As Prison Population Sinks, Jails Are a Steal 407
HughPickens.com writes After rising rapidly for decades, the number of people behind bars peaked at 1.62 Million in 2009, has been mostly falling ever since down, and many justice experts believe the incarceration rate will continue on a downward trajectory for many years. New York, for example, saw an 8.8% decline in federal and state inmates, and California, saw a 20.6% drop. Now the WSJ reports on an awkward byproduct of the declining U.S. inmate population: empty or under-utilized prisons and jails that must be cared for but can't be easily sold or repurposed. New York state has closed 17 prisons and juvenile-justice facilities since 2011, following the rollback of the 1970s-era Rockefeller drug laws, which mandated lengthy sentences for low-level offenders. So far, the state has found buyers for 10 of them, at prices that range from less than $250,000 to about $8 million for a facility in Staten Island, often a fraction of what they cost to build. "There's a prisoner shortage," says Mike Arismendez, city manager for Littlefield, Texas, home of an empty five-building complex that sleeps 383 inmates and comes with a gym, maintenence shed, armory, and parking lot . "Everybody finds it hard to believe."
The incarceration rate is declining largely because crime has fallen significantly in the past generation. In addition, many states have relaxed harsh sentencing laws passed during the tough-on-crime 1980s and 1990s, and have backed rehabilitation programs, resulting in fewer low-level offenders being locked up. States from Michigan to New Jersey have changed parole processes, leading more prisoners to leave earlier. On a federal level, the Justice Department under Attorney General Eric Holder has pushed to reduce sentences for nonviolent drug offenders. Before 2010, the U.S. prison population increased every year for 30 years, from 307,276 in 1978 to a high of 1,615,487 in 2009. "This is the beginning of the end of mass incarceration," says Natasha Frost. "People don't care so much about crime, and it's less of a political focus."
The incarceration rate is declining largely because crime has fallen significantly in the past generation. In addition, many states have relaxed harsh sentencing laws passed during the tough-on-crime 1980s and 1990s, and have backed rehabilitation programs, resulting in fewer low-level offenders being locked up. States from Michigan to New Jersey have changed parole processes, leading more prisoners to leave earlier. On a federal level, the Justice Department under Attorney General Eric Holder has pushed to reduce sentences for nonviolent drug offenders. Before 2010, the U.S. prison population increased every year for 30 years, from 307,276 in 1978 to a high of 1,615,487 in 2009. "This is the beginning of the end of mass incarceration," says Natasha Frost. "People don't care so much about crime, and it's less of a political focus."
Prison population (Score:5, Interesting)
Ha! (Score:2)
A place to keep everyone infected with Ebola. :-)
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Re:Prison population (Score:5, Informative)
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They are too busy playing GTA on the XBOX.
Re:Prison population (Score:5, Interesting)
I read that in until the late 1800's in the USA, people didn't go to prison to serve time. They went there to await their trail and if found guilty, to await their punishment, such as hard labor or hanging. Jail time itself was not the punishment until the Eastern State Penitentiary was founded in the late 1800's with the Puritan notion of rehabilitation through time spent in isolation and introspection.
Re:Prison population (Score:4, Informative)
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It's an election year. This is the occasion for prosecutors to lobby for jail construction bonds, at the same time as inventing new categories of prisoners to fill them. How many people are jailed for "paraphernalia," which means common items that might possibly be used in the drug trade. Failing that, we can always crank down the blood alcohol limit one more time until one beer with dinner out is enough to expose middle-class people to the prison system for the first time.
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Am I the only one who thought the prison population was at an all time high?
Don't worry it's still troubling high... You still have more people incarcerated than various not-so-popular dictators have had... :)
So don't worry, America is still evil, he he
On-topic, it's a shame the falling prison population isn't the headline... But instead the headline is empty prisons for sale...
Re:Prison population (Score:5, Interesting)
Check out this graph [sentencingproject.org].
The nuimbers of prisoners has not declined significantly since 2009. This doesn't mean the bubble hasn't burst, the nature of the bubble resists bursting. People can leave the housing market, but prisoners can't leave the prison market.
Still, anyone who invested big-time in prisons back in 2008 or so on the basis of 30 years of exponential prison population growth was just stupid. We were approaching 1% of the Amercian population incarcerated, how much higher did they expect that to go?
I have no sympathy with a town that bet its financial future on prisons while its schools rate minimally acceptable.
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Or could that be due to other factors? Besides, a lot of it is victimless crime like arresting people for smoking weed.
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I'm pretty sure no one ever served a jail sentence for "arresting someone for smoking weed".
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You know, that might actually be a good thing to criminalize...
Re:Prison population (Score:5, Informative)
Or could that be due to other factors?
Indeed. Crime rates fell in states that implemented harsh prison sentences, but it also fell in states that did not. It fell slightly more in the "lock-em-up" states, but not near enough to justify the costs.
Other factors:
1. Reduction of environmental lead. This is more strongly correlated with falling crime than any other factor.
2. Abortion. The case for this was laid out well in Freakonomics [amazon.com].
3. Better security, and less stuff to steal. Today, cameras are everywhere, alarm systems are much more common, and most people don't have as much to steal. People carry credit cards instead of cash, modern electronics has very little resale value, and nobody uses real silver silverware anymore.
4. Video games. Young men in their prime crime years spend billions of hours playing video games, leaving far less time on the street getting in trouble.
Re:Prison population (Score:4, Interesting)
Insightful list, but you forgot 5. "Crack cocaine". That's a huge factor. The death toll from that drug was vast, much of the peak in crime was due to it, and many people who were otherwise using criminal activities to make ends meet were killed by it. I saw a lot of that first-hand in the 80s, when I delivered pizza for a living. Pizza drivers were a good target for supporting one's drug habit in the early stages.
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Heroin deaths per capita today are twice what they were at the height of the heroin "epidemic" in the 70s.
"Per-capita use" is a poor way to estimate the crime generated by a drug. You also have to consider the price of the drug, and today heroin is very cheap. So junkies don't have to commit many crimes to support their habit. The reason for the drop in heroin prices was the US invasion of Afghanistan, which ended the Taliban's efforts to suppress production [wikipedia.org] of the drug, which they considered un-Islamic.
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I think they would probably address the poverty issue rather than decide to look everybody up.
Re:Prison population (Score:5, Interesting)
The rise in crime since WWII is a historical blip in a long term (on the scale of centuries) downward trend.
Why it is dropping is the million dollar question and nobody knows for sure. It is commonly known as the "Crime Conundrum" and it is unlikely that prison has anything to do with it because the same drop in crime is being seen across the developed world with countries that have wildly different incarceration policies.
Re:Prison population (Score:5, Informative)
Lead in pretrol. The rise in crime and the subsequent drop tracks the curve of the amount of lead released in the enviroment due to using TEL as a fuel additive almost perfectly. Children breatling in air with elevated levels lead are more likely to exhibit criminal behaviour as adults. This effect is especially strong for violent crime.
The problem was solved in Europe and North America around 1990, when lead-containing additives to petrol where almost eliminated. It just took a while before this affected crime statistics measurably.
Re:Prison population (Score:5, Interesting)
Obligatory link to Atlantic article exposing the link between leaded gasoline and crime rates.
http://www.theatlantic.com/nat... [theatlantic.com]
Re:Prison population (Score:4, Informative)
Obligatory link to Mother Jones article exposing the link between leaded gasoline and crime rates.
http://www.motherjones.com/env... [motherjones.com]
And yes, I grew up in the 80s so I blame the double post and bad link on leaded braincells.
Statistics and.. (Score:5, Informative)
California had a massive reduction in prison population due to courts deeming that holding people under severely crowded conditions was unconstitutional. I'm too lazy to do the math and figure out what percentage of the alleged 20% this accounts for. Law enforcement being allowed to legally seize property without any charges has further reduced "criminals" but again to what level? That one we don't know, because there is little to zero accountability by agencies practicing this illegal act (and there are numerous agencies doing this).
Not to take away the point regarding "Crime Conundrum", but rather pointing out that I have a feeling that the claim of reduction is at least partially a statistics game to make someone look good.
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And California's prisons are still overcrowded, despite the reduction. As are many other states [washingtonpost.com]
Re:Statistics and.. (Score:5, Informative)
The early release and refusal to place new inmates in California is huge. According to federal statistics, California dropped 50k internments per year and are releasing early 13k per month. Just their decline alone accounts for 72% of total US reductions. Depending on the length of sentences, they may well have sent home the entire 200k 'drop' in prisoners. And other major state prison systems admit their lowering of prison sentences for drug crimes is the reason for their drops.
And the california plan seems to be raising some crimes there
"By contrast, we find robust evidence that realignment is related to increased property crime. In terms of overall property crime, we estimate an additional one to two property crimes per year on average for each offender who is not incarcerated as a result of realignment. In particular, we see substantial increases in the number of motor vehicle thefts, which went up by 14.8 percent between 2011 and 2012. (Magnus Lofstrom and Steven Raphael, Public Safety Realignment and Crime Rates in California, Public Policy Institute of California, Dec., 2013 at p. 2.)"
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub... [bjs.gov]
http://www.latimes.com/local/c... [latimes.com]
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub... [bjs.gov]
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In California we are still releasing felons after little or no jail time due to lack of space. It sometimes is almost funny.
Recently Dorris Payne, an international jewel thief, was sentenced to four years for a $40,000 theft from a jewelry store in Palm Desert, California, a crime committed while on probation for a prior theft in Los Angeles. She was released by the sheriff [desertsun.com] after about a month as a "low -risk" offender (her thefts had never involved weapons) when there was no room available in the county
Re:Prison population (Score:5, Interesting)
Leaded petrol has a high correlation with crime rate too.
The nice thing about the abortion correlation theory is that it pissed off both the left and the right.
Saying that we should reduce the number of children born by unmarried mothers and this will bring the crime rates down is something that excites the right and pisses off politically correct lefties.
Saying that a good way of doing that is legalising abortion excites the left and pisses off the right
Re: Prison population (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it's not about reducing kids born to unmarried mothers, it's about not forcing kids to be born to mothers that don't feel they can adequately provide for their children (or just plain don't want them).
It's about being born into poverty, not about whether the mom wears a ring.
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the drop in crime rate had more to do with the drop in the levels of lead in the everyday environment following its ban in everyday items like gasoline and paint, than with the "get tough" 80s.
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I read on the internet that 92% of statistics are made up. Then again, I also ready that 84% of people are bad at math, whereas 28% are not.
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I believe you, seeing attitudes like this: " "There's a prisoner shortage," says Mike Arismendez, "
Re:Prison population (Score:5, Insightful)
Easy way to solve the "prisoner shortage".
Put Congress, Wall Street Execs, and Hollywood execs into prison.
Re:Prison population (Score:5, Funny)
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I was referring to their blatant purchase of Congress.
But your comment WAS funny as all hell.
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Indeed, it sounds like "Oh no, economic crisis! Not enough prisoners! We need to do something to reverse this trend and get the prisoner counts growing again!"
If you read the prospectus for one of those for-profit jails, it basically says just that - we need more laws so we can incarcerate more people so our shareholders can turn a quick, tidy profit.
Re:Prison population (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that once in prison, always in prison. With NCIC records public of both arrest and convictions, even an arrest for PI in college can keep someone from getting meaningful employment.
I know at least a few companies who ask for -arrest- (not conviction) records. The people I asked said that someone can buy their way out of a conviction, but if the cop thinks they are guilty enough to pull out the cuffs, they are guilty.
Felonies are also ridiculously easy to get. In the '80s, if two people were caught racing in their cars, it would be a $111 fine. Now, here in Texas, that is a felony.
Of course, once a felony is on a record, a person is pretty much hosed for life. For insurance reasons, few employers other than call centers will hire felons. They are not part of the voting bloc. They are prey to other felons. They cannot get apartments for the most part. Any brushes with the law will almost certainly result in an arrest. In society, they are persona non grata; the untouchables. This pretty much means that without a solid family support structure, there is no future. Good luck moving to another country. Nobody will take US felons.
So, because there isn't any real way to make income, crime is always available... which usually means arrest and another, longer sentence. Great for private prison profit margins, but a cost center until the person dies... all paid for on the US taxpayers nickel.
Re:Prison population (Score:5, Interesting)
When a black-mark can remain on your record forever, there's huge consequences.
I know a guy who was an engineer, FPGA specialist. Has 4 patents. Worked for 15 years, and his company imploded. I tried to get him a job where I work, but because he had a dishonorable discharge from the navy, no dice. (apparently, when he was 19, before he went to college, he failed to return from shore-leave for 24-hours, because he went on a bender, passed-out, and was basically kept incognito by a bunch of "bad people" with whom he had been drinking. Got in trouble for that, and it resulted in the dishonorable.) Bad judgement, for sure, but it was a small mistake. He went on to college, and go in at his first job through a professor. But now he's been unemployed basically since 2004.
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In Kansas battery is a misdemeanor, threaten to kick someone's a$$ after they punch you in the face and your friends are holding you so you can't hit him back is felony criminal threat. That law was created with things like bomb threats and terrorists in mind but has been twisted to be used in other ways.
Three felonies a day (Score:3)
yup even normal acts are felonies now a days.
http://www.threefeloniesaday.c... [threefeloniesaday.com]
"If you can't do the time, don't do the crime."
Yeah right.
Re:Prison population (Score:5, Interesting)
Rather than a prison sentence followed by automatic eligibility to be re-licensed to be a hazard on the streets again, I think a far more appropriate punishment would be to permanently revoke the person's license until he or she can prove, through a battery of physical and psychological tests, that he or she is no longer a hazard on the road. (This is what they do in Germany [wikipedia.org].)
But in the USA, for some reason it seems to be considered more humane to make someone a felon and lock them away than to ban them from driving.
This is why the goals of prisons need to be aligned better with the goals of society. Instead of putting someone away for x years, if private prisons bid against each other on a fixed price to rehabilitate each prisoner, coupled with penalties each time a released prisoner re-offends, private prisons would do their best to rehabilitate each prisoner as quickly, completely, and inexpensively as possible. Isn't this what we all really want?
Won't anyone think of the corporations? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure it's good to have fewer people behind bars...if you happen to be people. But corporations run many jails now, and depend on your tax dollars to simply put food on the table for their corporate families. If there are no inmates, who will make money feeding them $0.86 meals, or use 19th century methods of medical care to maximize profits, or make payments on their newly built facilities? It's still a young industry. Won't you think of the corporate children?
I say it's time we stand up and put more people behind bars. For you. For Me. For the corporations. Because when corporations suffer, we all feel the hurt.*
*not really, but it seems like a good slogan
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Sorry, but that's just too over the top for me.
Mod up if you get it ;-)
Re:Won't anyone think of the corporations? (Score:5, Interesting)
Part of capitalism is letting businesses fail as well as succeed.
This is part of the circle along with all the unemployment that this will bring (based on my anecdotal experiences, guards will have a harder time trying to be rehabilitated to work well with people and "customers" - particularly the kind of customer that can report them without having to risk getting beaten to a pulp for being a snitch.)
Re:Won't anyone think of the corporations? (Score:5, Insightful)
Part of capitalism is letting businesses fail as well as succeed.
Yeah, like banks and car manufacturers. Wait, did I get that wrong somehow?
Yes, prison is tough on guards, too (Score:3)
http://www.denverpost.com/news... [denverpost.com] ... Prison work "bleeds over into your private life. You go into restaurants, you sit with your back to the wall. You want to see all the entrances and exits, and you notice if s
"They harden themselves to survive inside prison, guards said in recent interviews. Then they find they can't snap out of it at the end of the day. Some seethe to themselves. Others commit suicide. Depression, alcoholism, domestic violence and heart attacks are common. And entire communities suffer.
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should i make up a reason and make you an example one of them?
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So what you're really saying is "Criminals are the job creators" ? :-) :-)
Three laws a day (Score:2)
Re:Three laws a day (Score:5, Funny)
Not necessary. First I would put more women in prison. The ratio imprisoned man/woman should at least be 50:50. You know, gender equality and such.
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Now that is the kind of forward thinking we need!
Plus the people who deserve it aren't locked up (Score:3, Insightful)
...and they'd demand swimming pools and a wine cellar.
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I'd say envy is your prison
Re:You don't know, do you? (Score:5, Insightful)
We teach our children that making money is more important than being happy, ie 'that degree is useless' or 'don't go into that field, you won't get paid much.' Our economy is based on wealth (gotta have money to make money), and our media is obsessed with how great the rich have it (next on Cribs, some athlete's ridiculously huge mansion and garage worth more than the GDP of a small nation).
The schools, the media outlets, hell even the sports teams are owned by the same cabal of very, very wealthy people.
So, if there's a 'wealth envy' issue in America, it's cultural, and the rich have no one to blame but themselves.
Yikes! (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, you do the math.
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No Brainer (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No Brainer (Score:5, Funny)
"No Brainer" was a nice touch for a zombie suggestion :)
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Call Italy! (Score:3)
Data centers? (Score:5, Interesting)
Since everything from office buildings to warehouses to shopping malls have been converted to data centers, why not prisons? They already offer a ton of security and the cells would be kind of perfect for those customers that buy those little fenced off spaces of multiple racks. The water lines for the sinks might be repurposable for some knd of cooling loop.
The other conversion option is a secure place for containing Ebola, or perhaps as safe havens FROM Ebola..
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Just use chilled doors on the racks have lower air con costs anyway and not have all that issue with trying to blow air around efficiently. Basically hot air exhausts through the back of the servers and immediately hits a gigantic radiator which has chilled water flowing through it and out the back of the rack comes cool air. Works a treat.
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If you used raised floors then you would have the problem that the cell doors don't match up with the floors. So you're going to have to run all that stuff along the ceiling on cable ladders. And it's going to have to run through the hallways because going through the walls will be a PITA. Finally, prisons are typically not located next to communications facilities or to office buildings, so they're not really optimal locations for data centers anyway.
Re:Data centers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why couldn't we use them as temporary apartments for the homeless? All the infrastructure is there to meet their needs, just replace the cell bars with a wall/door to add privacy. They now have an address in applying for employment. Showers, laundry, and dining facilities. Common areas could help with job training and education. The medical wing could make efforts to help diagnose mental illness and help people with addiction.
The only thing this requires is effort.
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Because many prisons are in the middle of nowhere, without public transportation or access to jobs? That's an obstacle.
great news. (Score:5, Insightful)
as a "casualty" of the US's insane and poorly thought out War on Drugs...I find this news wonderful.
the idea that people like me, whom got caught up in the drug game due to low self-esteem, need to goto state prisons and waste away with child-rapists, murderers, and "lifers" is not only totally ridiculous, but utterly dangerous.
i spent 22.5 months in Florida prison's, all because I got caught with some MDMA and weed at a rave in Orlando, FL in 2001.
i am basically serving a life-sentence for this crime, as corporate BG checks prevents me for getting hired.
hopefully, now others won't be subjected to the things I've been through.
Re:great news. (Score:5, Insightful)
Here in the Netherlands, employers can't directly check your criminal records (they are not even allowed to ask in job interviews), but they can request that you submit a so-called "statement of conduct" (in some professions like child care, having such a statement is mandatory by law). Such statements are issued by the police on request, and the nice thing about them is that it doesn't detail your criminal past, but instead answers a specific question about the job or license you are applying for: "does anything in this person's record indicate that they shouldn't get a job in a day care center / get a gun license / hold a job with a lot of financial responsibilities?" So a child molester is not barred from a job as CFO, an embezzler can still get a gun license, and a burglar can work in day care, because the statement of conduct in each of these cases will come back as "no objection". To me this seems like a much more reasonable balance between the rights of employers wanting to know whom they are dealing with, and those of criminals who have served their time.
Even better of course would be for the US to drop the stupid "war on drugs". Interestingly, it looks like the USA is now leading on legalizing soft drugs, whereas the Netherlands (known for its liberal attitude towards drugs) is actually cracking down. (remember: soft drugs were never legal here, merely tolerated).
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In the US criminal records are public records the exception is for juveniles. Once you are an adult you are expected to follow rules.
What I do not get is this statement. "i spent 22.5 months in Florida prison's, all because I got caught with some MDMA and weed at a rave in Orlando, FL in 2001."
If it was that guys first conviction and he did not have "a lot" of MDMA and weed aka amounts that make it look like you are dealing. Up to 20 grams is only a misdemeanor. MDMA is another story but unless he refused
Re:great news. (Score:5, Interesting)
If you ever have the misfortune of getting mixed up in the system, good luck to you. Maybe you have been in trouble and have gotten lucky. I went to court on two VERY ridiculous charges. I paid for a lawyer. He kept putting the case off until the DA finally agreed to drop the charges. It all depends on what mood you catch them in. It was proven to me when my charges were dropped. My lawyer didn't tell me what he was doing, but I figured it out. I wound up showing up to court about 6 or 7 times on the same charge. The first several times, the DA didn't agree to drop the charges. Finally, one random day, he said "OK" and the charges were dropped. Before that he had offered something dumb like community service. My lawyer just kept saying "I wouldn't take it". So I kept going back to court and one day the DA just agreed to drop the charges. The first charge cost me $250.00. The second one cost me $1500.00.
If I would have walked in there with a public defender, I would have gotten (probably) 80 hours of community service and a charge on my record that would have kept me from EVER getting a decent job. I have a family. My son is GOING TO EAT whether I get his food through legitimate means or not. If that would have been put on my record, I would probably be in prison or headed there today for some BS charge (and it was BS, trust me on that) that I shouldn't have been charged with in the first place.
Some people deserve to be in jail for the things they do. A lot of people are sitting in prison right now who don't deserve to be there by a long stretch.
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re: criminal past (Score:3)
Absolutely 100% agree with you about the U.S. needing to give up on the "war on drugs" thing. That failed policy has cost untold billions of taxpayer dollars and made criminals out of insane numbers of citizens -- all with essentially no upside.
The system you speak of in the Netherlands sounds pretty reasonable too, and I could see the U.S. potentially adopting something similar. But I'm also not sure I'm that opposed to the present system, at least in theory, that's used in our country? I think the fact
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Wow that's pretty harsh. Do you mind if I ask (as a non-USian) what amounts you had on you? Such drugs are illegal where I live, but being caught with small amounts usually results in a minor punishment, and no "record for life".
Great News (Score:5, Insightful)
Hurricanes, flooding, and the occasional viral outbreak would be much easier to weather if some known infrastructure was already in place.
Status quo ante can be restored easily. (Score:4, Insightful)
Ahem. (Score:5, Insightful)
I notice that the author couldn't resist putting some spin on the story - the part about relaxed drug enforcement.
However -
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-1
The government tells us that ALL crime is down. For example, from 2001-2011, the violent crime rate went down 21.9%.
Everything dropped - property crimes, rape, the whole lot.
Re:Ahem. (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at that table again - the most significant declines for most categories of crime was between 1992 and 2001. It even more dramatic when you consider the growth in population.
So the cops have to explain why they're now equipped like they're tank battalions.
Re:Ahem. (Score:4, Funny)
Obviously the reason why crime is down is because they are equipped like tank battalions. We must equip them with more in order to keep lowering the crime rates. You don't want to see crime rates increase, do you? And if rates do happen to go up, obviously we didn't equip them well enough so they deserve EVEN MORE!
IP (Score:2)
They are just making space.
When someone said "everybody is infringing IP several times per day", most people took it as meaning "IP laws are wrong".
When the MPAA and RIAA reacheed the same conclusion, they understood that if everybody was infringing IP, the only solution was to put everybody in jail.
Prisons are now in your hand (Score:2, Interesting)
Sold by Apple and Samsung.
Who cares where the body is if they have captured the mind?
States from Michigan to New Jersey (Score:3, Interesting)
Is that geographical or alphabetical?
What America does best: Outsourcing (Score:2)
Send poor people to serve time in some third world hell hole. Send rich people to serve time in some vacation paradise.
AHA! Now I understand! (Score:2)
I was having a hard time figuring out why the Republican candidate for Colorado governor was promising to roll back marijuana legalization. I mean why would a politician go against a law that got 55% approval on the ballot?
(Note. The above is sarcasm. He's not such a cheap sell-out. He's just an ass-backward troglodyte throwback.)
Prison (Score:2)
Sounds like returning to the norm, from a foreigner's perspective.
"The incarceration rate in the United States of America is the highest in the world."
Something like EIGHT TIMES what it is in Europe, from what this page says:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U... [wikipedia.org]
Land of the free, indeed...
Programmer Cubicle Alternative (Score:5, Funny)
Good for the programmers. 8x10 cubicle with it's own bathroom. Wired for high speed cablemodem. Has a door that closes so nobody can sneak up behind you while you are working.
Good for the managers. Control smoke breaks and general working hours from a master control system. Video surveillance is taken to a whole new level.
"There's a prisoner shortage," (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow and really bad and a really scary way to put it, I envision authorities dreaming up ways to fill jails.
Jails are easily repurposed (Score:2, Insightful)
They are bare bones buildings designed to accommodate people in the most basic conditions. They provide shelter, sanitation, feeding infrastructure, physical security, basic medical facilities, and even infrastructure to do productive work.
Any American jail would be luxurious compared to living on the street. Open up empty jails to the homeless populations and food banks. Use the facilities to teach homeless people skills to do a job.
In a nutshell (Score:5, Insightful)
Framing it this way is typical of a mindset that is depressingly endemic in our culture. We do not have a shortage of prisoners, we have an excess of prisons.
Well that's not true (Score:5, Funny)
Bullshit! You know what you have to do to turn it into an airsoft and paintball facility? Put up a sign and a cash register.
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2,266,800 (Score:3)
1.6M? The U.S. prison population is 2,266,800 according to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]. It's been over 2M for years, and was 2,418,352 in 2008.
Re:2,266,800 (Score:5, Informative)
1.6M? The U.S. prison population is 2,266,800 according to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]. It's been over 2M for years, and was 2,418,352 in 2008.
In the U.S., the word "prison" is more specific than you think. Look at the third figure from the top at your own link.
In 2010, the U.S. prison population was ~1,518,000 (state and federal prisons). The U.S. jail population was ~749,000. The sum of those is 2,267,000; then comes another ~90,000 in juvenile detention (see the table below the figure). Add all these (and a bunch of smaller numbers, such as holding facilities for immigrants, and military facilities), you get the number of incarcerated people, which is the number you mention.
But yes, AFAIK the U.S. still incarcerates more people than any other country in the world, both as a fraction of the population, and in absolute numbers. There's a long way down to the next on the list.
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You'd need a lot more prisons
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I think what has changed is the definition of crime and the idea that punishment should match the crime.
Punishments have not gotten weaker, instead there are fewer crimes being committed. I'm sure people will make all sorts of claims why... the Freakonomics guys claim it was abortion, others say the end of the crack epidemic, and others point to the crackdown on crime and harsh sentences enacted during the late 80s and 90s. Whatever the reasons, the jails are not filling up because there are fewer criminals - not because we've changed attitudes.
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Or perhaps they saw that when the politicians declared they were going to "get tough on crime", they totally missed the kinds of crime people were concerned about and ended up jailing a lot of people who weren't particularly doing much harm (and were largely black).
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You've clearly missed the TEA party revolution. "Angry young men with impacted reasoning abilities" is one of their recruiting slogans.