1 in 100?
I haven't studied criminal law much, other than the required courses for graduation. However, this seems like a problem:
"For the first time in history, more than one in every 100 American adults is in jail or prison, according to a new report."
And this seems like even more of a problem:
"the 50 states spent more than $49 billion on corrections last year, up from less than $11 billion 20 years earlier." (emphasis added)
Like I said, I haven't studied criminal law much, so I don't have any grand solutions for this problem. However, I think it is telling that despite the fact that we lead the world in incarceration, we are not seeing a public safety benefit or a decrease in crime.
"For the first time in history, more than one in every 100 American adults is in jail or prison, according to a new report."
And this seems like even more of a problem:
"the 50 states spent more than $49 billion on corrections last year, up from less than $11 billion 20 years earlier." (emphasis added)
Like I said, I haven't studied criminal law much, so I don't have any grand solutions for this problem. However, I think it is telling that despite the fact that we lead the world in incarceration, we are not seeing a public safety benefit or a decrease in crime.
posted by teirney at 4:21 PM
1 Comments:
I can think of a few things that would help:
1. A better economy (creates more jobs, and more spending, which helps a capitalistic free-market like we apparently are, and in turn keeps people away from commiting crimes to ensure survival).
2. Ending the war in Iraq - This war is one of the major contributions to are terrible economy. Because this war keeps needing more funding, we are constantly borrowing money from the chinese, and it is devaluing the American Dollar.
3. - Reducing spending on the war on drugs. Not only do many people go to jail for drugs which means us tax payers have to pay to have them housed their, there are still lots of drugs out there. Here is a plain simple fact - "as long as there are people who want to do drugs, there will be people willing to grow and create them and sell them for a profit."
4. All this money we are wasting on wars we aren't winning, we could spend on things that are going to have a much greater impact: public education, health-care, the environment, just to name a few.
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