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Chart Of The Day – America’s Prison Population Over The Past 100 Years
Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
There are 2.3 million Americans in prison or jail. The U.S. has 5 percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of its prisoners. One in three black men can expect to spend time in prison. There are 2.7 million minors with an incarcerated parent. The imprisonment rate has grown by more than 400 percent since 1970.
Recent research suggests that incarceration has lost its potency. A report released this week from the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law finds that increased incarceration has had a very limited effect on crime over the past two and a half decades.
– From today’s Five-Thrity-Eight article: The Imprisoner’s Dilemma
The sickening and absurd rate of incarceration in these United States has been a frequent topic of conversation here at Liberty Blitzkrieg over the years (links at the end). In our national insanity, the U.S. has only 5% of the worlds population, yet 25% of its prisoners. Many of these people have no business being locked in a cage to begin with, and are wasting their lives away for committing “victimless crimes,” i.e. for no good reason.
While the immorality of locking up so many of our fellow citizens for non-crimes should be readily apparent, today’s article from Five-Thirty-Eight offers evidence that America’s incarceration rate has become so saturated that it has absolutely no meaningful impact in lowering crimes rates anyway. The time for prison reform and the elimination of mandatory minimum sentences is long overdue.
From Five-Thirty-Eight:
There are 2.3 million Americans in prison or jail. The U.S. has 5 percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of its prisoners. One in three black men can expect to spend time in prison. There are 2.7 million minors with an incarcerated parent. The imprisonment rate has grown by more than 400 percent since 1970.
It’s supposed to help the country reduce crime in two ways: incapacitation — it’s hard to be a habitual offender while in prison — or deterrence — people scared of prison may do their best to not end up there.
But recent research suggests that incarceration has lost its potency. A reportreleased this week from the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law finds that increased incarceration has had a very limited effect on crime over the past two and a half decades.
At incarceration’s current elevated levels, the effect of more incarceration on crime is not statistically different than zero. It’s no longer working.
In 1970, there were just shy of 200,000 Americans in prison. Today there are more than 1.5 million — 496 prisoners for every 100,000 people. That’s more than in any developed country. According to the International Centre for Prison Studies, the imprisonment rate in Russia is 467. In the U.K., it’s 148. In France, 102. In Germany, it’s 76. In Japan, 50.
It’s because of these elevated levels that we’re likely to see diminishing returns. If we assume — fairly! — that the criminal justice system tends to incarcerate the worst offenders first, it becomes clear why. Once the worst offenders are in prison, each additional prisoner will yield less benefit in the form of reduced crime. Increased incarceration — and its incapacitation effect — loses its bite. And at its world-historic level, it’s not surprising that it would’ve lost nearly all of it.
And diminishing returns are what we saw. Crime rates dropped as incarceration rates rose, for a time, but incarceration’s effect on crime weakened as more people were imprisoned. An increase in incarceration was responsible for something like 5 percent of the decrease in crime in the 1990s, when its levels were lower, but has played no meaningful role since. If I were speaking to a fellow economist, I’d say the incarceration elasticity of crime is not distinguishable from zero. At a cocktail party, I’d say that crime no longer responds to changes in incarceration.
Evidence of incarceration’s diminishing returns can be found outside of big data sets and regression models, too. It can also be found via a natural experiment. A report from the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project compared the prisoner releases from California’s realignment with similar releases in Italy, following clemency legislation passed by the Italian Parliament. California saw no discernable change in crime. Italy saw a spike in crime. The reason? California’s incarceration rate was high, and Italy’s was low. Italy hadn’t yet experienced dramatically diminishing returns.
Now here’s the money shot. U.S. imprisonment rate per 100,000 people since 1880:
Land of the free indeed. Can we reverse this nonsense already?
* * *
For related articles, see:
The United States: 5% of the World’s Population, 25% of its Prisoners
Land of the Free: American Police Make an Arrest Every 2 Seconds in 2012
A Deep Look into the Shady World of the Private Prison Industry
Poverty Profiteering in 2014 – Introducing Private Probation Companies
»
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There is plenty of cash to made of prisoners and people think slavery ended.
Now let's see a graph of time vs privatization of prisons. Also, time vs progress of Gangsta rap....
It's the fault of a broken system, but that doesn't mean that most prisoners somehow didn't fuck up.
Those who've been to prison have nothing to lose by committing future crimes, because just like a credit score and report, their reputation is shot. They can't get jobs, certainly not good jobs, and prison may actually benefit them in terms of food, housing and social prospects.
The LBJ/Democrat War on Poverty slash war on families slash monster vote buying policy started a decade and some change before the incarceration hockey stick. Boys without fathers, incentivized by your tax dollar. A war more costly, in dollar terms, than all our shooting wars combined. And we lost.
They're trying to build a prison!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yndfqN1VKhY
Prison is just an extention of the FSA bennies ..it's warm. Free food. Free ass. Free drugs.....free friends
So this is how the blacks behave after getting their snivil rights?
"Over the course of the 1990s, crime rates dropped, on average, by more than one-third. It was a historic anomaly; one that scholar Frank Zimring dubbed “the great American crime decline.” No one was sure how long the trend would last. Then, in 2010, the Bureau of Justice Statistics announced that the homicide rate had reached a four-decade low. (Since then, overall crime rates have remained relatively flat.)"
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2014/11/24/10-not-entirely-crazy-theories-explaining-the-great-crime-decline
the ramp up is mirrored by the cia/gb1's importation of cocaine into bill clinton's arkansas under the iran contra umbrella.
this period is also why hillary clinton the entitled thinks she is due the presidency, for being a good doormat.
The date of banning lead in gasoline correlates with drops in violent crime in every country, with a delay of around 15 years between the end of lead and the beginning of the violent crime drop. Exposure to lead in childhood drops IQ and increases impulsiveness.
Wars are bad!!! The war on drugs is also responsible. Going to prison for possessing a plant? Then they get out and can't find a job because they are felons. So they resort to more black market jobs and wind back in the pen. All these wars need to end!
I got a little upset wehn I was researching hemp wicks for my candles with silver coins (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ScentSavers?ref=hdr_shop_menu). I had to make sure that I could use a natural plant in my product. Strangely enough it is legal to buy hemp, but you can't grow it (exceopt for a handful of states). Hopefully this will change along with our broken financial and poltical systems. They are, of course, all connected.
There's a lot of money made, by the gov., in the drug war. They seize all the cash the dealers use, then release said dealers so they can harvest even more cash. That's why it's a revolving door. The state is the queen bee. The dealers are the worker bees. It's a state run enterprise from the C eye A monopolizing overseas growing fields, to the local sheriff buying new equipment with cash forfeitures.
War on drugs and poverty. The most costly American wars ever.
Wars start and end. And this is where it starts.
Tricky little d icky and I am not a crook.
Our great war on drugs started by the little dick.
The end of what was our way of life.
Charts with real info don't lie.
The timeline matches perfectly with the replacement of Common Law with Statutory law. Common Law = Their must be a injured party, Statutory Law = There could be a injured party from your actions. One is nanny state based the other is grounded in what happened, who got hurt.
Also, coincided with fiat money replacing gold. That's how all the dishonest programs are funded.
The spike occurs at the time that the "war on drugs" was launched.
Also when all those children from broken welfare homes became teenagers. The perfect storm.
"Now let's see a graph of time vs privatization of prisons." That is it right there.
Prisons are profit centers that coincide with a lot of the points made by other commenters: getting off the Gold standard, public debt, the "war on drugs & poverty", etc.
Local prison run by the county charges $40/day to each prisoner, usually paid by Parents or other family members.
Prisons have become a kind of "reverse college" where profits are made and petty crime youngsters are trained to become professional adult career criminals.
The prison industrial complex needs to have new victims to justfy its budget like the industrial military complex needs more wars.
Anyone think this might have something to do with it?:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nSTO-vZpSgc/TP_WD_ih6VI/AAAAAAAAJ6w/BVCm5FxSY68/s1600/snap2.png
Funny how when you subsidize something, you tend to get more of it.
It was the 1960's when we really started to subsidize the under-classes.
Idle hands?
Go figure...
It is a mirror image of this.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/GFDEGDQ188S
Good one. Misallocation of resources.
What else happened in the '70's? No more 'Cool Hand Luke' prisons, now you have weight rooms, good food, television, college classes, and on and on and on.... It didn't loose it's potency because more people were incarcerated, it lost it's potency because we made it practically as comfortable as the local Holiday Inn.
It's part of their 'union' accomodations. Most prisoners are drug dealers. The state, basically, employs them thru arrest, forfeiture and release.
I know what you're talking about with the prisons. I had an uncle, prison warden, before the Welfare State, who was dragged thru the mud over an inmate's death. New York Yankee reporters came down south to vilify him in the press, during his trial. Fortunately, he was aquitted by his Southern peers.
Catch and release of career criminals keeps the police, lawyers, and judges employed.
The 16th Amendment made all Americans slaves. The chart above merely shows corporate monopolists profiteering off the predictable behavior of stupid, violent, remorseless savages.
Went up fast after 1971. (what happened in 1971 ?)
Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?
Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.
Neil Young
Nixon ended convertibility of the U.S. dollar to gold and everything inflated.
Nixon ended convertibility of the U.S. dollar to gold and everything inflated.
This ain't no way to honor black history month. 10% population black 50% prison population black. Only the banks can use bad math and get away with it. Ain't no getting away from this equation.
Black History Month, just like ML Koon day are nothing but PC appeasement events that have no basis in reality. Blacks have destroyed far more than they have built in the USA. I have no problem locking up millions more of them!
It happend right at the end of the 60's right when the baby boomer progressives took over. Margaret Sanger would be proud..
Not to mention it was right around the time that feminism began, and women started entering the worforce in droves.
Newly-unemployed men (the lowest-skilled ones with marginal utility) with nothing to do but cause trouble?
Interesting...
The lowest skilled ones who became state sponsored drug dealers. Look at the demographics of prisons before 1971 vs. now. The state started running a drug operation during Vietnam. Google Alford McCoy.
Wrong. Sanger wanted the underclass sterilized. There's more grift in incarceration/redistribution, so USSA got those rackets instead.
Right putting them in jail for life is another form of sterlization
We could do better.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/gang-leader-allegedly-fathers-c...
Interesting how the war on poverty and war on drugs was started in the 70s?? Correlation? A perfect example of government effectiveness
GYWO
http://www.austinchronicle.com/binary/acf9/pols_feature-16888.jpeg
Evil defeated good on 11/22/1963. We have lived under Communism ever since, regardless of what Lee Greenwood sang.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf8hfZuzw_A
We also went off the gold standard at this same time.
And we went off the gold standard because we ran out of cheap domestic oil. Same reason we opened China and shipped all manufacturing there. All started at the same time... remarkable.
It went exponential precisely the day after Nixon closed the gold window. Honest money keeps people honest. Fabricated money changes the rules and morals - FOR EVERYBODY and EVERYTHING. And I'm thinking 90% of those folks in jail, probably ought not to really be there.
Tricky Dick undermined Justice for All.
Killed it, he did.
Just like the potuses before and after dick trickster. His other legacy is creating a relationship with china. That's going very well, for who, china...
+1 Pareto
The war on drugs started under Nixon too. That actually started a few months before the Nixon Shock.
I agree with you to a point..but id say your 90% estimate is a bit of a stretch.
Drugs are nearly 2/3 rd's when you account for drug related offenses like theft and guns.
http://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offenses.jsp
I retired from a Cal. joint- I would say most are in State pens for armed robbery, violence of some sort, sex crimes and murder- all the low level- non violent incarcerates were sent out of state because we had 120-150 housed in gyms on an already crowded yard which never were used for basketball games.. we were always at max capacity.
But to say 90 percent of my boarders were in for minor drug charges is not even close.
yah. i know. i was just trying to get at the notion that as entitlements rose, as a result of the state assuming its coddling role - and that the only way it could pay for it was through a steady erosion of currency - and the construction of various prohibitions - we have created two things: (1) unambiguiosly entitled marginalized classes of people, and (2) laws that make criminals out of basically honest people. but yeah - for sure - i no doubt exagerated with 90.
Canada's PM keeps this chart under his mattress...
along with the autograph from the queen.
some think the queen is dorian gray and will live forever.
I say she is Dorian HEY!, You old shriveled up raison, are you ever gonna die?
But if we let a bunch of people out of jail that would necessarily mean a higher percentage of black people would be let out relative to whites.
There you go, yet again, blacks get every damn thing in this socialist dystopia. And now they want freedom, too????
I mean limited government is great for "us", so long as the negros have absolutely all of their freedom and liberties restricted by that same gubmint.
I mean, fair is fair. The blacks get what they deserve.
Amigo the negros will not be coddled by white guilt once the conversion to Mehico Norte is complete. Negros will have to work to provide for themselves once again. The great white guilt subsidizing will be over Amigo!
Cash that EBT while you still can. Rapido, andele!
The blacks are being used (born and raised on EBT) by the welfare state to enrich the narco state.
We can thank Ronald Reagan for the war on the drugs and each consecutive President and their militarization of the police for the wonderful prison industrial complex.
Even Nancy smoked pot according to Reagan - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhEJ8gm8aL4 You can see it in his own words right nere.
Another war won here. It's about the battle, but to build up their forces to fight their own people.
2000 armed personnel to combat a skinny pressure cooker bomber. Impressive.
Nancy smoked pot? All Ronnie needed was a handful of jelly beans and he was under your command.
Ronnie's second in command was a former Narco import agency director. It was all by design. I wonder if he knew how he was being used? Even, if he did, I doubt he was willing to take another bullet!
CIA = Cocaine Import Agency
Thanks to COINTELPRO in the sixties, the death of heavy industry in LA in the '70s and the business men from South America in the '80s, and yes the cowboys from Langley.
Bastards of the Party is ten years old but I just came across it the other day. Worth a watch -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US0bgNJAGZg
End the complete failure that is the war on drugs, and the statistics are not so out of line. Prohibition has proven to be a total mess that only encourages drug cartels and criminal behavior. If we are truly free then we can put whatever we want into our own bodies and be responsible for the consequences, this nanny state BS is getting out of control...
The CIA will never allow it, they depend on their drug profits too much. And of course the law enforcement community doesn't want to lose their jobs.
What happened in 1970?
Nixon started the war on drugs in 1971. Reagan kicked it up a few notches.
They should quit pretending and adopt the North Korean model of the country as a vast prison labor/welfare/surveillance camp. Work to eat and if you don't work, you eat better with free spyphones and state-praising music videos, and militarized police officers earn bonuses for every non-righteous kill.
Private Prison contracts have minimum occupancy thresholds. So even if a cell is empty you're paying for it...so might as well rustle up some jailbirds.
Bobby, it looks like you should be paroled this time around but we really just can't afford to lose the head count right now.
Yes, we also operate the parole board. They are our employees. So how about an easier job say, in the laundry?
Police in many cities no longer respond to "low level crime." It will go the other way, urbanization and lots more local policing led to the decline in lynching. As society shuts down due to the coming economic collapse, locals will police themselves again. Lynching will make a comeback as society gradually goes into depression and crime goes up!
The upturn in prison populations coincides with the decline of lynching. There is no longer the requisite amount of fear out there.
In America, you have your 'free' range sheep and your pinned in sheep.
Think of all the wasted productivity and resources, not just the hours lost for those in jail, but all the man hours that it takes to put them in and keep them there. Shameful.
In jail, you get 3 squares, active daily sex life, and you get to stay in shape and read and do whatever other hobbys may interest you. Should be on the brochure.
You failed to mention the all paid healthcare
Could it be that we sloughed off God and went whole hog for doing whatever is right in our own eyes?
This looks like judgement to me. A nation full of reprobates perpetually at war.
You could reverse this trend immediately. All you have to do is get everyone to behave themselves.
There should be a law! /snark off
Appears that around 1973/4, there were some fundamental changes! Let me think...
It tops off about when secret prisons really took some market share, so who knows how many there really are. Black pools.
Also government subsidies of private corporations.
We don't make incarceration tough enough. Anyone ever seen the Russian prison video on Netflix? Frigging nightmare for capital offenders. In our system they get pampered.
This by the way would greatly reduce the overall population of prisoners because it would quickly get out that prison is not a place you want to be.
In Charlotte, a white couple in their early 60s were just murdered (hit) by a guy on parole for armed robbery. No jail time, just parole. He popped them both because his buddies had tried to rob this man's furniture store and the man shot back, injuring one. They had him killed before he could testify in the trial.
The problem isn't too many in prison. The problem is prisons aren't tough enough. We're a pussy society and we pay the price.
you're a fucking moron.
and part of the problem.
I always hate the "gotta get tough on crime! It's good for 'Murika!" schtick. We put a lot of innocent people in prison and we put a lot of people in prison for shit that shouldn't even be criminal in the first place. Tougher prisons will punish them along with people who actually did do something bad, and if the studies coming out of Maricopa Co. AZ indicate anything, having tougher prisons dosen't reduce crime like you'd think they would.
It appears newly elected governor Ducey is picking up right where the last drunk left off- now he is wanting to build another private prison with Arizona tax money.
This state is hopeless in my opinion, it's already littered with private prisons all waiting to be filled and corrupt politicians with hands outstreached.
I just spent three days on Maricopa Co jury selection last month for a trial of a couple of black low level retail marijuana entrepreneurs a few weeks ago, I think my views on the subject set off bells with the prosecution team when I got up and told them the whole issue was a ridiculous waste of tax money. My views on jury nullification as outlined by Lysander Spooner probably didn't help- I got fired without explanation after three days of consideration.But the wholesale waste on that one trial which would not further the cause of justice had to be in the hundreds of thousands even with an acquittal, with the certain guilty verdict I imagine it in the millions.. and for what?
Jury nullification is a noble response to an out of control system, if enough people simply refuse to play the game then things will change.
More people should consider it for what it is.
War on drugs? War on terror? War on liberty? War on people? War war war war war
Federal Bureau of Prisons state as of 7/25/14 half of prisoners were drug offenders. Not only is the system designed to drive people into the prisons but it is fully compliant in the experience ruining future opportunities. Try getting a job with a juicy charge. Recitivism is built in. Most states it is cheaper to school an inmate via University than to house them with 3 squares and a cot.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/10/war-on-drugs-prisons-infographic_n_4914884.html
75% of the prison population either male or female have no father in their life....This is a fact look it up yourself.......Our Government has incentivized mothers to have children with no regard for a father...The court system is stacked against fathers in most cases especially in divorce and custody situations....Kids need fathers and discipline but in todays PC correctness/Lawsuit society it's not possible....
The narco/welfare state IS their father.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lbjru5CQIW4
75% of the prison population either male or female have no father in their life....This is a fact look it up yourself.......Our Government has incentivized mothers to have children with no regard for a father...The court system is stacked against fathers in most cases especially in divorce and custody situations....Kids need fathers and discipline but in todays PC correctness/Lawsuit society it's not possible....
I was researching this very issue recently, and was pretty surprised (but in retrospect, it makes perfect sense) at the cause.
War on drugs? Tiny contribution. Mandatory sentences? Tiny contribution. In fact, you can go through all the common explanations and they don't contribute much.
There's one glaring statistic, though, and that's the number of charges filed per prisoner, and the number of felonies charged. Starting in about 1980 (no doubt related to the war on drugs) prosecutors started stacking charges, and more importantly going for felony rather than misdemeanor charges, on nearly everyone. This results in more leverage to get a plea (i.e. less work for the prosecutor since they don't have to take it to trial) and way more felonies plead to (filling up the prisons.) It also turns out that after the 70s crime wave, being a "hard nosed" prosecutor became a political career move and a path to power. So in a nutshell, the sociopaths that are TPTB today started their careers by throwing people arrested for minor crimes (like being caught with minimal amounts of weed, a misdemeanor) under the bus by charge stacking (they owned a gun, too, so the elevated the charge to a felony.)
The scariest part about this... it's all done at the county level. The only way to stop it is taking them on one by one, changing federal law, state law, etc has no impact because it's a county prosecutor that files the charges and misleads the grand juries and has an incentive to get a high conviction rate so he can run for a house/senate/governor seat.
I've watched that happen. Several felonies against two people, where the only physical evidence pointed to one of them being the victim, and the only other evidence being two statements that were completely contradictory. Not just two people recollecting events a bit different from different viewpoints - discrepancies between two different eyewitness will always be present, even when everybody is trying to be honest, - but completely different stories. One of the witnesses wound up murdering the other witness, so the case was dropped, but the assistant DA who had the case was a mean and ruthless bitch. I bet they would have dropped the charges on the day that jury selection was going to begin. I've watched that happen too, when the DA didn't have a case, but they'll sure keep the pressure up on a person. If I ever get arrested and charged for some real BS with no evidence, I'm going to object when the DA goes to drop charges on the day of trial. Most of the judges around here don't like BS games, but they cannot do shit about it if the scope of the BS is never revealed.
I've seen the same, friend of my daughter got arrested for a minor misdemeanor that in the past would have resulted in her being sent home with a warning to not do it again -- they stacked the charges to include multiple felonies, and included language in the plea agreement that her crime was both non-violent and that the chances of recidivism were near zero, clearly with the intent that she get probation and never see the inside of a prison. End result, the prosecutor gets a felony conviction via plea, this girl's life is screwed, and the probation offiicer stays employed. And there's not shit that can be done to stop it, because the primary check and balance, the grand jury, has been completely castrated by prosecutors.
http://files.libertyfund.org/pll/quotes/122.html
It's a powerful tool that may be our only hope.
I agree with this. Stacked charges, all of which carry massive potential sentences, are used as a club to generate plea bargains which go on the books as convictions which count as a "score" for prosecutors and police.
If you are charged with some minor crime, the prosector might stack on 2, 3 or more other charges until you are looking at 50 years in jail. Now he offers you 5 years if you take the plea bargain. What fucking kind of justice system is this? Who wants to go to trial with some 2nd rate lawyer on your side against the weight of the state and gamble your freedom against 50 years? So people take the plea and go to jail even when innocent.
Like many aspects of our society our "Justice System" has been warped by privileged power-seeking classes who work relentlessly to increase their own power and wealth no matter who else has to suffer.
Yes, most people cannot afford a good attorney, and have to rely on public defenders. Even a good public defender is probably overloaded and unable to devote the required amount of time to a case to be an effective proponent for the accused. If I get arrested for BS and wrongly charged or overcharged, I'm not wealthy, so I will have a choice: Defend myself or accept a public defender. I've successfully defended myself in civil court, so I have an idea about how things work, but for most people, this is between a bad choice (public defender) and an even worse choice (pro se.) On the flip side, I can be quite vindictive when it comes to this stuff, so you can bet your ass that I would be looking for anything that would disqualify the DA from absolute or even qualified immunity along the way.
~ "There are 2.3 million Americans in prison or jail".
That's all? WTF this is the USSA, we can do better than this, where is that can do spirit? Yes we can, yes we can! It should be obovious to all that the answer lies in D.C.
We need more LAWS damnit! Now get out there and rat someone out! Let's fill these prisons across the land, so we can build more and "create" jobs!
Can I get an Ahmen?
You IRS audit form has been mailed to you. Hope you are happy now. You need alot of greenbacks to purchase your get out of jail card. or be a banker.
America's Prision Population. Well, that would roughly be around 320 million minus the Elites, Politicains and the "Fascist" guards.
Whether you are in prison, on welfare or you are employed, unemployed or employing someone, the system enslaves you to that little known group of slave masters. They Live!
I can see putting someone away for awhile if it's deserved. What I have a problem with is putting a felony conviction on someone and expecting them to live a "normal" life forever in spite of every obstacle put in their way. I am totally in favor of reinstating every right after a person has done their time, they have served their probation and they haven't had a speck of trouble for 10 years past any involvement with the judicial system. Yes, including gun rights. How the fuck do you expect a person to believe in this country, pay taxes and support the system if he/she is reduced to being totally at the mercy of burglars, rapists, etc. because they can't protect themselves? It doesn't work that way. The USA is a "Christian" nation that doesn't believe in forgiveness or redemption. What a farce.
The BLS wants to know if there's a way to release some of these people without their being added to the denominator.
1980 is about when America went insane. I'm not sure what triggered it. But after 1980 levels of systemic dysfunction skyrocketed.
I blame Reagan. Carter had everything on the right track.
The drugs. Also the god awful music, which was because of the drugs.
your timing is off only slightly. I graduated h.s. in 1975, so I was there. The snow ball starts off very small and is not recognizable at first. It all started when we went off the gold system in 1971. It's been downhill ever since.
Prison America.
How many are working for the factory prisions?
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-prison-industry-in-the-united-states-bi...
Made in the USA.
Damn depressing to read that link. There's sure not much about this nation to be proud of any longer. Like everything else that is the worst about our society it all stems from a Government that serves corporate interests above the interests of the people.
Slavery is alive and well in Amerika. Prison slaves make about $0.25 per hour.
I had porters making .08 dollars an hour- X time baby.. X time.
They should make nothing but work to eat, don't work, don't eat, then die cuz worthless pond scum, problem solved.
That's shortsighted, if you don't give a prisoner something that can be taken away, they become very hard to control..
..just like with us.
If the goal is to reduce crime it failed. If the goal is to disenfranchize and subjugate the black community then it is working great!
Maybe we could release a bunch of black males and give them real punishment -- the kind they ran away from -- we could MAKE them live with the MOTHER of their CHILDREN and force them to be DADS!
And, I thought you were kidding about Carter.
Yeah, sure -- we all will be much BETTER OFF if criminals know ahead of time that they can commit a crime and NOT get ANY punishment!
If jail is NOT a deterrent, then we need to come up with something MUCH worse so that the criminals DO NOT WANT to commit the crimes. Let's really scare them -- we could threaten to TAKE AWAY their OBAMAPHONES!!!
Humans are nothing but dumb egoistic short memoried animals.
Take Singapur - they have extremely low crime - but at the same time EXTREME punishments.
It works.
Take away the penalties - and you will immediately (within weeks) have again a wild herd of Criminals.
Conclusio?
I would put them all in prison - the 0.01% and the 99.99%.
As they are all equally ignorant of history.
We all know since Stonage what is wrong and what is right. What is justice and what are lies. What is freedom and what is manipulation and enslavement. What is inequality and what is corruption.
But still they can get away with it.
Since Stonage.
Or how many bankers and politicos have been put into jail - after (just as an example) 2008/2009 ????
Or how many more innocent civilians need to die for the sake of a few tyranns or Neocons or Zionists?
Or how many more humans need to be slaughtered for the sake of religion?
Or how many more decades do we have zillions of loopholes for corporations and individuals to avoid taxes while everything is sucked out of the middle class and the sheeple?
Or how many more idiotic zillions of regulations do we need - until to finally wake up, that the goverment bureaucrats are finally killing everything what is left of the economies?
Eventually absolutely IGNORANT sheeple anybody???
So they are all useless and worthless and dumb and stupid - after thousands of year - and hence all do not deserve to further breath this planets air just to do and allow more damage and pain and blood and cock sucking to each other and this planet.
This useless creature deserves nothing else but prison for the rest of their lifes.
If we actually tossed 100 bankster criminals in jail then the extra 1 millions prisoners in jail might have a chance on the outside.
Bigger prisons with more inmates means -- MORE JOBS for Guards!
AND more next-to-free labor for companies!!
It is no coincidence that it shot up right after oil production peaked. :)
The ultimate compromise that con not be argued with. Make it legal to grow drugs, legal to sell drugs and legal to buy drugs, Make it ILLEGAL to use drugs. This way you eliminate the market, gang activity and cartels. At the same time if you use drugs and hurt someone you are in violation of the law. The only problem is there would be Billions lost in off the books revenue the Cabal uses to arm people and start wars.
The ultimate compromise that con not be argued with. Make it legal to grow drugs, legal to sell drugs and legal to buy drugs, Make it ILLEGAL to use drugs. This way you eliminate the market, gang activity and cartels. At the same time if you use drugs and hurt someone you are in violation of the law. The only problem is there would be Billions lost in off the books revenue the Cabal uses to arm people and start wars.
In the end it is quite simple - put up a chart of inequality.
Or who gets how much of the cake.
If you have 1000000 sheeple - and only one left to afford the cake - at some point you will have 999999 criminals.
So maybe something is wrong there ... and painting charts will not solve anything.
But but, but .... TV, games, porn and iphones are of course much more important - than a piece of the cake.
You need another Australia to ship them to like the poms did and the Fijians did to the Kiwis. hell, a coupl'a hundred years from now they will thank you by parroting whatever your President says as gospel.
Piss on us and call it rain... Our Gov will believe you.
Send all the black criminals to Israel! They can use some of that multi-culti diversity they're always pushing on everyone else!
Most definitely a corrupt and symbiotic relationship between various stakeholders in the prisonn-industrial complex has grown up. But remember this: You have all those ghetto thugs off the streets.
Lock us in a cage if we do not comply. Kill us if we resist. THIS is the system and its a damning indictment of our system of government. It is, by its very nature, EVIL.
Other 1st world countries don't have the black population that the US has. They're 13% of the population and commit more than half of the violent crime. And before we go blaming 'institutionalized racism" check the violence in Africa, Haiti, Jamaica, and just about every black country....it's off the charts. Something about violence in the black culture that needs to be addressed before any serious conversation about prison populations in America can be had.
European colonialism In Africa. Check out Namibia, somewhere that experienced minimal raping and torture from Europe.
In the old days, families and churches taught people to resist their baser urges, state hospitals housed the mentally ill, and segregation forced each race to keep its own nitwits in check.
Now all these functions are performed by the prison system.
So what, the people in prison are overwhelmingly scum, anyway.
Apart, of course, from the innocent.
All people are scum. That's why we are here. It is how humans evolved. By taking what they needed from whoever they needed by whatever. Means they needed. So in a way the scum locked up are the future of mankind not these non breeding dickless twits sitting on ZH wishing they knew what is up
While correlation is not causation, and the default position is clearly, "the Jews did it," there is one obvious politically motivated initiative that occurred in the late 60's. That was the War on Poverty. Prior to that massive expansion of the social safety net primarily predicated on skin color, rates of incarceration, illegitimacy, drug use, unemployment, secondary school graduation rates etc had all been trending positive and were converging with rates for whites. When money for nothing became the norm and any stigma associated with receiving welfare payments was subrogated by the new black ideology of victimology, these trends reversed dramatically.
As to why the deterrent effect has waned, that answer might also be rooted in socio-cultural changes. Where is the stigma w/i the black community? More often than not prison time is a badge of honor. Certainly very few members of that community view a criminal record negatively. Sort of like women and extramarital sex. In 1960 no respectable woman admitted to sex outside marriage. Today...meh.
Thomas Sowell explores these issues in depth.
Before WoP, black marriage rates were similar to whites, with most young blacks raised in a family with a father. WoP destroyed that, swinging the pendulum hard towards unwed black mothers (and latterly hispanic and white mothers) raising children on welfare. The evidence is very clear that children raised in such circumstances generally do poorly at school (reduces employment prospects) and are far more likely to be in trouble with the law.
Another Democrat success story.
They even locked up Martha Stewart...the bastards. Luckily she's cleaned herself up and has a baking show. She can sit on my face anytime.
Lil Wayne got locked up for some time and came right back to make shitty music. Its like part of the contract for being a badass...need to serve your time.
Let's not forget Wesley "fuck the IRS" Snipes either!
So, according to this chart the Police State officially started under the rat fuck Reagan administration.
Thanks right wingers.
You fucking asshats!
The late 60's early 70's had riots in many cities that were clearly threats to the establishment.
They were stopped by intoducing
1. severe drug law punishment .
2. Cia drugs.
Pretty simple really.
Total crap, PCness is the problem. There is no real punishment anymore for lawbreakers. No such frickin' thing as a victimless crime, people must be held responsible for their actions or we get exactly where we are today with corrupt politicians and bankers running our country, the once great, high integrity example for the world to follow.
Texas is installing air conditioning in their prisons now, I rest my case....
Maybe the imprisonment rates are just fine now, and we had it all wrong before the year 2000. See, our prisons were underpopulated all along. Good to see we're making better use of our resources now. And prison life's not so bad to some -- three hots and a cot plus regular sex, however involuntary. And as globalization spreads across the Ziosphere, we can export prison culture and get the rest of the underimprisoned countries up to speed.
I don't think people realize we're all in prison, enslaved by "the man". Taxes, credit card debt, mortgages, the IRS, cops, Big Pharma, vaccines, schools and others all ensure we struggle day to day to keep "them" in comfort. Something, very slowly, went very bad in our social contract. We elected governments to make things better but, gradually, government aligned with "them" to evolve from a benign concept to an overlord.
Brings back the memories of the 'Fortress'...