At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

Post by standardUser » Sat, Aug 27, 2022, 7:52 PM UTC

ryan93 wrote: post #126

standardUser wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if we decriminalized every "crime" that didn't have a victim. We might actually be able to prevent more real crime, like violent crime and sexual assault and large-scale theft and fraud!

A majority of prisoners are in for violent crime; or committed a violent crime and pled down. IF more resources were devoted to fighting heinous crimes prison populations would increase since many murders and to a much larger extent rape go unsolved. Not to mention fraud and child abuse.

Post by gregsadetsky » Sat, Aug 27, 2022, 7:52 PM UTC

etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #94

standardUser wrote: post #13

What drives me absolutely insane about stories like this is that so many of the people suffering under these policies are guilty of little more than market participation. The government strains, at extraordinary expense, to pretend they can stop drugs from being made, bought and sold, but they can't. They simply can't. Countless laws, countless billions of dollars and countless ruined lives later, drugs are no less p…

Plenty of countries, especially in Asia, but also the UAE and possibly others, have successfully stopped nearly all drug use and trade with heavy-handed policies. You may not like what it took to get done, but it did work. I'm not advocating for the heavy-handed approach, but it's intellectually dishonest to say that it can't work. Also, the other countries have done it with a much smaller imprisonment per capita.

Post by superchroma » Sat, Aug 27, 2022, 7:53 PM UTC

wizofaus wrote: post #99

metadat wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. It's a statistic many people are not aware of. Additionally, if you look at the racial breakdown of who's incarcerated in the USA, it's disproportionately black relative to number of blacks per capita residing in the country. Blacks are incarcerated at 5x the rate of whites, and make up 40% of all incarcerated individuals. This is insane.

Sadly it's even worse in Australia, where it's closer to 10x the rate for indigenous vs non-indigenous. I'd be horrified to find out they were expected to pay for their time behind bars though.

Post by etaioinshrdlu » Sat, Aug 27, 2022, 7:53 PM UTC

superchroma wrote: post #130

etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of countries, especially in Asia, but also the UAE and possibly others, have successfully stopped nearly all drug use and trade with heavy-handed policies. You may not like what it took to get done, but it did work. I'm not advocating for the heavy-handed approach, but it's intellectually dishonest to say that it can't work. Also, the other countries have done it with a much smaller imprisonment per capita.

It can't work. Prisons in places like Indonesia and the Philippines are objectively degrading and inhumane. That's not winning, and that's not a working system. That's focusing on one aspect of a greater whole at the expense of our humanity. America has had more than a fair go at a heavy handed anti-drug policy and it was and continues to be a spectacular failure. To sit here at the end of it and say that they didn't…

Post by standardUser » Sat, Aug 27, 2022, 7:54 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #90

pydry wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you assume that the original intent was to find the most socially acceptable way to criminalize minorities and "social undesirables" (e.g. hippies) and go all in on it, it makes a lot more sense.

You might assume that, but it would be a questionable assumption. Opium was banned in China (where is was used by ordinary denizens of that country, not minorities) well before the West followed suit.