The US DoJ issued a report and press release last week. The headline: “One in every 32 adults was in a prison, jail, on probation, or on parole at the end of 2005.” I struggle wrapping my head around that statistic. Then you look at black men between the ages of 25 and 29, and one in 13 are in jail or prison – not even counting parole. Can you imagine if out out of every 13 of your friends went to jail?
What are we doing wrong as a society that such a high fraction of our population is monitored and/or locked up?
I believe our first mistake is the war on drugs. The report shows that approximately 20% of state prisoners and 55% of federal prisoners are for drug offenses. I’d be very interested to see those broken down into violent and non-violent crimes. If we de-criminalize non-violent drug behavior, we will have a lot fewer people in the justice system.
It’s not just the raw numbers of people in jail, either; it’s also the growth. In the last 8 years, the number of federal drug offenders increased by 65%. (At that rate of growth, 50% of the country will be in federal prison for drug offenses by 2040!)
Reports like this one show that our drug policy doesn’t make sense. It is time for us to revisit our drug laws.
If our society continues at the rate it is going there will be no save the children programs – there will be no children — all our men are in prison and our women are catching up. Who will produce so we will have someone to save. There are 3 categories in prison in my opinion — Those who are completely innocent, those who have served enough time for the crime they have committed and those who will be totally eliminated from the planet — however, none are my call — but the call is on our society as humane people — after a short period those who are making the laws to lockdown every man, woman & child who makes a mistake will no longer have anyone to talk to — then what?
“There are 3 categories (of people) in prison”. I can’t agree with that breakdown. It assumes that we are all created equal with the same bedrock upbringing. We aren’t… neither in the former nor the latter. Our justice system doesn’t “know” who is culpable or not. When people are convicted of a crime, then you can theoretically put them into bins, really did it, or didn’t do it. (Buit we don’t even know that, obviously).
That is the first pass we need to make, and we never know who is in one vs the other. Our justice system relies on implications. With our system (as far as I can tell the best system there is), some guilty people go free, and inoccent people get convicted.
So right off the bat we have innocent vs guilty. That is one differentiator. You skipped that one.
Then you assume that “serving time” is an appropriate fix for the people who are guilty. I think, from the research that I have seen that that isn’t the best way to reduce recidivism (the likelihood of committing another crime). Putting someone in jail doesn’t help them to obey the law in the future. In fact, from what I understand it has the opposite effect.
Then you judge that there are people who should just be “totally eliminated”. With our justice system that isn’t done with an even handed measure. There are people who are more susceptible to “elimination” than others, based on aspects that have nothing to do with their crime.
We have a lot of problems, both in our justice system and around our justice system. We can’t just dump those problems on our “convicts”.