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  • From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
  • To: Homestead <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Homestead] So many things wrong with this situation
  • Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 11:39:40 -0500

All countries deal with those who affront society with varying severity of punishment. In our country, that we like to think is superior to all others, it seems to me that we have 1) more unhappy citizens, 2) more laws against personal freedom to act, 3) a far superior apprehension and conviction system, 4) harsher laws, 5) longer sentences, 6) a cavalier attitude toward social inequities, 7) a lack of consideration for productivity lost, and/or 8) we are just mean people.

There are so many things wrong with our so-called criminal justice system. We put minor offenders in prison where lose what positive self- image they might have had and they learn advanced criminal techniques from other prisoners.

The expense of maintaining a police, court and detention business of this magnitude is awful. Citizens are in prison, costing we taxpayers large sums of money to give them food, shelter, clothing and medical care, and in many cases doing the same for their spouses and children. Through out various failings we cause and support this war against our citizens.

The only answers I have are to eliminate dumb laws like the stupid War on Drugs and to offer non-violent lawbreakers the option of prison versus a decent job and a strict parole system so they can support their families and gain a sense of self-worth.


Inmate Count in U.S. Dwarfs Other Nations’
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: April 23, 2008
The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.
Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.

Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences.

The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation, according to data maintained by the International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College London.

China, which is four times more populous than the United States, is a distant second, with 1.6 million people in prison. (That number excludes hundreds of thousands of people held in administrative detention, most of them in China’s extrajudicial system of re- education through labor, which often singles out political activists who have not committed crimes.)

The full story is at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/us/23prison.html?hp



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