The U.S. Leads the World..
By Dyre42 | Related entries in Bad Decisions, Drugs, Newsin incarcerations.
From Reuters:
“A U.S. Justice Department report released on November 30 showed that a record 7 million people — or one in every 32 American adults — were behind bars, on probation or on parole at the end of last year. Of the total, 2.2 million were in prison or jail.According to the International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College in London, more people are behind bars in the United States than in any other country. China ranks second with 1.5 million prisoners, followed by Russia with 870,000.”
“Julie Stewart, president of the group Families Against Mandatory Minimums, cited the Justice Department report and said drug offenders are clogging the U.S. justice system.
Why are so many people in prison? Blame mandatory sentencing laws and the record number of nonviolent drug offenders subject to them,” she said.”
Is it me or does something seem wrong with this picture? Many states have “third misdemeanor for the same offense is a felony” laws. Is the public served well by such laws in the case of nonviolent offenders? Wouldn’t a system in which nonviolent drug offenders be forced to pay high fines, perform endless hours of community service, and mandatorily enter rehab programs at either their or their insurance companies expense ulimately prove more useful and less costly to the public?
What’s your opinion?
This entry was posted on Sunday, December 10th, 2006 and is filed under Bad Decisions, Drugs, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 10th, 2006 at 10:01 am
Absolutely agree on different punishment/sentencing for non violent offenders, drug related. The three strikes your out policy seems fine to me for crimes that affect us all: anything violent, theft, fraud.
The only danger to the public from drug abusers are their under the influence behaviors in public. If that’s not a factor in a case, then I don’t see why prison time should be considered. Surely thousands of grandmas with glaucoma or arthritis smoking marijuana in their backyards is an actual victimless crime. These people aren’t hurting myself or my family, so I don’t see any reason we should be paying to rob them of their lives and keep them in a prison.
If we must punish people for substance abuse/possesion/trafficing then at least make it useful instead of a giant economic drain on the country.
December 10th, 2006 at 1:10 pm
Two points:
- First off, raw numbers of those incarcerated is a meaningless metric — countries with small populations will never show up . . . even if they were to jail 90% of their population. If you want something meaningful, use the percentage of the population.
- Second, as noted the biggest factor is our ridiculous drug laws. Do drugs cause problems? Sure. So does alcohol. Which led, a century ago, to Prohibition. Eventually, we figured out that Prohibition didn’t work. God willing, we will make the same conceptual leap with regards to the use of other drugs, and change to something saner to address the problems that they cause.
Once the drug laws are fixed, the three strikes laws can be left alone. But if we don’t, three strikes (which, in California at least, means three of ANY felony, not just three of the same which the ariticle refers to) ends up running up the prison population with individuals who do not warrant that treatment.
December 10th, 2006 at 3:18 pm
What we really need is attitude readjustment programs. Once someone is convicted of a crime, we have every right to reprogram him or her so that he can no longer commit crimes. That way, we can also boost the number of florists in the world, because you can never have too many florists. So what if the side effects include permanent migraines, nausea, and anal leakage - they earned it by being bad.
December 10th, 2006 at 3:45 pm
Maybe the high number is because we enforce our laws better than other countries. Do I hear anyone complaining about the substantial reduction in crime over the past decade?
Alex you need to get out more. I have seen drugs and alcohol screw up or destroy the lives of more people than most anything else. DUI is only one of the many ways that abusers negatively impact the public.
December 11th, 2006 at 9:34 am
Hey! I thought we got rid of the Welfare State. Although, if I had an expensive medical problem, I might rob a bank so I can get healthcare.
Truthfully folks, we lock people up because we are too lazy to figure out a better way of dealing with nonviolent offenders. I am all in favor of locking up and throwing away the key on those offenders that are a threat to our society; but I object to my taxpayer money going to support state-sponsored welfare for people who are perfectly capable of working.
December 12th, 2006 at 7:05 pm
Wrong wj, and I hate to say this but NZ is second behind the US on a per capita basis…
But then I read of how some people in this country “behave” and I have to wonder what gives.
December 12th, 2006 at 9:44 pm
probligo, doubtelss you can provide us with a source for the per capita ranking you cite….
December 19th, 2006 at 3:12 am
WJ, I was relying on information that is commonly cited in NZ by (predominantly) the right wing political opposition.
Having found this I stand corrected to the extent that in the global list NZ stands at 64 of 213. I note at the same time that Sudan, Mali, and Chad are listed 201, 202, 203 respectively. Perhaps there are some lessons there?
That aside, the next time I hear our right wing prating on about the numbers that we have in prison I shall be sure to let him know where the correct data is.
Thank you.