US News
New record: More than 1 in 100 adults in jail in US
Feb 28, 2008, 20:13 GMT
Washington - More than one in 100 adults in the United States were behind bars for the first time in history at the start of 2008, placing a serious strain on state budgets and calling into question their reliance on prisons as the best means of punishment, according to a new report issued Thursday.
The Pew Center on the States' Public Safety Performance Project, which compiled the data from state and federal sources, said 2,319,258 people were in prison at the beginning of the year after an increase of more than 25,000 people during 2007.
The report said that the higher incarceration rates were not related to an uptick in crime or the population in general, but rather to policy measures.
'For all the money spent on corrections today, there hasn't been a clear and convincing return for public safety,' Adam Geib, director of the Pew project said in a statement.
But Geib said states were now beginning to 'rethink their reliance on prisons' and testing out community-based punishments that may be equally effective and reduce the strain on correctional facilities.
The report said that one in 30 men aged between 20 and 34 were jailed, while 1 in 9 African American men of the same age were incarcerated. Men were 13 times more likely to be in jail than women.
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Older Talkback
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Drug dealers and drug users do not need to go to prison; they just need to have their illegal drugs confiscated. If they resist violently in the confiscation process, or if they break the law in any other way, then, let them suffer the consequences. Otherwise, they can be let go without creating a record on their resume. What a concept...
Result: Less cost to the taxpayer, less men and women in our prisons, and less poisons taken into their bodies.
Another important approach for those already in prison: Make sure they have every Constitutional right in prison as they would on the outside. After all, how can we expect them to assimilate into a society that has rights, when we do not uphold their rights and show them the way we want them to live when and if they are free again (that is what rehabilitation is meant to be). In other words, stealing is wrong on the outside, it is also wrong in prison, killing is wrong on the outside, as well as in prison. Why not vigorously implement this approach within the prison system?
One Nation
The writer Frank Herbert had an idea:
Bring back corporal punishment for most crimes, capital punishment for the worst stuff.
A public flgging, i.e. behind the courthouse or something for most offenses.
Make crimes like rape, and murder capital crimes, punishable by death.
Most jails would disappear.
Jails are not a burden on the taxpayer, anymore than any other public service.
Typical the neocon SP4 will catapult your country right back to the dark medieval times to save the taxpayer's money.How stupid....
Is it better to let criminals go free?
toni from belgium seems to care more about the criminals than the victims.
...I only bring it up to provoke thought, but, I'd have to debate who, is actually in the dark ages i.e. the nation who has a lopsided justice system like the USA, and Europe or some of the more practical one's where they do not have a Constitution being used as a suicide pact.
In the US, crime and criminality was 'diseasized' by the libnazi movement of the 1960's ostensibly because they had such a penchent for breaking the law, they felt the need to socialize the criminal justice system to facilitate their own needs. In my town, we actually built a new jail we are incapable of running, due to funding. How's that for a city that calls itself 'the city that works'?????
Peace love dope...huh?
Like the myth of privacy, the socialists, as in prewar Europe, quit punishing crime as an institutional practice, turned jails from self sufficent institutions into human warehouses, established 'sentencing guidelines' (really done to facilitate overcrowding) removing judicial decision making and got us where we are today.
Add to this a drug culture promoted by that special generation, organized crime, coddled by the likes of folks like the Clintons, illegal immigration and the gangs it has fostered, and you have one huge criminal justice sh-t sandwich which everyone now must take a big bite.
I hope no one likes bread, because in this sandiwich, there isn't any. Thanks a pantload.
Some day, folks are just going to want it dealt with.
'Add to this a drug culture promoted by that special generation, organized crime, coddled by the likes of folks like the Clintons, illegal immigration and the gangs it has fostered, and you have one huge criminal justice sh-t sandwich which everyone now must take a big bite.'
You'd know ALL about the drug culture, wouldn't you, seeing as how you're both a smoker AND a grower. Watch out, druggie, the DEA is watching you.
None of that makes me wrong, either. Time for you to take off the tinfoil hat. The aliens are only in your mind.
SP4: To the Dildo aboveFeb 29th, 2008 - 23:02:54
None of that makes me wrong, either. Time for you to take off the tinfoil hat. The aliens are only in your mind.
Oh, you stupid, stoned, stunned supercilious twit. You are the one with aliens in the head. You should take off the tinfoil hat as well, that way you might see the DEA at your door. As for not being wrong, you are seriously screwed in the head. Drugs do that, you know. They screw the perceptions and yours are right out to lunch. Ergo, you ARE wrong.
Don't bend over in the shower, sweetie, or you're gonna be someone's b*tch.
..doesn't. (make me wrong)
is in denial. Just like his hee-row, GW bush. Sing another song, addict, that one is past it's best before date.
It has been known for hundreds of years;poverty and crime go hand in hand.
Can you find one valid reason why young black people score so high in crime rate?Keep on dancing around the hot stuff and blaming the sixties then .To me the facts are basic;as the gap between the rich and the poor widens ,crime rates rise .That is why young black people score so high.They get bad education,bad health care,bad jobs and bad justice.About 25 percent of the balck inmate are innocent for the crimes they were convicted for.That doesn't seem to bother too much people.Racism ?
Crime, in America, is an institution. We imported it from other nations. Europe and China exported their crime societies and we inherited them.
Our Constitution has this one weakness: It facilitates criminals. We were fertile ground.
Just look at our history: wave after wave of criminal culture from Italy, Sicily, China, etc. came ashore, preying on it's own peoples. If poverty has a relationship, THIS is it.
A lot of really famous folk descend from criminal aristocrisy. The Kennedy's for one. These folks use the underworld to facilitate their climb and to maintain themselves at the top.
The shortcoming to your acceptance of the poverty-crime myth: Socialized nations have as much, or more, crime. Like health care, they either de-criminalized their crimes i.e. Holland with drugs and prostitution, or they simply do not keep track of the crimes committed, for political reasons. We've heard the poverty angle for a generation now, and after decades of socialism, it's worse than ever. This old chestnut just needs to be buried.
As of January in 2007 there were appm. 3,263 convicted criminals on death row in the USA awaiting to pay the ultimate price to society and the victims families.
Let us exexute them in the space of a week and we will open up those 3,263 spots in our prisons and have more breathing room for the other wretches.
Save money on the lethal injections and just use 1 rusty bullet for these mass murderers and savings can be realized for the overburdened US taxpayers.
If Tonny does not approve perhaps he can volunteer to keep some in his
home with his own family.
That goes for the other morons crying for the crimials and forgetting the dead victims.
Hungarian Crusader
...something to wish for...anyway...
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Why wereFeb 28th, 2008 - 21:01:50
Negro men highlighted from all other ethnic groups? That just doesn't seem right for some reason. If there is going to be a particular group pointed out, maybe we should be able to see a list of all ethnic groups to include Muslims, Latins, Asians, etc.
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