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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KLP who wrote (8178)	12/31/2005 5:38:59 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541358

This is what is happening in our jails: "The cost of this massive growth in incarceration is staggering. Americans will spend nearly $40 billion on prisons and jails in the year 2000. Almost $24 billion of that will go to incarcerate 1.2 million nonviolent offenders.4 Meanwhile, in two of our nation's largest states, California and New York, the prison budgets outstripped the budgets for higher education during the mid-1990s.5 The number of people behind bars not only dwarfs America's historical incarceration rates; it defies international comparisons as well. While America has about 5% of the world's population, almost one in four persons incarcerated worldwide are incarcerated in the US.6 While substantial increases in all categories of inmates have contributed to America's mushrooming incarceration rates, the use of imprisonment for drug offenders has increased particularly sharply, drawing increased attention by researchers and policy makers alike. In 1999, the Sentencing Project reported that between 1980 and 1997, drug arrests tripled in the United States. In 1997, four out of five drug arrests (79.5%) were for possession, with 44% of those arrests for marijuana offenses. Between 1980 and 1997, while the number of drug offenders entering prisons skyrocketed, the proportion of state prison space housing violent offenders declined from 55% to 47%.7 Fully 76% of the increase in admissions to America's prisons from 1978 to 1996 was attributable to non-violent offenders, much of that to persons incarcerated for drug offenses.8 Data like these prompted retired General Barry McCaffrey, Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, to refer to America's prison system as an "American gulag."9 And indeed, with an incarceration rate second to only Russia's, the drug czar's choice of language is fitting.10" I really think we should be trying to reduce incarceration rates, rather than continuing with a penal model that is clearly not working. The penalties for non-violent crimes need to be (imo) drastically changed- so they involve community service that benefits society, rather than incarceration, which is costing us an arm and a leg (and quite possibly a good chunk of the communal brain, as well.) I DO think highly recidivist offenders should never get out- serial rapists, and child molestors- to name two types. I would like to see drugs decriminalized so that our prisons can handle violent offenders more effectively, and keep them in forever, if necessary.