California May Cut Prison Population By 40%

The idea of prison is fundamentally flawed to begin with. It's expensive, overused and ineffective. We need to overhaul the way we deal with criminals in this country and recognize the fact that what we're doing now is stupid.

  • Less than 10% of offenders ever actually end up in prison, and our capacity is severely strained even then - so it would be impractical to apply this system-wide as an effective solution.
  • The vast majority of offenders who go into prison will also leave prison at some point. Prison typically does not teach inmates to be law-abiding citizens; it's the best possible networking opportunity to turn shady characters into serious bad guys. They may go in as directionless losers, but they come out as hardened predators. It's like filtering algae slime out of a stream, soaking it in a vat of crude oil, and then pouring it back in.
  • Criminals who are taken off the street will be rapidly replaced by new people who are either more ambitious or more desperate than those who came before them. When a gang or crime ring is broken up by the authorities, their territory is quickly absorbed by the competition and new people are rapidly recruited from anyone who is available. This often leads to violence and turf wars.
  • Prison addresses the symptoms, but does nothing about the root causes of the problem. As a harsh beating stick that isn't even effective at turning around behavior, it guarantees that the offender and their family will view the law in an "us vs. them" mindset. That's not healthy, and it does nothing for the next generation.
  • Prison creates a rite of passage. Gang members often brag about their time in prison, the way most people do about their military service, job, or years spent in college. They make prison into something for the younger groups to strive for rather than avoid.
 
I once read that punishment must be cruel and unusual to be effective. If it is the usual, it's just another bad day. If it isn't cruel, where's the punishment? Our state and federal governments have been so busy making prisoners comfortable, many of them live better than law abiding citizens.
 
so I see our "fearless" leaders wanting to free prisoners.... and take away our firearms... who is electing these idiots? and why?
 
Scarecrow said:
so I see our "fearless" leaders wanting to free prisoners.... and take away our firearms... who is electing these idiots? and why?
Click to expand...

If you postulate the Right is made up of rational, intellegent people who have a well thought out ideology and belief system and they make up about 40% of the population, and the Left is similar in size and intellegence, you have 40% of the people vs 40% of the people.
The people who choose the elected officials are the remaining 20%, you know the morons who have given no thought towards their belief system, have no understanding of the world around us, whose education on government comes from watching Friends reruns.

In other words, our elected officials are chosen by the stupidest people on the planet...
 
Wolfling68 said:
If you postulate the Right is made up of rational, intellegent people who have a well thought out ideology and belief system and they make up about 40% of the population, and the Left is similar in size and intellegence, you have 40% of the people vs 40% of the people.
The people who choose the elected officials are the remaining 20%, you know the morons who have given no thought towards their belief system, have no understanding of the world around us, whose education on government comes from watching Friends reruns.

In other words, our elected officials are chosen by the stupidest people on the planet...
Click to expand...

Well, the stupidest in the country, anyway.:biggrin:
 
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