Lincolnite

What positives? Uh, it will keep more criminals off the streets?

speeding and other moving violations along that section of West O Street?

yes, let’s be the first society ever to reach the coveted 2% of the total population in prison mark. That oughta help us maintain our dwindling position of power on the world stage.

You mean we don’t actually need the jails? The overcrowding currently isn’t real? I’d love to not have too many people in prison, but when I read my LJS every day, it certainly seems that there are many people breaking the law. I don’t think of it in terms of percentages, and if people aren’t a true danger to me and you, then maybe probation will suffice. However, wouldn’t having bad people off the streets be considered a “positive”?

I’d like to see the cost lower by not offering luxuries such as TV…make the stay there as primitive as possible so the bad guys don’t want to stay or come back.  No Frills Prison, with pink, comes to mind.
If you have a bad check writer give him a tatoo on his writing hand so merchants can see he’s a bad check writer.  There are other ways to identify & punish those bad guys of lesser crimes.

I think that many of those in our prisons for non-violent crimes should be given some other form of punishment. we keep throwing kids who get caught with a little dope in prison. it is a waste of money, and ineffective. A criminologist will tell you that those in prison for petty crimes just learn how to be hardened criminals in their time locked up.

What comes to mind is the idiot who filed the lawsuit because he wasn’t getting his favorite show on cable.  And the other one who’s not getting his porn magazine. Unreal! 

And to commenter Andrew, are you going to open your home to all those “kids” who get caught with “a little dope”?

certainly not. but how many of them should i pay for in prisons for an offense i’m not really concerned about? I wouldn’t mind paying for them to be in jail if I was given some legit evidence that showed that non-violent offenders actually came out of prison ready to join law-abiding society instead of being newly trained career criminals instead of kids who made a few bad decisions. Our prison system is a failure. It produces much more crime than it protects us from, and with a few exceptions of seriously demented people, it’s not something I am willing to pay for. Especially, when the money could be much more useful when used to keep the kids in school and give them jobs before they resort to crime to make a living. I’d rather we had a proactive legal system than a reactive one.

I think we should let everyone (except for the ‘few exceptions of seriously demented people’) out of prison.  And for their troubles, we’ll cut them a check for $100k, so hopefully they can stay in school and get a job so they don’t commit anymore crimes.  We can also ask them nicely not to break the law.  But if they do, we’ll just blame ourselves for having not given them enough money and attention.

But no amount of money will keep an at-risk child in school.  The at-risk child has to be removed from their dope smoking crack using parents who don’t give a crap whether the kid goes to school or not. 

And since you don’t want to pay for prisoners, would you be willing to pay for more child protective services then? 

I challenge anyone who doesn’t believe this country’s social problems aren’t directly related to basic parenting to visit HHS and volunteer with a case worker for a week.

I agree. and I have no problem paying to prevent all of these kids from getting into a bad environment in the first place, although with the economy being the way it is, it will be difficult. Anyone who would rather pay to punish than to prevent the problem in the first place is running a race they can never win.

it’s not really surprising that the American response to “too much crime” is “not enough prisons.”

also…
no matter what the circumstances before entering the CJS, they will almost always come out much worse than when they went in. The CJS is perhaps the least successful institution in this country, and that says a lot with the economy and the health care system, and the education system the way they are.