How many people we kept in jail LAST YEAR

I wasn't saying that we should release the drug offenders unconditionally, especially if they are just going to commit another crime to support their habit. I do think that pot should be legal, regulated and taxed though.
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I'd be for sending them to Vancouver Canada so they can recieve free heroin from the socialists up there. Of course brilliant ideas like free heroin for dirtbags never has to have a positive outcome, it just has to be implemented by do-gooders who mean well. :rolleyes: :barf:
 
I'd be for sending them to Vancouver Canada so they can recieve free heroin from the socialists up there. Of course brilliant ideas like free heroin for dirtbags never has to have a positive outcome, it just has to be implemented by do-gooders who mean well.
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Never had a good outcome? I remember when they did that in a small city in England. They had terrible drug related crimes and open air drug market everywhere. Within a year they had no drug market, the burgarlies dropped immensly, and the drug addicts who joined the program were able to keep jobs and get treatment. If I remember correctly it was stopped not because it wasn't working but because conservatives just didn't like the idea. Not ONE heroine addict I have ever met thought he was going to become addicted (shoulda been obvous though) and almost all of them want to stop. They need SOME kinda help, not put into the same place as gangbangers that got there for murder. It would be a whole lot cheaper too. These ideas just have a stigma (like the one you mentioned) attached and so they are never tried. Instead we just build more multimillion dollar prisons and pay to keep them there.
 
Many people serve in "jail" for pot posession (I may have mispoke slightly). Many of the people who are in prison do worse thing like sell pot or steal to support their heroine habit. You mentioned an over simplification? Well just look at the stats that say that most of the prisoners are drug users that did not commit a violent crime. I'm not saying that they are not bad people now I'm just saying that they can become good people. And if we can get them to stop drug abuse then WE will have to spend billions less on keeping them in jail each year.
As far as those kids that grow up in the innercity or nearby suburbs that gain more respect from going to jail, well you're right about part of that. If there was more intervention in their neighborhood and had a better family life as well then that would not be the case for them. I am pretty sure that they are also not the majority of criminals in prisons and evevn if they were then why are we putting non violent criminals, that made serious life mistakes that were related to drug abuse, into the same prisons as the ones that will make them into violent criminals. They have to get out of prison sometime and now we have a bigger problem to deal with. Unless you put all criminals in for LIFE, you have to rehabilitate the ones you can and drug abusers are a lot easier to rehab than the gang thugs that make up smaller numbers. So unless we want to commit mass murder or build enough jails for trillions of dollars to keep them in for life we need to do something different than the path we are taking.
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Well said, Let mew tell you im pretty dam right wing and proud and have loads of respect for our men in blue,servicemen,and firemen that put themselves on the line each and every day so that we can be safe. I cannot emphasize that point enough! BUT there are way to may laws, we are extremely overregulated. Many good people are one mistake away from going to jail, seriously! Nonviolent and non-theft related drug offenders especially 1st timers should be cut some slack. These minimum stututes are insane. Some guy doing a years time for a joint in his ashtray is asiniine and very expensive to ME AND YOU, in other words good citizeans contributing to society. Taxes are so out of control and this issue is part of the problem.
But child molesters are being let out in 3-5 years. there is something very wrong with this picture!
 
Now to the other side ...

with the sheer number of local, state, and federal laws on the books all of us at one time or another are a criminal. i would agree that many that go to either jail or prison may not have hurt anyone but themselves. in these cases it was politicians and their laws that made the criminal, not the person's actions.
 
... and back again

in my life i have know many people that use drugs. in order to use they must posses. most of them have been arrested for possession. some multiple times.

they are in neither jail nor prison.

the ones that ended up incarcerated were the ones that did something bad to someone else: assault, battery, theft, murder.

heck, i know people with 3+ DUI convictions that still drive to the bar on a regular basis. they won't end up in prison until they kill someone.

IMO the majority of folks that are incarcerated did something to deserve it.
 
FrankDrebin: I tried but you need at least the persons last or first name to search. Take a look at the minimum sentences for drugs (nonviolent) and tell me that they are reasonable. It is plain silly and expensive and believe me im not advocating drug use by no means, but I am tired of paying through my nose in taxes and like i said this is one small part of the problem.
 
redhawk41: Most are but think of that. That means the others are not and thats wrong. Thse are peoples lives we are talking about and keep in mind people who have not hurt or robbed anyone. I mean our judicial law system will never be perfect but If you do the research , I think you will see that we can do something about our Minimum sentence statutes and this will help alleviate some overcrowding and help the LEOS focus on the real BADGUYS.
 
sorry Red I was on fire. Its a passionate subject for me. Its tax time and I am paying close to 50 % to uncle suger! I really have done this research and was appalled at the # of inmates w nonviolent offenses in the can for 1-3 years.
 
"Non-violent offenses" does not necessarily equal "drug offenses".

I steal your entire savings account by way of forgery, and it's classified as a non-violent offense.

You come out of Wally World and your car has been transported to a chop shop, leaving you and your children stranded 30 miles from home, it's a non-violent offense.

LawDog
 
IMO the majority of folks that are incarcerated did something to deserve it.
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And in my opinion this only proves what a good job the Media does in convincing us that, "if the government says so, it must be right". A "majority" deserve it? What about the other 49%? Are they just "Casualties of War" (The War on Drugs)?

If you're willing to extend the thinking to all other types of criminal transgression including unknown "conspracy to" in the firearms world, the world of home defense, the world of Free Speech and the like; well, that's a sad commentary on the National Attitude.
Rich
 
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/welcome.html

Click on 'Prisons' under the 'Corrections' tab.

For the year 2001, the latest tabulated year, we find the following breakdown by Most Serious Offense. Do note that the Drug category is for all drug charges, to include simple possession.

  • Crimes of violence: 49% of the prison population.
  • Crimes involving property, no violence: 19%
  • Crimes against public order: 11%
  • Crimes involving drugs: 20%

Now, math was never my strong suit, but last I checked 20% is about a fifth, somewhat less than fully half.

So. All drug offenses as the most serious crime sentenced for in 2001 came to a fifth of the prison population. Bearing in mind that all drug offenses includes trafficking, manufacturing and on down the list to simple possession, we can probably infer that the prison population of those whose most serious crime was simple possession is somewhat less than 1/5 of the total prison population in 2001.

The stats are on the BOP site listed up top, if anyone wants to plough through them.

LawDog
 
Lawdog; Someone who steals your car and steals your savings should go to jail PERIOD. and not for 1-2 years like they are being sentenced now. But again non-violent offenses besides white collar crimes are overboard and creates overpop which in turn cost us in money and costs these poor parents of these missing and molested children's predators ( such as that vermin in Florida) to be released beacause of crowded jails. And Rich, AMEN.

For the record, I am not advocating drug use or even legalization except for maybe Pot.
 
http://www.cjcj.org/pubs/poor/pp.html
Read this if you like.

we can probably infer that the prison population of those whose most serious crime was simple possession is somewhat less than 1/5 of the total population in 2001.
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That tranlates to hundreds of millions of people at 30,000 dollars a year to house. It's like a mega welfare system, one bigger than the most flaming liberal could even conjure up.
 
middle of the road?

i guess it is hard for me to really say where i stand on this issue.

myself, i have only gotten into trouble with parents, teachers, police when i did something to deserve it. maybe it is to much to extend that onto the rest of humanity.

i have known plenty of people that got busted for drugs that never ended up with much more than probation. i have also know plenty of people that commited violent offenses and did end up in prison. i just don't know anyone that got into trouble with the law that didn't deserve at least part of what they got. again, maybe it is to much to extend that onto the rest of humanity.

i definitely believe that the laws governing this country today have become way to complicated. when you have laws on the books that make it illegal to whistle under water, well... and it is said "you can't legislate morality" which seems to be happening more and more, but whos morality? like a server running windows, it gets too bogged down in its own processes and needs to be rebooted every so often, which is why we have the 2nd. to reboot the server.

as far as "conspiracy to", i've conspired lots of things in my own mind, should i be put in prison? i suppose if some had their way, just thinking outside the box would land you in the clink. and the way technology is progressing, that day may come sooner than we are aware.

and now for the mystical: i believe in karma and cause-effect to much to believe that someone in prison isn't there for some reason. we can't see beyond the world that we have created for ourselves through tv and such, to see what it is that really drives it. so we make judgments based on what we know, even if what we know is totally wrong. kinda like telling columbus he was going to fall of the edge of the world. in the end we all have to answer for our actions in one way or another. no one is truly innocent.

YMMV

i would hope that i could stand by these convictions if, for some reason, i found myself in prison. i guess i would really have to evaluate my life and realise that i did something to put myself in this position.
 
Lawdog,
One of the earlier arguments was that the drug addicts do things to support their habits and so most of the crimes are drug related but if we use those stats you brought up then we still get more than 20% drug related or partialy caused because of use that are nonviolent (a lot of white collar crimes are drug related as well). And Azmax has a very good point- unless we are willing to raise our taxes by another 10% (guesstimate) to pay for many more prisons then the system will have to (by current laws) release people that deserve to be there for life (or at least a lot longer). The child molester in Fla is a good example. In most prisons (and I think federal as well) they give credit for time sereved if the prisoner has to share a cell that was built for one. This time off can be as much as 1 day credit for 2 days served. Almost every prison and jail in this country is overcrowded and so this happens everywhere, or soon will.
 
Under mandatory minimum sentencing and habitual offender schemes, high-level drug offenders continually plea-bargain their way to reduced sentences, while low-level offenders, with no information to trade for leniency, are sentenced to unusually long terms.

The average sentence for a first time, non-violent drug offender is longer than the average sentence for rape, child molestation, bank robbery or manslaughter.

This is according to Federal Judicial Center Report, 2004
 
"That tranlates to hundreds of millions of people at 30,000 dollars a year to house."

Well, since the number of people incarcerated last year, as posted at the top of this thread, was said to be a little over 2 million, I would guess that 1/5 of the total population would be somewhat less than hundreds of millions.

Tim
 
What about all those plumbers, carpenters, electricians, and out-of-work engineers who missed two child support payments? I didn't see their numbers represented in the figures. Hell- I was 17 days late and was sentenced to 30 days in the klink (suspended) and only later was the accounting error discovered and that I was actually 15 days in advance!

After having WORKED in the jail as a jailer I can say there are few jobs more depressing and few cops who long to work in the jail for long before they hit the streets. In our department, you worked the jail first for six months, then you hit the streets (a kinda "meet who you will be working with program").

Sadly, we had a child molester (James Lambert- I think it is safe to say names since he'd been convicted EIGHT TIMES!!!) who was released because he was a severe epileptic and went into episodes that cost the county money. Then there was Mr. Wells, who for all intents and purposes made a stupid choice but was as decent a human being I've ever been around, and would trust my kids with. They kept him around a real long time.

What I really like is releasing child molesters who have no mandatory minimums so that we can keep the likes of the old hippies in jail who do have a mandatory minimum for growing a garden in their basements. :(

It isn't all bad people in jail. There are lots of them to be sure, but there are also quite a few stupid people also. I'd venture to guess there are a few true victims too. I couldn't take it anymore and quit after four months.
 
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