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Politics : THE WHITE HOUSE -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (18266)	3/13/2008 10:55:48 AM
From: Bill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25737

Lets free all the criminals.

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (18266)	3/13/2008 12:05:12 PM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25737

Nor is it surprising that the left uses an old and irrelevant comparison — between the cost of keeping a criminal behind bars versus the cost of higher education. According to the Times, "Vermont, Connecticut, Delaware, Michigan, and Oregon devote as much or more to corrections as they do to higher education." The relevant comparison would be between the cost of keeping a criminal behind bars and the cost of letting him loose in society. But neither the New York Times nor others on the left show any interest in that comparison. In Britain, the total cost of the prison system per year was found to be 1.9 billion pounds sterling (more than $3.8 billion), while the financial cost alone of the crimes committed per year by criminals was estimated at 60 billion pounds sterling. The big difference between the two kinds of costs is not just in their amounts. The cost of locking up criminals must be paid out of government budgets that politicians would prefer to spend on giveaway programs likelier to get them re-elected. But the far higher costs of letting criminals loose is paid by the general public in both money and in being subjected to violence. washingtontimes.com

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (18266)	3/13/2008 5:58:40 PM
From: longnshort	Respond to of 25737

but it costs more, like 30 times more, not to lock them up

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (18266)	3/13/2008 6:26:44 PM
From: MJ	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25737

According to the commentary writer-----just as I thought one big urban legend exaggeration------ "The Pew Center may not be right that the United States has a higher incarceration rate than countries like China and Cuba, whose official figures should be viewed skeptically. Still, the U.S. undeniably imprisons a much larger share of its population than other democracies: about 750 per 100,000 people, more than twice the rates in Ukraine, Estonia and Latvia; more than fivefold the rates in Spain, Scotland and the Netherlands; and more than 10 times the rates in Denmark, Italy and Finland" The proportion of 750 per 100,000 comes out ot .0075----not even 1% of the population. mj