Bfgrn
Gold Member
- Apr 4, 2009
- 16,829
- 2,492
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Our criminal justice system is badly broken. A failed draconian war on drugs, mandatory sentences and way too many laws has created a monster. It is consuming too many of our youth, to many of our people and too many of our resources that could be put to better use.
To incarcerate one human being costs taxpayers around $30 - $40,000 per year!!!
Think about this my fellow citizens:
Today, the US is 5% of the World population and has 25% of world prison population. That is not the America I grew up in, or want my children and grandchildren to grow up in...
Do YOU?
November/December 2012
The Conservative War on Prisons
Right-wing operatives have decided that prisons are a lot like schools: hugely expensive, inefficient, and in need of root-and-branch reform.
Take Newt Gingrich, who made a promise of more incarceration an item of his 1994 Contract with America. Seventeen years later, he had changed his tune. There is an urgent need to address the astronomical growth in the prison population, with its huge costs in dollars and lost human potential, Gingrich wrote in 2011. The criminal-justice system is broken, and conservatives must lead the way in fixing it.
None of Gingrichs rivals in the vicious Republican presidential primary exploited these statements. If anything, his position is approaching party orthodoxy. The 2012 Republican platform declares, Prisons should do more than punish; they should attempt to rehabilitate and institute proven prisoner reentry systems to reduce recidivism and future victimization. Whats more, a rogues gallery of conservative crime warriors have joined Gingrichs call for Americans to rethink their incarceration reflex. They include Ed Meese, Asa Hutchinson, William Bennetteven the now-infamous American Legislative Exchange Council. Most importantly, more than a dozen states have launched serious criminal justice reform efforts in recent years, with conservatives often in the lead.
Skeptics might conclude that conservatives are only rethinking criminal justice because lockups have become too expensive. But whether prison costs too much depends on what you think of incarcerations benefits. Change is coming to criminal justice because an alliance of evangelicals and libertarians have put those benefits on trial. Discovering that the nations prison growth is morally objectionable by their own, conservative standards, they are beginning to attack itand may succeed where liberals, working the issue on their own, have, so far, failed.
This will do more than simply put the nation on a path to a more rational and humane correctional system. It will also provide an example of how bipartisan policy breakthroughs are still possible in our polarized age.
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
Thomas Jefferson
To incarcerate one human being costs taxpayers around $30 - $40,000 per year!!!
Think about this my fellow citizens:
Today, the US is 5% of the World population and has 25% of world prison population. That is not the America I grew up in, or want my children and grandchildren to grow up in...
Do YOU?
November/December 2012
The Conservative War on Prisons
Right-wing operatives have decided that prisons are a lot like schools: hugely expensive, inefficient, and in need of root-and-branch reform.
Take Newt Gingrich, who made a promise of more incarceration an item of his 1994 Contract with America. Seventeen years later, he had changed his tune. There is an urgent need to address the astronomical growth in the prison population, with its huge costs in dollars and lost human potential, Gingrich wrote in 2011. The criminal-justice system is broken, and conservatives must lead the way in fixing it.
None of Gingrichs rivals in the vicious Republican presidential primary exploited these statements. If anything, his position is approaching party orthodoxy. The 2012 Republican platform declares, Prisons should do more than punish; they should attempt to rehabilitate and institute proven prisoner reentry systems to reduce recidivism and future victimization. Whats more, a rogues gallery of conservative crime warriors have joined Gingrichs call for Americans to rethink their incarceration reflex. They include Ed Meese, Asa Hutchinson, William Bennetteven the now-infamous American Legislative Exchange Council. Most importantly, more than a dozen states have launched serious criminal justice reform efforts in recent years, with conservatives often in the lead.
Skeptics might conclude that conservatives are only rethinking criminal justice because lockups have become too expensive. But whether prison costs too much depends on what you think of incarcerations benefits. Change is coming to criminal justice because an alliance of evangelicals and libertarians have put those benefits on trial. Discovering that the nations prison growth is morally objectionable by their own, conservative standards, they are beginning to attack itand may succeed where liberals, working the issue on their own, have, so far, failed.
This will do more than simply put the nation on a path to a more rational and humane correctional system. It will also provide an example of how bipartisan policy breakthroughs are still possible in our polarized age.
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
Thomas Jefferson
