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When are too many people in prison?

Lopettaa said:
I read were there is more then 2 million people in US prisons.That's a lot. Perhaps the Government likes to criminalize people.
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1 in 100 adults are in jail.

[ame=http://www.google.com/search?q=1+in+100+people+in+jail&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:eek:fficial&client=firefox-a]1 in 100 people in jail - Google Search[/ame]
 
TheDude said:
Yeah, I'm sure you're right. Let's just keep doing the same thing we've been doing for the past 4 decades and hope for better results?:confused:


What are you a DA?
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We are getting great results.

Im confused on what you think the goal is.



What are you a hippy stoner?
 
Caine said:
We are getting great results.

Im confused on what you think the goal is.



What are you a hippy stoner?
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1-Yes, 1 in 32 U.S. adults are in involved in the criminal justice system. Whether locked up or on parole-probation. Great results huh? And they will be even better for you since that number is expected to rise in the near future

2-The goal should be to detour crime and ricitivism and gain a better understanding of the psychological-biological factors in our country that are usually correlated with it.

3-No, hippies existed in the mid to late 1960's and early 1970's. A good decade before I was even born. And no I am not a stoner. Not that I'm against marijuana use by others, but I have never enjoyed the feeling of being stoned.
 
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As I have said many times, prisons are not to rehabilitate persons but instead are purely a method of removing from society those we see as undesirable. Once a person has commited a crime all we want is outta sight and outta mind. As long as they no longer can inconvenience us we no longer care (generalization).

There are several problems with the current system that need to be corrected. Prison does not make criminals regret commiting the crime it only makes them regret being caught. If a person is going to be truely remorseful for past deeds they will be so without being incarcerated.

Many criminals have only known a life of crime. They grow up in a home and neighborhood full of gangs and the crimes and lifestyles of those gangs. They are brought up thinking that this is the "norm" with little outside intervention in their upbringing. Once these people have commited a crime we throw them into prison with other like minded people. They still have no real idea of what we call moral values and the importance of such values in a society. Once they have gone to prison with little guidence from society we expect them to come out as model citizens.

Simply telling a person what they have done is wrong does not make them understand that if everything in their lives have told them differently. If I were to tell you that the sky was red you would think me a fool. Afterall everything up untill now has told you it was blue. What? you can see it for yourself and see that is blue? Well they can also look out their homes and see crime on a daily basis.

If we really expect them to be better citizens then we should put effort into helping them understand the wrongness and the reason their actions are "bad" and help them find new ways of thinking. Simply throwing them away for our own convenience makes us as guilty of crimes against our fellow man is they are.
 
TheDude said:
1-Yes, 1 in 32 U.S. adults are in involved in the criminal justice system. Whether locked up or on parole-probation. Great results huh? And they will be even better for you since that number is expected to rise in the near future
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And whose fault is that?
Maybe if our popular media culture would stop encouraging promiscuity, making drugs out to be 'cool' and maybe, just maybe, if parents would do their ****ing jobs and stop ignoring their children to be raised by MTV, maybe we would have better results. But of course, lets blame the government instead.

2-The goal should be to detour crime and ricitivism and gain a better understanding of the psychological-biological factors in our country that are usually correlated with it.
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And whose responsibility is this? The government? Should we just ignore it when people commit crime? Will that solve the problem? I don't think it will.
 
Baralis said:
There are several problems with the current system that need to be corrected. Prison does not make criminals regret commiting the crime it only makes them regret being caught. If a person is going to be truely remorseful for past deeds they will be so without being incarcerated.
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I hear this all the time from leftist nanny state types, but Nobody has ever actually come up with an idea.

BTW: The rest of your post is the job of parents, not the government.
 
Caine said:
I hear this all the time from leftist nanny state types, but Nobody has ever actually come up with an idea.

BTW: The rest of your post is the job of parents, not the government.
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Im anything but a leftist nanny state type ;), but I have had an immediate family member serve time in prison and have learned alot about the system and those in it.

You say it is the job of the parents and I agree 100% but when the parents fail are we all suppost to turn our backs on them because it is the easier path? After all we are the ones that demand they act a certain way or become disposable.

There are programs out there that do help criminals rehabilitate and many have a pretty good record for reoffenders compaired to non rehabilitaion centers. The reason why these centers are not popular is the pricetag. Its cheaper to ignore the problem instead of putting any effort into fixing it.
 
Baralis said:
Im anything but a leftist nanny state type ;), but I have had an immediate family member serve time in prison and have learned alot about the system and those in it.
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You state this, then you state......

You say it is the job of the parents and I agree 100% but when the parents fail are we all suppost to turn our backs on them because it is the easier path? After all we are the ones that demand they act a certain way or become disposable.
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Which essentially shows your support for the government to do the job for failed parenting. Thus being a 'nanny'.

Society as a whole should not accept the actions of these people, and should want them locked up where they cannot do additional harm.

There are programs out there that do help criminals rehabilitate and many have a pretty good record for reoffenders compaired to non rehabilitaion centers. The reason why these centers are not popular is the pricetag. Its cheaper to ignore the problem instead of putting any effort into fixing it.
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These programs are also extremely costly, and only work on small select groups of offenders who have already been deemed at having a good chance of rehabilitation anyways.
 
Caine said:
Society as a whole should not accept the actions of these people, and should want them locked up where they cannot do additional harm.
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Becuase the whole system is full of fail. Are you aware that in many states that if you murder a fellow inmate the sentence may be as little as 2 years. Thats just another instance of people no longer caring as long as it doesnt involve them.
 
Caine said:
And whose fault is that?
Maybe if our popular media culture would stop encouraging promiscuity, making drugs out to be 'cool' and maybe, just maybe, if parents would do their ****ing jobs and stop ignoring their children to be raised by MTV, maybe we would have better results. But of course, lets blame the government instead.
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Do you have any sound empirical research that indicates those media elements have a causative link to an increase in corresponding behaviors amongst youth?
 
Agnapostate said:
Do you have any sound empirical research that indicates those media elements have a causative link to an increase in corresponding behaviors amongst youth?
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HuH? Can you speak in english please your not impressing anyone.



And to answer your question, its called.... wait for it.....


"Common ****ing Sense"

If you don't want to believe that, its fine, Im not spending hours digging around for some online research (which will then be considered biased) to support my common sense theory that when kids grow up watching cool people on TV do stupid ****, they want to do stupid **** too.
 
Well, I mean, parents said the same thing about comic books in the 1950's, and I've never seen anything that proves that either. :shrug:
 
Agnapostate said:
Well, I mean, parents said the same thing about comic books in the 1950's, and I've never seen anything that proves that either. :shrug:
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So the kids in the 70s and 50s acted exactly the same?

:rofl
 
Caine said:
So the kids in the 70s and 50s acted exactly the same?

:rofl
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No, parents did. Neither generation of parents had an interest in basing their ill-conceived opposition to "illicit" elements that their children were exposed to on sound empirical research rather than crude emotional speculation. The same is clearly true today.
 
Agnapostate said:
No, parents did. Neither generation of parents had an interest in basing their ill-conceived opposition to "illicit" elements that their children were exposed to on sound empirical research rather than crude emotional speculation. The same is clearly true today.
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Umm.... Are you a robot?


You don't get brownie points for going out of your way to try to sound smart.

With that said, you are right, I do blame the parents, and I have stated that I blame the parents and I don't agree that its the government's job to make up for lack of parenting.
 
Caine, do you see the idiocy in your statements? You don’t want the government to step in when it comes to prevention or getting to the root of any contributing factors to crime in our society. But whenever a crime is committed you have no problem with immediate government intervention.

Then in other statements on this thread you were angered because you felt that people were blaming criminal activity on the government. Then you later blamed MTV and bad parenting for crime. So it's not alright to attribute criminal activity with lax government attitudes because they do little to detour crime, but it's perfectly alright to blame crime on what you assume to be bad parenting and a morally loose pop culture?
 
TheDude said:
Caine, do you see the idiocy in your statements? You don’t want the government to step in when it comes to prevention or getting to the root of any contributing factors to crime in our society. But whenever a crime is committed you have no problem with immediate government intervention.
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Where have I said anything about prevention. Prevention means that your taking action BEFORE something happens. Prevention rests on parents, PERIOD. Im sorry you got the impression from the idiocy of the last two decades of American government, but the government is not the answer to everything.


Then in other statements on this thread you were angered because you felt that people were blaming criminal activity on the government. Then you later blamed MTV and bad parenting for crime. So it's not alright to attribute criminal activity with lax government attitudes because they do little to detour crime, but it's perfectly alright to blame crime on what you assume to be bad parenting and a morally loose pop culture?
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Yes. The environment in which you are raised and or live in is the primary determining factor in how you will act as a member of society. If you have ****ty parents who don't teach you morals and right vs. wrong, you will be without morals and will be incapable of making the proper decisions in life. If your parents do not motivate you, you will go through life without knowing anything about setting goals for yourself and learning to be a productive member of society.

Our media and culture could make up for the lack of parenting by promoting responsible values, but they fail to do this, instead they fill in the gaps that the parents leave with stuff like, "Robbin' niggas and stabbin' niggas, and ****in' hoes and smokin' dope" and other garbage from the rap culture. Pop culture also teaches people to fight when fighting isn't necessary, that pride is more important to making the right decisions, and that is why we have so many confrontational little teenagers willing to go to blows at the drop of a hat over something as stupid as a ****ing parking space.
 
Caine said:
Where have I said anything about prevention. Prevention means that your taking action BEFORE something happens. Prevention rests on parents, PERIOD. Im sorry you got the impression from the idiocy of the last two decades of American government, but the government is not the answer to everything.




Yes. The environment in which you are raised and or live in is the primary determining factor in how you will act as a member of society. If you have ****ty parents who don't teach you morals and right vs. wrong, you will be without morals and will be incapable of making the proper decisions in life. If your parents do not motivate you, you will go through life without knowing anything about setting goals for yourself and learning to be a productive member of society.

Our media and culture could make up for the lack of parenting by promoting responsible values, but they fail to do this, instead they fill in the gaps that the parents leave with stuff like, "Robbin' niggas and stabbin' niggas, and ****in' hoes and smokin' dope" and other garbage from the rap culture. Pop culture also teaches people to fight when fighting isn't necessary, that pride is more important to making the right decisions, and that is why we have so many confrontational little teenagers willing to go to blows at the drop of a hat over something as stupid as a ****ing parking space.
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Exactly Caine, you said nothing at all about prevention. It seems that you don't want our government to try and prevent crime at all. But when it happens you want them to take full action.

Any sane and borderline smart person knows that there are bad parents who have children who become priests, and there are good parents who have children that become serial killers. You cannot blame parents anymore than you can blame our government. I too expect those who have children to raise them to respect others as you would want to be respected. Just as I expect our government to explore more programs and to have an attitude that encourages good behavior.

I do believe that my original response to this entire post was that the government passes way too many laws and we lock up too many non-violent offenders without any rehibilitation programs or crime detourant programs. And we just keep on passing more and more laws and locking up more and moare of our citizens for non-violent offenses. Which only cost the tax payers more money. Because we will need more prosecutors, judges, juries, investigators, correction officers, prisons, pobie officers, and so on Remember, $56 a day per inmate not including what we have to pay for the numerous government funded jobs in the criminal system.
 
justabubba said:
but then, look at the data for japan

it has both a low incarceration rate and a low crime rate

one would think that with such a low percentage of its population in jail that would allow more criminals to roam the streets committing crime. but the data does not support that conclusion

and why does the USA, with 4% of the world's population have 25% of the world's imprisoned population. are we really that much more a criminally inclined nation?
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Maybe they raise their kids differently.
 
American said:
Maybe they raise their kids differently.
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Thats what I have been saying this whole time.

But apparently im being too mean about it. we are supposed to blame the government for all of our problems and not let the responsibility rest upon the family. :roll:

Go figure.
 
So you believe that crime is a direct result of bad parenting. How do you explain brothers and sisters raised by the same parents and the same moral values who go on to excel in life while the other(s) fails? You know the black sheep in the family. Surely you can't say that you haven't known at least one family where this has happened. I know I've known at least a dozen maybe more.

I don't think anyone on here is directly blaming the government for a single criminal act. My argument was that I feel that the government does little to detour crime, and I do not feel that our criminal justice system encourages good behavior and low recidivism.
 
TheDude said:
So you believe that crime is a direct result of bad parenting. How do you explain brothers and sisters raised by the same parents and the same moral values who go on to excel in life while the other(s) fails? You know the black sheep in the family. Surely you can't say that you haven't known at least one family where this has happened. I know I've known at least a dozen maybe more.

I don't think anyone on here is directly blaming the government for a single criminal act. My argument was that I feel that the government does little to detour crime, and I do not feel that our criminal justice system encourages good behavior and low recidivism.
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I agree with ya here I just want to add a couple of my thoughts.

I believe that behaviour has many deciding factors. Upbringing, enviroment, and genetics.

Now people may call me racist for this view but remember Im not saying anyone is better then others. But consider this, there is as much as 2-4% DNA difference in humans. There is a 6-8% DNA difference between humans and chimps (just to show you how different we can be with only a small percentage.) Yet we all are expected to believe that all races are equal in every aspect. I disagree with that notion. We are simply different. Now I see no reason why this difference can't change behavioural traits to some degree. Add in enviroment and upbringing and I can see how one geographically located race can very greatly from another geographically people/race. So while one race may prosper in a certain enviorment others will not largely in part to genetic behavioural traits.
 
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