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Our crime rates especially homicide are down considerably because of all the murderers and rapists in prison. Prisons are good, the goal should be safe streets. Our streets are quite a lot safer than they were in the past. Build more prison, have more 3 strikes laws.
Is America so great because so many of its people are in prison or
is America not so great, because so many of its people are in prison?
And it got me to thinking.....
Would America be even greater if more or less people were in prison?
Quick... what's any reason you can think of where having your nation's people incarcerated should be a profitable capitalist venture. Not "could be" ... "Should be." CCA announces $42.4M profit - Nashville Business Journal
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You know, I'm not a world traveler by a long shot, but I've been to a few countries, here and there. They're not on fire...well, If you don't count Iraq, and they don't have as many people in jail as we do. I think it's weird that America has so many criminals. It's like we're the Land of Evil People.
I vividly recall when I was in HS (decades ago) a class discussion where the teacher pointed out that one of the reasons America was SO much better than Red China or the Soviet Union was that they had such huge prison populations.
Today, we have more prisoners than both of those two combined. And the current insane obsession with "privatization" is now making incarceration a profit center for insider political cronies who get contracts to erect "private" prisons. Heck, when I was in college there was no such thing as a "criminal justice" major.
We're slipping...
huge prisons in Communist China and the U.S. runs a close second....
We were told, "We are the freest country in the world, and look at Communist China with all the people in jail to see how they fare"
Yup, look at us now indeed.
Rather than look critically at our laws and policies, we say, bah who cares, their criminals.
Its easier that way and alleviates ones conscious. So their all criminals in the USA, and it was because of communism in China, nice, neat and easy way out.
When they told us that, people were scared of being killed in some random crime, more women feared being raped on a college campus. Some little girl got her arms cut off by a serial pedophile rapist, serial killers were getting by with murder after murder -- Americans locked themselves inside their own home prison walls, afraid to wander outdoors but telling themselves we were free while Chinese were not.
People began to question that and 3-strikes laws came about. Now we really are freer while the thugs are behind bars.
We have a ridiculously high rate of incarceration (far higher than any other nation) because it is yet another power-play by Big Government. A big part of it is the "Drug War," which has cost taxpayers a fortune and destroyed our inner cities, leaving welfare and crime the only options. It is the single greatest destroyer of African-American society and minority communities: http://www.rightsworkinggroup.org/content/war-drugs-a-war-america’s-minority-communities-reflections-a-former-drug-cop. In order to get around restrictions on confiscating property, Government calls it a "War" and is thus free to ignore most rights provided by our laws and Constitution.
The War on Drugs serves the added purpose of enforcing Big Pharma and Big Health's control of pharmaceuticals. You must have the money to see a specialist doctor every month, and pay for pain-relief medication, along with absurd and expensive constant testing and hoop-jumping, in order to get relief from pain like backaches, migraines, and other chronic pain. If you can't afford all this, your only option is to break the law. In effect, our Government's obsessive need to control everything means many in the lower classes are condemned to constant pain, unless they risk jail by buying a simple painkiller on the street.
If we didn't have the ridiculous War on Drugs (which is a total waste of money and accomplishes absolutely nothing beneficial), and our government was sane instead of power-mad, we would have plenty of room (and funding) to incarcerate REAL criminals, who are a danger to society. Instead, these regularly are out after doing less than half their (already minimal) sentances, because we have to "make room" for more drug addicts, and because we must provide them with good food, medical care, protection and other amenities.
Of course, it's not just the Drug War--even with that gone, we'd have far too high an incarceration rate, for non-violent and victimless crimes (e.g., prostitution should be no concern of law enforcement). The problem is that government has more laws than could fit in a large library. The government can get you on ANYTHING, because there are countless laws on the books that got passed and forgotten: It is an offense to open an umbrella on a street, for fear of spooking horses. Dominoes may not be played on Sunday. In my state of NH, you may not tap your feet, nod your head, or in any way keep time to the music in a tavern, restaurant, or cafe. It is illegal to pick seaweed up off of the beach. You may not run machinery on Sundays. In New York, it is illegal for a woman to be on the street wearing “body hugging clothing”. While riding in an elevator, one must talk to no one, and fold his hands while looking toward the door. Dumb Laws in Alabama. Crazy Alabama Laws. We have weird laws, strange laws, and just plain crazy laws!
It may seem funny, but it isn't. If government decides it doesn't like you (perhaps you are not pro-government here on C-D), it can find some law you are breaking, and put you in jail (as well as cost you a fortune). And you can hire a lawyer, but "ignorance of the law is no excuse." Neither is the argument that the law shouldn't be there: you'll be told you should have wasted your own time and money to have the law revoked.
We are definitely going to regret allowing our Big Government to accumulate the amount of power and money it now has. It will fight to the death to preserve every facet of power and tax authority, and the patriot is the enemy that must die. Unfortunately, unless we reduce the size and confiscation power of government to a level the economy can survive, our nation will soon be a Third-World nation that taxes everyone into poverty.
We really shouldn't have let our "guard dog" become so large and vicious and arrogant that it bites us every time we don't provide food, chews, toys, play, grooming, and attention, the moment the Dog wants them.
Wonderful post.
Yes, we have allowed our government to tell us how to live our lives and it will probably be impossible to reverse this horrid path.
Government should not tell us what to eat, drink, grow or smoke. Government should not tell us what to do with our bodies and how and who we have sex with. Government should not tell us who we can marry. Government should not tell us when we can open our stores, or how to package our products or what prices to charge.
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