Tough On Crime

NEW YORK - For the first time in history, more than one in every 100 American adults is in jail or prison, according to a new report tracking the surge in inmate population and urging states to rein in corrections costs with alternative sentencing programs.

The report, released Thursday by the Pew Center on the States, said the 50 states spent more than $49 billion on corrections last year, up from less than $11 billion 20 years earlier. The rate of increase for prison costs was six times greater than for higher education spending, the report said.

Using updated state-by-state data, the report said 2,319,258 adults were held in U.S. prisons or jails at the start of 2008 — one out of every 99.1 adults, and more than any other country in the world.

The steadily growing inmate population "is saddling cash-strapped states with soaring costs they can ill afford and failing to have a clear impact either on recidivism or overall crime," said the report.

Democracy, as a political system, is great.. except when it appeals to societies baser emotions.

It would be interesting to conduct an experiment to see how far it could be taken. You could ask a broad sampling of Americans how severely to punish people for a variety of crimes. I suspect there would be no real upper limit to the punishments.

When you flip it back onto "democracy", as a system, it favors candidates who promise to punish criminals more and more severely. Surely, a candidate that would say that the punishments are out of line with the crimes is going to lose, every time, to the guy that wants more and more prison time for every offense.

A politic an will usually be more successful by pandering to American's hatred.. because most Americans are hateful bitches. This is especially true in "red states", and is a direct consequence of Republican politics. These policies are ruining lives, and creating roadblocks to improving the lives of poor people, who are predominately the victims of these policies.

So.. what you end up with is a system like we have today. More and more people in prison, and a disproportionate number of them being poor because they can't afford the attorneys that give a shit about them.

And so.. we end up with absurd sentences for ridiculous "crimes".. costing us more and more money.. and the worst part of all, ruining peoples lives by putting them in the hell-holes of state prisons, with zero benefit to society.