assault perpetrated upon the nation by its ruling elite.  The real criminals run free about the country in private jets while their victims are immured or enslaved.

this.

Most of our prison population is full of minorities who sold/possessed drugs or burglarized a convenience store.  This is not really their fault, is it? 

What?

You can argue that it should be legal, but certainly it is their fault that they did something.

Many were in a state of desperation I have a feeling not too many people here could understand.  What if you had a family you literally could not feed unless you went and robbed the 7-11?  Or that you were raised in a environment were resentment was bred through the injustice of extreme poverty?  No... we cannot as a society let rampant burglary and drug trade become the norm.  But hey, when a guy sells drugs in order to eat, I get it.  When someone grows up being told that there is no chance for them unless they bend the rules, I get it.  

What do I also "get"?  That a CEO who flies around in a private jet after inheriting a company and still finds a way to **** over his employees and trick investors so he can become ever more rich is a far, far more evil human being than the guy who robs the corner store in Camden.  One is in jail.  One goes to court and has the system work tirelessly to get him off.  

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

Most of our prison population is full of minorities who sold/possessed drugs...  This is not really their fault, is it? 

Clearly, as Vosem said, if we presuppose people have free will, then it is their fault they sold/possessed drugs (excepting the possibility of being framed etc). You can argue that this behavior should be legal if it harms no one else, but:

Most of our prison population is full of minorities who ... burglarized a convenience store.  This is not really their fault, is it? 

You can't argue the same for this. Holding up a convenience store, particularly with a weapon, is not a victimless crime.

TJ see previous post.  Desperation and injustice are the operative words here. 

Dead0man was arguing that "HEY!  Maybe were just good at bringing criminals to justice".  I'm arguing; No, the issue is poverty.  Is poverty their fault?  No, a vast majority of the time it is not. 

[Link]

Couldn't it also be true that we're pretty good at figuring out which persons need to be in prison and then keeping them there?  Wouldn't our decreasing crime rate point more in that direction than the other?

Is that why no executives went to prison for the mortgage back security scam?  We've got thousands upon thousands of black males locked up for nothing more than possessing or selling small quantities of marijuana.  What does more harm to our society?  A small amount of marijuana or toxic mortgage backed securities?  If you look at the state of America and can say with confidence we have any clue about who to lock up I don't know what to tell you.

[DC Al Fine]

Oh come on, dead0man, you know as well as I that the prison system is an assault perpetrated upon the nation by its ruling elite.  The real criminals run free about the country in private jets while their victims are immured or enslaved.

this.

Most of our prison population is full of minorities who sold/possessed drugs or burglarized a convenience store.  This is not really their fault, is it? 

What?

You can argue that it should be legal, but certainly it is their fault that they did something.

Many were in a state of desperation I have a feeling not too many people here could understand.  What if you had a family you literally could not feed unless you went and robbed the 7-11?  Or that you were raised in a environment were resentment was bred through the injustice of extreme poverty?   

1) How many people actually cite "Needed to feed my family" in these sorts of crimes? They tend to be perpetrated by unmarried young men ages 16-25. Not exactly prime "needed to feed the kids" material.

2) Resentment is no excuse for violence. In post-apartheid South Africa, some working class whites have become poorer due to apartheid ending. This in turn has probably led to some resentment against blacks. Would it be acceptable if one of these people went out and started killing/raping/robbing blacks?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Certainly no one benefits from locking up large numbers of people on minor drugs charges. Other than people employed by the prison service, I guess. Lawyers too, but in America that's a given.

This is not really their fault, is it? 

That's a pretty racist attitude, you know.

[© tweed]

This is not really their fault, is it?  

That's a pretty racist attitude, you know.

not if it is well proven that drug crimes among blacks/hispanics has entirely to do with law enforcement behavior and nothing to do with a higher rate of drug use/possession among blacks/hispanics, which it is.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

This is not really their fault, is it?  

That's a pretty racist attitude, you know.

not if it is well proven that drug crimes among blacks/hispanics has entirely to do with law enforcement behavior and nothing to do with a higher rate of drug use/possession among blacks/hispanics, which it is.

It's also well known that it's those vices associated with minority groups that have tended to be criminalized.  Alcohol was the vice of Catholics.  Opium was the vice of the Chinese.  Marihuana the vice of the Mexicans and Negroes.

[© tweed]

This is not really their fault, is it? 

That's a pretty racist attitude, you know.

not if it is well proven that drug crimes among blacks/hispanics has entirely to do with law enforcement behavior and nothing to do with a higher rate of drug use/possession among blacks/hispanics, which it is.

It's also well known that it's those vices associated with minority groups that have tended to be criminalized.  Alcohol was the vice of Catholics.  Opium was the vice of the Chinese.  Marihuana the vice of the Mexicans and Negroes.

such is the perception, and the perception played a role in the initial criminalization, but the statistics fail to bore this out.  white kids use just as much marijuana as do black kids.  the best chance to paint it as innocuous is to point out that blacks occupy more densely-populated geographic spaces, hubs for police offense.

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

Certainly no one benefits from locking up large numbers of people on minor drugs charges. Other than people employed by the prison service, I guess. Lawyers too, but in America that's a given.

This is not really their fault, is it? 

That's a pretty racist attitude, you know.

It's racist that I think a capitalist system + a racist history has led to a disproportionate number of minorities in poverty and therefore more likely to commit crime?  I think anybody living in poverty has a greater tendency to commit crimes.  Were you implying that I think the tendency is innate?  

[HoosierPoliticalJunkie]

Oh come on, dead0man, you know as well as I that the prison system is an assault perpetrated upon the nation by its ruling elite.  The real criminals run free about the country in private jets while their victims are immured or enslaved.

Frankly, it's this kind of rhetoric that turned me from a far-left liberal to a slightly right-leaning moderate.  People are responsible for their own actions.  No matter what anyone else does, you have the responsibility to follow the law.  You have no right to steal just because someone else does.   As Gerald Ford said, it's ridiculous to blame someone throwing a burning brick into your car on the circumstances someone was brought up with.  It's time to stop making excuses and start punishing criminals for what they are:  criminals.  If you hurt someone else or steal from them, you deserve significant punishment proportional to the magnitude of your crime.

That being said, I would agree with you that we should decriminalize simple drug possession and replace it with therapy and counseling.  Drug addiction is a disease and should be treated as such.  Drug dealers, on the other hand, contribute a great deal of destruction to our society and should be handled as such. 

[LastVoter]

Oh come on, dead0man, you know as well as I that the prison system is an assault perpetrated upon the nation by its ruling elite.  The real criminals run free about the country in private jets while their victims are immured or enslaved.

this.

Most of our prison population is full of minorities who sold/possessed drugs or burglarized a convenience store.  This is not really their fault, is it? 

What?

You can argue that it should be legal, but certainly it is their fault that they did something.

We should assume every rich person is doing something illegal/wrong Vosem, policy resulting from this would workout much better for working class.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

This is not really their fault, is it?  

That's a pretty racist attitude, you know.

not if it is well proven that drug crimes among blacks/hispanics has entirely to do with law enforcement behavior and nothing to do with a higher rate of drug use/possession among blacks/hispanics, which it is.

It's also well known that it's those vices associated with minority groups that have tended to be criminalized.  Alcohol was the vice of Catholics.  Opium was the vice of the Chinese.  Marihuana the vice of the Mexicans and Negroes.

such is the perception, and the perception played a role in the initial criminalization, but the statistics fail to bore this out.

When has government policy ever been based on facts over perception?  The push towards decriminalization of MJ is occurring because the perception as to who uses it has been changing.

[opebo]

If I were in charge, crime would go down. 

You have a different (and rather silly) definition of crime than I, NutsNGory.

Oh come on, dead0man, you know as well as I that the prison system is an assault perpetrated upon the nation by its ruling elite.  The real criminals run free about the country in private jets while their victims are immured or enslaved.

Frankly, it's this kind of rhetoric that turned me from a far-left liberal to a slightly right-leaning moderate.  People are responsible for their own actions.

They're most certainly not so, and your tendency to cling to this belief is your greatest obstacle to understanding, HoseJunkie.

[dead0man]

Obviously I don't think people should be in prison for drugs (and I actually vote that way), but they only make up 20% of our total prison population and of those, only 5% are for possession.  They shouldn't be in there, but even if you took them all out our prison rates would still be noticeably higher than the countries we like to compare ourselves to (even if the comparisons are stupid).

[angus]

It's often brought up as an example of what's wrong with America.  It might very well be, but I don't understand how it has to be.  Couldn't it also be true that we're pretty good at figuring out which persons need to be in prison and then keeping them there?  Wouldn't our decreasing crime rate point more in that direction than the other?

Prisons are training grounds.  We lock people up for all sorts of reasons, often when they aren't violent, and after they are beaten, raped, and tortured, they come out mad.  It is well documented that prison overcrowding creates psychological harm, adds more fuel to already poor inmate-to-inmate relations, and encourages institutional practices that create a degrading environment. 

The government's campaign of consumption and fear, about which I have posted before, is a big part of the cause.  For example, in the 42 years since President Nixon launched the "War on Drugs" the consequences have outweighed the gains. According to the ACLU, of the 2.3 million people incarcerated in the United States, 25% of them imprisoned for drug offenses.  Bear in mind that 70% of all crimes committed are committed by ex-convicts.  Prison is crime school.

And there's the cost.  $31,307 per year per inmate, according to Florida officials.  In states like New York it's even more, upwards of $50 thousand per year.  With that layout, you could have provided jobs training and meaningful rehabilitation to each of these interns.  Prison is a bad investiment.

There's also the issue of "rehabilitation."  Who needs rehabilitation in our society?  The slaves of ghetto deprivation and drugs pushed by those who wish to dull possible insurgency?  Maybe the people who need to be "rehabilitated" are those whose minds and bodies have been warped by false value systems that convince them that some people must die so they can live, many must starve so they can eat, all must slave so they can enjoy leisure pursuits.  In any case, you don't turn criminals into citizens by brutalizing them.  Then again, maybe that's not the goal.  Maybe the goal of incarceration is to protect us.  If they wanted to really protect us from murder and psychopathy, they wouldn't be busting teenagers for smoking grass, they'd be locking up the officials who have plundered the national treasure and murdered millions of innocent people.   

[© tweed]

an aside: just focusing on the number of people who are currently in prison is misleading.  the correctional-industrial complex has a reach much further than that, to the probationers and overlaps with the drug treatment industry.  many states have come out of the dungeon and sold the liberals on 'treatment and rehabilitation' for drug possessors, which translates into getting caught in a Kafkaesque loop of court dates, drug tests, and compulsory self-help meetings.  if you dance for a year or two and pour tens of thousands of dollars into the endeavor, with a stroke of luck, you can get the charges 'expunged'.

[AmericanforAmerica]

You do the crime - you pay the time. That simple.

[kobidobidog]

Prisons give guilt. Nothing good about giving guilt.  Jails are anti Christ anti God institutions. They don't teach people any of the positive attributes of Jesus.

[Person Man]

Don't quite welcome me to the Republican Party just yet but see this as me trying to be fair and open-minded-

Is the number of crimes-in-se per capita proportional to the incarceration per capita compared to other "modern" (like us) countries?