Why prisons continue to grow, even when crime declines
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Re: Why prisons continue to grow, even when crime declines
#2;tldr -
FTA "Judges are dealing with more repeat offenders now"
Seems pretty straightforward then...
Re: Why prisons continue to grow, even when crime declines
#3;tldr - FTA "Judges are dealing with more repeat offenders now" Seems pretty straightforward then...
Yeah but the US does incarcerate at a much higher rate and for much longer than comparably developed countries, prison conditions are also much worse.
Re: Why prisons continue to grow, even when crime declines
#4Stop throwing people in jail for "moral crimes" such as drug use, and we'd see a massive decline. Victimless crimes, such as contempt of court for not being "respectful" enough of a sitting judge, or the like should never send you to a cage either. One could make a massive list of the ridiculous uses of our criminal justice system, and sadly many don't see it as a problem.
Re: Why prisons continue to grow, even when crime declines
#5This argument doesn't make any sense. What would be the reason for seeing more repeat offenders other than sending more people to jail in the first place? The statistic they're observing is a RESULT of prison growth, not the cause. Obviously they correlate, but without the incarceration rate going up first, this simply doesn't make any sense - the average # of prior offenses can't increase unless the rate of conviction increases first (and must lag by the average recidivism time), so average # of prior offenses is clearly not a leading cause.
In any case, you can easily see that the incarceration rate grew at a pace far in excess of the crime rates: http://www.usprisonculture.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/...
The whole idea that the two are related in any way, including this one, is verkakte.
Re: Why prisons continue to grow, even when crime declines
#6;tldr - FTA "Judges are dealing with more repeat offenders now" Seems pretty straightforward then...
Yeah but the US does incarcerate at a much higher rate and for much longer than comparably developed countries, prison conditions are also much worse.
From what I've heard, Japanese prisons are even worse than US prisons.
Re: Why prisons continue to grow, even when crime declines
#7Stop throwing people in jail for "moral crimes" such as drug use, and we'd see a massive decline. Victimless crimes, such as contempt of court for not being "respectful" enough of a sitting judge, or the like should never send you to a cage either. One could make a massive list of the ridiculous uses of our criminal justice system, and sadly many don't see it as a problem.
Drug crimes cover only 16% of inmates in US state prisons [1]. It's higher in Federal institutions, but that's only about 15% of total inmates.
I don't disagree that many drug offenders probably shouldn't be in jail, but the US could release all of them and we'd still have the highest incarceration rate in the world.
[1] http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p13.pdf (table 13)
Re: Why prisons continue to grow, even when crime declines
#8Stop throwing people in jail for "moral crimes" such as drug use, and we'd see a massive decline. Victimless crimes, such as contempt of court for not being "respectful" enough of a sitting judge, or the like should never send you to a cage either. One could make a massive list of the ridiculous uses of our criminal justice system, and sadly many don't see it as a problem.
Contempt of court is not a victimless crime. Nobody gets sent to jail just for being disrespectful--they get held in contempt for disrupting the process other people rely on to adjudicate their rights.
Re: Why prisons continue to grow, even when crime declines
#9Stop throwing people in jail for "moral crimes" such as drug use, and we'd see a massive decline. Victimless crimes, such as contempt of court for not being "respectful" enough of a sitting judge, or the like should never send you to a cage either. One could make a massive list of the ridiculous uses of our criminal justice system, and sadly many don't see it as a problem.
Contempt of court is not a victimless crime. Nobody gets sent to jail just for being disrespectful--they get held in contempt for disrupting the process other people rely on to adjudicate their rights.
So telling a judge to go fuck himself ought to get you some time?
Re: Why prisons continue to grow, even when crime declines
#10Stop throwing people in jail for "moral crimes" such as drug use, and we'd see a massive decline. Victimless crimes, such as contempt of court for not being "respectful" enough of a sitting judge, or the like should never send you to a cage either. One could make a massive list of the ridiculous uses of our criminal justice system, and sadly many don't see it as a problem.
Drug crimes cover only 16% of inmates in US state prisons [1]. It's higher in Federal institutions, but that's only about 15% of total inmates. I don't disagree that many drug offenders probably shouldn't be in jail, but the US could release all of them and we'd still have the highest incarceration rate in the world. [1] http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p13.pdf (table 13)
Take another look at this data from same source regarding Federal instead of State:
Half of males (50%) and more than half of females (59%) in federal prison were serving time for drug offenses on September 30, 2014.[1]
[1] http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p14.pdf
How many started that way or their crime involved weapons/money that were involved in a drug operation? How many repeat or lifetime criminals were first created with a non-violent drug crime?
If it is non-violent it should not be something that locks you up ever as that is cruel and unusual punishment, outside the law that is abduction and locking them up in a box.
Jailing non-violent offenses costs the taxpayer and the individual more to no benefit. There should be payment penalties and temporary records for those that do repeat offenses, real rehabilitation, mental help, also job programs for them if desired. All of that would probably be cheaper than creating lifetime criminals.
Not just for non-violent drug offenses, when I hear about people stealing cars for instance and getting locked up it makes no sense. Insurance exists, and we want the criminal out working to pay that back not debt taxpayers 30k+ per year, it is a loss all around and compounding.