"America's inmate population grew by 2.9 percent last year, to almost 2.1 million people, with one of every 75 men living in prison or jail."
"The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the Corrections Officer says, 'I love to make a grown man piss on himself.'"
prisons
Tags: big brother, conspiracies, grim meathook future, perversions
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15 Responses:
I get a major kick out of your erstwhile "news of the weird" feed onto my friendslist, so I figured I'd pass this on to you, since I haven't seen it on your LJ (yet).
Russian guards ordered to smile more
and of those 2.1m around 1/4 of them are non-violent drug offenders. In addition to that, the prison population has more than tripled since 1980, which is funny considering thats around the same time as the war on drugs started. AND, we have about 5% of the worlds population, but more people in prison than any other country; add in the 'you can be jailed for an indefinate amount of time without formal charges being brought against you, without the right to consult an attorney or really anyone' state of the us legal system and one can only expect to see it triple again over the next 20+ years.
god bless america.
Since they said "prison or jail" and did not use the word "gulag", I doubt those statistics include people who are being held without having been charged.
eh there are only a couple, and its provisions in the patriot act that made it legal [the executive branch has the right to hold incommunicando (sp?)/without trial/charges anyone who poses a threat to national security, which could be indefinatly in a time when there is a war against terrorism], still there are only a few of them- and the chances of them grabbing you or me because they felt like it is slim to none, but it would be legal if they did it.
As a randomly-offered comparison:
The British prison system is currently in crisis, with almost 77,000 men and women behind bars. (Population: 60 million.) Britain has the highest per-capita incarceration rate in Europe.
If the US prison population was proportionate to the British incarceration rate there'd be about 300,000 people in prison.
Isn't the Free Market Corrections Industry wunnerful?
I often wonder why the US courts puts drug users into jail when in fact they are the victims of a crime rather than the perpetrators.
You guys live in a pretty messed up society.
Drug users are bad. Thats why.
Rehabilitation? What's that?
(Nevermind the fact that we could save a boatload of money by releasing nonviolent drug offenders.)
Or, you know, we could just fucking legalize pot and turn it into a huge tax revenue source instead of the ridiculous money and time sink it is now.
I can't stand the stuff personally, but I don't think it's really that much worse for a person than booze, and incarcerating its users is ludicrous. That, and think of the turnaround we'd get in the economy - Frito Lay and Pizza Hut profits would skyrocket overnight! :-P
http://www.dpf.org/homepage.cfm
The Drug Policy Foundation does important political work in this country.
http://www.dancesafe.org
DanceSafe has been working on harm reduction. Check out their resources on pill testing.
Good stuff - thanks for the tip(s)!
Releasing all those prisoners would seriously impact the revenue stream of the prison industry; and as the RIAA continually teaches us, protecting existing revenue streams is the primary function of government.
It's a no-win situation! If you're a law and order conservative, you can't abandon the War on Drugs! If you're an easygoing liberal, you can't take on the prison guard unions!
I propose the movie "Fortress" as a solution.
I assume the plot will involve a giant wave of arrests what will sweep over the planet incarcerating 98% of the population :)
Then there are also the women who are in prison for nonviolent offenses (mostly drugs and prostitution). In many cases, added to the financial burden of incarcerating them, is the funds spent on foster care for their children.