We send billions of dollars on prisons, but don't seem to have a clear purpose.
We call them "correctional institutions", but their track record of correcting bad behavior is appalling.
We send people to be locked up for punishment, sometimes for non violent crimes, even victimless crimes.
We send people there to be locked up to protect the rest of society from violent individuals.
It seems to me that there should be a better way to correct anti social behavior, and a better way to punish wrongdoers.
That leaves the violent criminals who are a danger to the rest of us. If only those people were to be locked up, prisons would cost only a fraction of what they cost today.
What do you think? Are you OK with locking people up as punishment for white collar crimes, drug crimes, property crimes? Is it really cost effective?
What about correcting anti social behavior. Do you think the "correctional institutions are the best way to accomplish this end? Why or why not?
The "correctional institutions", though they may not function to correct behavior when the criminal can't do basic introspection, still perform a "correctional" function by correcting the situation of having a known criminal at large, thus keeping the rest of us safe from the criminal.
The so-called "non-violent" and "victimless" criminals most definitely behaved in a
reckless endangerment manner at the very least (DUI on pot, selling drugs around kids' neighborhoods, exposing kids to drugs, etc.), for which their incarceration is sufficient. Most of our laws are smartly thought out, and, yes, that does indeed include the ones on drug abuse and drug selling. When our laws are violated, appropriate responses are required, such as locking them up to protect the rest of us.
No, it's moronic to think that incarceration should only be for "violent" individuals. An embezzler, a person committing securities fraud, a senior citizen scammer, a pyramid schemer, a drug peddler .. all of these crime-committers usually are non-violent in their commissions. But we are very smart in locking them up, so they get to think about it for a while and, whether they don't suffer from recidivism when they get out or not, at least while they are in the rest of us are protected from them.
Yes, there may be better ways to perform correction and punishment .. but those ways aren't compatible with western capitalist philosophy.
The conundrum for keeping us safe from
all kinds of victimization must
always be taken into account. Non-violent crime hurts -- don't ever think it doesn't. I know people who were swindled out of their life savings. They hurt .. a lot .. from those crimes. It is self-deceiving obfuscating subterfuge on the part of activists to tell us that only violent crime commits hurt sufficient for incarceration.
Yes, money will have to be spent. That's life. That's the price for justice, justice which is based on the broader concept of security, security we need to help keep us safe.
If the expenditure is too high, then the only solutions are to convert from capitalism to socialism that might help or to reduce the population to reduce the number of criminals. However, a successful bloodless conversion to socialism can't really occur until the ratio of population to available basic resources (food, clothing, housing, road space, land space, classrooms, water, breathable air, etc.) is considerably less than one. Today it's considerably greater than one, and thus that leaves reduce the population in general as the only recourse to reduce the total dollar cost of incarceration.
So yes, I'm quite okay with locking people up for white collar (scam-stealing, fraud-stealing, and the like), drug abuse/selling (at the very least always involving reckless endangerment of others and often child abuse), and property (vandalism, stealing, etc.) crimes. Absolutely, and obviously as to why.
Cost-effective is simply irrelevant with respect to deciding to incarcerate. Until we're allowed to perform lobotomies and cult brainwashing on criminals in an attempt to prevent repeat criminal behavior, the cost-effectiveness of these vs. the way we do it now isn't a feasible analysis.
Cost-effective is valuable in determining if it's more cost-effective to incarcerate or make efforts to reduce the population (drastically reduce legal immigration, crackdown and deport and prevent illegal aliens, reduce the birth rate, facilitate living-wage jobs for American citizens so they won't have to resort to crime to survive, etc.) to effect a reduction in the number of incarcerations.
