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Data Can Help Fix America's Overcrowded Jails, Says White House (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via CNET: The White House launched a program called the Data-Driven Justice (DDJ) initiative to help reduce the population of jails. It will allow states to better divert low-level offenders with mental illness out of the criminal justice system and keep low-risk defendants out of jail while they await trial. The DDJ program could help alleviate the cost and congestion facing many of America's local jails, which costs local governments nearly $22 billion a year for minor offenses and low-level non-violent misdemeanors. Every year, 11 million people move through America's local jails. In local jails, 64 percent of people suffer from mental illness, 68 percent have a substance abuse and 44 percent suffer from chronic health problems, according to the White House. Seven states and 60 communities committed to DDJ. The plan is to use data collected on individuals who are often in touch with the police, emergency departments and other services and link them to health, behavioral health and social services within the community. Law enforcement and first responders will also be trained in how to deal with people experiencing mental health issues to better direct them to the proper services. The administration is developing a toolkit that will guide jurisdictions toward the best practices, policies and programs that have been successful in DDJ communities. DDJ will also put in place pre-trial assessment tools to determine whether the individual can safely return to society while awaiting trial without having to post bond. Amazon Web Services is onboard with the project, planning to bring together data scientists, technologists, researchers and private sector collaborators in a Technology and Research Consortium to identify technology solutions and support DDJ communities. A mapping software company, Esri, has pledged half a million dollars worth of software and solutions to the DDJ communities as well. Meanwhile, AWS is providing the cloud-infrastructure, which should help share data between criminal justice and health care practitioners among DDJ communities.
We forget so quickly...
https://www.propublica.org/art...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You can not solve a social problem with a technical solution.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
This is America, and our jails are run for profit. How the hell we gonna make a profit if we don't have as many Americans in jail as possible? We need more for the next quarter as well.
God these liberals - trying to destroy America.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
They should hire IBM, did great work for the nazi's 75 years ago...
How about the government stop creating eight thousand new but unnecessary criminal violations every year? We don't need to be throwing people in jail for shipping prepared lobster in the wrong color plastic or for failing to have a sign on an auto shop stating that used oil is accepted for recycling. Both of these are serious federal felonies punishable by up to 5 years in prison. But, these aren't even the silly ones. You can be incarcerated for 10 years for picking up a feather off the ground, if that feather came from an endangered bird.
So yeah, how about we get to the root causes of why so many people are in jail, like stupid laws and income-driven law enforcement?
In North America our justice systems are not Data Driven, and they never will be -- they are Revenge Driven. If we were to be Data Driven, we would have a system like Norway -- where recidivism is dramatically lower than what we have here.
The only way to make such a thing happen here would be to persuade the prison industrial complex that it would be more profitable that way. Of course they believe the opposite is true -- lower recidivism would mean fewer prisoners, and that means lower profits.
Ian Ameline
While it can be hard to determine whether someone who is in jail is the victim or perpetrator (or both) it seems that the political and philosophical viewpoints of the public draws the line in different places. This is probably the most visible when the studies are done by think-tanks that are politically motivated, or by academia which tend to lean liberal. I have found it difficult to know which set of statistics to believe in times like this. I especially find it hard to swallow the "2/3rds have mental illness". It seems to me that this has to be using the broadest definition of "mental illness". I wonder what the percentages of the general public would have "mental illness" based on this viewpoint. Is the percentage significantly higher in jail than the general public, or is this number so high because the authors of the study are trying to advance an agenda that "jails are bad" and "those in jail are victims". It would be interesting to know what the definition is, since without that a meaningful discussion on the topic is hard to have.
Drugs (fine them $)
Sex (fine them $)
Rock and Roll (fine them $)
and you'll have so many empty beds the private sector will get out of the inmate housing market. It's BIG BUSINESS now.
Less Revenge, more Justice?
Yah, heresy, I know.
Might work a little better.
There's no reason at all the U.S. should have such a large prison pop to begin with.
People are stupid.
Politicians are worse.
Data or not data
Medicare for all as well some use jail as there DR as the ER does not cover all.
They'd be fools, then, because the private prison companies lose money by providing healthcare. It's in the company's interest to spend as little money as possible, and they can get away with it far, far more than any insurance company or HMO on the outside could ever dream of.
Okay, you've found some examples of unusual laws. Now how many people have actually been convicted of those crimes, and sentenced to jail time which they've actually started serving? 0?
The real problem here is that we have large portions of American cities overrun with gang violence, mainly in areas with large African-American populations. This isn't putting lobster in the wrong colored container. We're talking about drug-dealing thugs driving around recklessly in SUVs shooting one another, and often hitting and killing innocent bystanders. We're talking about these thugs violently robbing stores, assaulting or killing the shop keepers in the process. We're talking about these thugs running prostitution rings that often involve minors.
The problem that builds upon that problem is the fact that, thanks to political correctness, Americans can't openly discuss this issue. There are many members of the black community who want to put an end to this culture of thug violence that infects their communities. But they are severely outnumbered by the many young, white, suburban American college students who, despite knowing nothing about the real problems facing America's black communities, insist that it's the "police" or "society" or "the government" who is to blame for this violent, murderous thug culture. Instead of supporting the blacks who want to enable real change within their communities for the better, we see these ignorant college students instead acting in ways that will only promote and even encourage this thug culture.
The only way to put an end to the large number of people in jail, most of whom are there for committing very serious crimes, is to put an end to the thug culture that enables and supports such behavior. Those within the black community who want to make a real community-wide behavioral change happen, and not just march around whining about how "black lives matter" without doing anything useful to help the situation, need to be given the support they deserve!
Or, of course, the US could overhaul it's ridiculous justice system. Start by eliminating the "War on Drugs". MJ should be legal. People addicted to hard drugs need help, not jail. If they could get their fixes under controlled conditions, you would the dealers and smugglers out of business, and the addicts themselves wouldn't need to steal to finance their habits. This would do more to eliminate crime than any thing else.
Second, stop trying to be "tough on crime". Mandatory, multi-year sentences for first-time offenders, for non-violent crimes. Everything is a felony, and far too many things are federal felonies. Just as an example: attempt to get some Marijuana across the Mexican border, any amount at all - even if it's your first offense, the minimum sentence is 10 years.
Then one could go after all of the other low-hanging fruit: other stuff that shouldn't be illegal. Lying to a federal officer (Martha Stewart).
Improperly packed lobster tails. Taking home an Indian arrowhead you find at a public camping ground. Picking up a feather you found on the ground. And on, and on...
Really, it's no wonder the jails are overcrowded.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Digitize the prisoners and compress the data. This will save space.
Yeah, Obama is a big fan of computer technology. Obama also cares about the criminal justice system.
Obama: "Hey, I have an idea! Lets use big data on the criminal justice system! It's genius!"
As though their very presence will somehow bestow Grace upon the project.
We're seeing technology, and the application of big data and software algorithms in particular, becoming a kind of secular religious ceremony for governments and big corporations. Where once departments and managers would ask their local preacher/padre/rabbi to invoke the blessings of God on their latest pork-barrel endevour, we now have cadres of turtlenecked Valley geeks arriving with tablets, power-points slides and enough buzzwords to fill out page in a transparent effort to invoke the "awesome power of Big Tech" to bestow -- in the increasingly jaded eyes of the public -- scientific or technocratic legitimacy to, what emerges on closer inspection, a decidedly 19th century institution with decidedly 19th century problems.
You can't fix overcrowded jails with software algorithm. You can at best "optimize" their current capacity, which excess in turn will swiftly be used up by the same processes that caused overcapacity in the first place. You will then have gone from 20th century overcrowding in an 19th century institution, to Just-in-Time, razor tight margined, burnout generating, critically-phased complex system, always one hiccup from failure 21st century overcrowding in a 19th century institution. You will also have paid probably the cost of of small airport on the salaries and pension funds of the "private" contractors who developed it.
You can only fix crowded jails by
1) Building more jails or,
2) Jailing less people, or
3) some combination of the above
Anything else is a Digital Age, Cloud Based, Synergistically Integrated, Disruptively Innovative Technological Solution Program to kick the can down the road.
"You are a True Believer, Blessings of the State..."
I used to work in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Corrections. I helped set up a special facility (Longwood Correctional Facility) where the only inmates were those whose crimes were related to substance abuse problems. We kept them away from "regular" criminals, provided treatment, and we had a less than one percent repeat offense rate. IF they do this correctly and provide treatment for those who need treatment, I believe that this can make a huge difference. I am not overly confident that it will be done correctly, though.
This will only end in tears for everyone who is not a data analytics firm.
They'd be fools, then, because the private prison companies lose money by providing healthcare. It's in the company's interest to spend as little money as possible, and they can get away with it far, far more than any insurance company or HMO on the outside could ever dream of.
THere ar elimits though. If the income unit expires while in your care, you lose that income.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
How about decriminalizing drug use, like in Portugal?
Decriminalization doesn't mean legalization. It just mean that you aren't going to jail for drug use. You can still get an administrative punishment, like a small fine, which can be waived it you show that you are willing to do something about it, like following an addiction treatment.
Prisons for profit, they are just now expanding the gravy train, so more mega corporations can get in on the honey pot..
Soon, it will be to big to fail, which means it will never get reformed..
Can't have anything that challenges profits..
Is to put everyone not living off grid in funny farms.
In funny farm were you no gun for you.
Taxes going up. Dollar an hour rent a wanna be cop jail guard for Mary wants to be a 40 dollar an hour nurse funny farm baby sitter.
We used to commit them to mental institutions. As it turns out, that had some ugliness --we warehoused them and didn't provide treatment, and many we thought didn't need commitment at all.
So we turned them out of mental institutions and reformed commitment laws.
The number of crazy people on the street went up (48 hour emergency holds don't accomplish anything, no ongoing treatment, commitment reform made it vastly more difficult to commit someone). Our solution has turned out to be tossing them in jail instead, or letting to cops shoot them when they get too crazy.
Now we've figured out that the high numbers of crazy people in jail is a problem along with the PR fail of cops blasting raving lunatics with kitchen knives. So I guess we're back to turning them loose on the streets.
My guess is the solution somewhere is a vastly more accessible mental health system, but talk to anyone with "good" insurance about getting mental health services. At best, you get an all-you-can-eat supply of anti-depressants with a side of anti-psychotics, forget counseling as the numbers guys say it's worthless and the insurance companies think its just aimless middle class people whining about their mother at $250/hour.
So for low-income/no insurance people with serious mental health problems? We won't even bother jailing them when they become risky because the data guys say we could use the space better. We for sure won't be providing any treatment short of court-ordered but impossible to enforce anti-psychotic treatment.
Many counties in Florida have no mental health facilities that are capable of treating anyone for anything. We can not even house the homeless or come close to housing the homeless. Pregnant women or women with small children are about the only people who can get housing. Drug treatment facilities are few and far between or are only designed to give a few days of therapy and then out the door for the patients. I am currently sheltering a girl with a broken jaw that the hospital refuses to fix claiming that a broken jaw is not an emergency. She was a victim of a violent attack so severe she was near death, She can not apply for a job effectively as her face is swollen due to inflammation from the broken jaw. So these ideas about prison reform are wonderful but Florida has a right wing lunatic as governor and the idea that they are going to do something to help inmates is off the wall crazy. Currently the Fort Pierce jail does not use air conditioning.They put ten men in a cell and the heat index is over 100 degrees.. That is justified as "punishment". Yet the bulk of those inmates are there awaiting trial and often are found not guilty. But the catch is they can not make bail so they either plead guilty with a plea bargain or wait for a trial for a year or more. That is a way of forcing people who are innocent to plead guilty. Florida beurocracy may be more criminal than the inmates in our jails.
The government is going to dump these people in low tier rest homes and make life a living hell for any older person who can't afford better.
If we deported and kept out illegals, out prison pops would drop up to 25%.
What a bunch of bullshit. This is nothing but yet another way of asserting CONTROL over you.
If they were really concerned about money, then they wouldn't be perpetually expanding their costly programs of Drones, Cameras, License plate readers, biometric scanners, military equipment, etc. etc.
Every time they try to do this they make major mistakes. The main one is trying to be 'race blind'. But the system is already rigged against certain races, and screws over black men.
Example, they count interactions with police, if without an arrest. So a 45 year old white man that no previous 'listed' interactions with the police (as every time he almost got caught, he talked his way out of it) is listed as a low risk, while a black teenager has 20 stops by police - none of which resulted in arrest - because of where he lives.
So the white man goes free, while the black kid is listed as high risk.
I am white, but I am not stupid enough to believe the data they are using is good.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
The local jail is not private also club fed is good. Also there was this guy who had to go back in to get an surgery as when he timed out he lost the coverage that he had from being an inmate.
http://www.theatlantic.com/hea...
And probably neither was the programmer. Instead there are deeply rooted institutions built on racism that become data inputs and in turn racial bias. See, we lanyards are all about one thing: solving difficult problems. Racism is one of those. It's not enough to say black folks got schools now so everything's honky dory. If we use a complex web of property taxes and rules against which schools the get to attend we can achieve the goal of racism (creating an under class for people to shit on) without being obvious about it. Google the phrase Dog Whistling for a start
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
stop locking people up for pot tax it like beer
Revenge is for the little man. The real goal with making a business of victimless crimes is, of course, profit. How else could a developed nation -- the #1 world superpower no less -- end up having more prisoners per capita than a third-world dictatorship? The US is such an outlier on the incarceration rate that any conclusion other than greed is laughable. The simple fact is that a nation of "criminals" is more profitable for the business of government than a nation of non-criminals. The people who designed this system weren't thinking about making the nation a better place; they were thinking about how to take advantage of it. The more crimes, the more criminals, and the more money necessary to administer the whole scam.
Law must be precise. Otherwise it's either too broadly applied and leads to false imprisonment or too narrow and let's people violate the spirit by adhering to the letter. You do not want "common sense" in your laws. That's what got us the DMCA and those nasty federal anti hacking statutes that can put you jail for a Perl script...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Rather than spend money a new boondoggle of a computer system that will likely not work, be over budget and way past schedule....
Just legalize weed, or at least on the Federal level, remove it from Schedule 1 drugs, and let the states do as they wish with it.
We could quit sending TONS of money to DEA war on drugs personnel and equipment, we could empty many folks out of jails (leaving room for the violent offenders), and again...NOT spend more money on a boondoggle computer program for auto-sentencing.
I think we could do just dandy sentencing if just ONLY for truly violent crimes that actually harm people.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
That was my first thought as well. But really only addicts get caught. After treatment they probably turn into regular "abusers", who are much less likely to get caught. Because it is a stupid victimless "crime" anyway.
Stop using computers/algorithms as some sort of magic mirror on the wall. The conclusions are almost always WRONG!
Maybe things will improve, but I'd give it 30-50 years
Get rid of the hard core criminals and those who are repeat offenders. If you keep going back to jail you either have never learned from your first mistake or you have chosen not to live within the bounds of civil society.
The cost to remove criminals from society will be cheaper than paying to keep them around.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I can't say I am happy with the thought of a for-profit corporation with huge interest in data mining getting spoon-fed all that information. This just reinforces the overlap between corporate and government sectors, which is something already highly disadvantageous for the society as a whole.
The implications are far too unpleasant.
A false positive from the program in the article here would result in offering assistance to someone who doesn't need it. Offering help to someone who doesn't need it does not harm them.
A false positive from the program you linked causes someone to be given a harsher punishment. Increasing the punishment of someone who doesn't deserve it does harm them.
These are not the same.
Information may fix things, if USED CORRECTLY. Data fixes nothing.
The lack of understanding of the difference between the two fuels ignorance and allows stupidity to flourish.
(Insert obligatory joke about all the times Commander Data fixed the Enterprise here....)
They keep trying to make jails "nicer" and criminal populations keep getting bigger. When will they get it into their stupid heads that the whole point of jail is to make people afraid of the punishment for committing crimes. It's not about fixing the broken douchebags who are in there. If you're an adult and you don't understand right and wrong, you're never going to. But you will understand wrong and pain. Quit pussifying the justice system, and you'll stop getting so many criminals!
No, what would fix it is to quit treating American's with drugs as criminals.
The war on drug is a failure. But it has filled out prison's to the brim.
We should let drug users be and instead focus on helping addicts. The Jail population would plummit.
Unfortunately prisons are big business in america. Hell, they give millions to fight Marijuana legalization just to keep the human stock high.
querist here...
I did not know exactly how they determined which criminals to take, but the idea was that these were people who committed crimes to support their habit. The theory was that they turned to crime to support their substance habit.
> It will allow states to better divert low-level offenders with mental illness out of the criminal justice system and keep low-risk defendants out of jail while they await trial.
I can't help but notice that they want to send all the poor, mentally ill people back to the streets where they get no care.
Didn't we already do that once, leading to a surge in crime?
It'd be nice if we actually had places to help care for them, rather than dumping them on the streets out of "compassion" to let them starve.
The fundamental problem with using data like this is that race is often hidden in the data. A simple question like "Do you feel you have ever been singled out by police" might be highly predictive of race. Combine that with several variables w/ interaction in a complex model and race is almost guaranteed to be a factor.
What makes the problem worse is that the best machine learning models can be very difficult to interpret. After doing dimensionality reduction with stacked autoencoders and using boosting with decision trees, the model will most likely produce good results and be a "black box." This is fine if you're trying to predict someone's next shopping purchase, but becomes a civil rights issue when used to determine whether they are allowed to be released from jail.
I've seen this happen in several industries. I'm not sure if there's an official name for it, but I call it the "Netflix effect." Data mining and machine learning work really well for certain things like shopping. This causes people in other industries to assume they can use the same data mining techniques in their industries. I've seen it happen in education as well. There are two fundamental problems I see.
First, big silicon valley companies can afford the best statisticians and computer scientists in the world. They have the resources to train and validate very complex models. Then an industry specific company without those resources says "bring netflix-like data analytics into your industry!" They might offer something simple like linear regression and call it a day. Or even worse, make up a "score" that has no theoretical basis and use a misleading metric like accuracy to promote it.
The cost of misclassification is not the same across all industries. Misclassifying a movie suggestion is way different than deciding how to treat humans.
Jails and prisons aren't 'problems' to states and even cities...
THEY ARE PROFIT CENTERS.
But just as importantly to the 'law and order' whores for the Prison-Industrial Complex, they are a way to keep minority families broken and removed from having any political influence (the BS laws about felons permanently barred from voting, i.e., Jim Crow 2.0).
This is like the problem of detecting credit card fraud by solving the machine learning A = B x C matrix problem where the "features" of the matrices are age, ethnicity, race, gender .. even if you don't believe in the metric it can still be useful so you collect everything and use all data. Expect people to start accusing robots of racism.
Which HMO or insurance company do you suppose most of those prisoners have?
Completely pointless to catch and release the mentally ill. San Francisco has been doing this on a local basis for years and now we have thousands and thousands of mentally ill people living in tents and carts on the streets. Besides the $250M annual subsidies they also earn more by burglarizing cars and houses along with muggings - most of which are not prosecuted or only result in a written "ticket" but no consequences.
We have an entire population of wealthy (former) suburbanites carpet bagging in the city now while working in Silicon Valley who tolerate and encourage the gangs of mentally ill living in the streets. Hard to understand their motivation other than just lack of living experience because they too are the victims of the crimes. Some think it's really cool to live in an edgy place but are incapable of understanding cause and effect. When the young carpet baggers begin to breed they inevitably move to distant safer suburbs and leave lifetime city residents with the problems they've created by catering to the mentally ill criminal class.
So if you want to live in a 3rd world city/country a catch and release policy is the surest means to getting there besides buying a plane ticket to Bombay. On the other hand, even the Indians take better care of their mentally ill.
End the war on drugs.
End for-profit prisons.
End "third strikes" legislation
End mandatory minimums
End "increasing sentencing by pi times"
Stop using prisons as mental hospitals and actually build mental hospitals and give the people the services they desperately need.
Imprison only the "real criminals" and make everyone else do restitution/fines/service work.
This business of making /not even half-hearted/ "reforms" that only actually increase prison populations is not fucking cutting it.
You had your chance to deal with this, Obama. You had 8 years of a potential bully-pulpit for ideas you said you believed in. You never used it. Fuck. You.
--
BMO
Or we could just decriminalize drugs and emphasize rehab over incarceration?
The fact they're in jail should tell one, 2 things: 1) Treatment out of jail isn't working, 2) police are focused/diverted towards health problems not crime problems.
Reagan deleted healthcare from government responsibility, such that if people feel sick, they need to pay for treatment. For-profit companies decide what treatment and how much one gets; so they don't have an interest in actually curing sick people.
What does one expect with jails for profit and "tough on crime" attitudes? If one has the attitude that it's okay to abuse criminals, guess what the system will be designed to achieve? At the least, one needs a faster way of moving them through the system; like kicking minor offenders onto the street after a few hours, instead of holding them until a court sitting. This is what happens in other countries.
The best way to ease jail overcrowding is to legalize all drugs. Sure, it might cause morgue overcrowding, but they don't have to stay there as long :P
You go on and on about mental illness and use all these polarized terms but you never hint or imply what mental illness actually is.
People like you are turning "mentally ill" into an expression synonymous with "practitioner of witchcraft"
Also there are no low income people who are ineligible for insurance for almost no cost.
"Mental health services" are effectively free for all because they are effective in conditioning people to conformant behavior and this is good for the economy for many many reasons.
That is the only goal of medicine in general. There is no such thing as accessible good, holistic care. Our society will never have this.
The fundamental requirements for good care are directed contradicted by the requirements for our society to function.
Basically the critical ingredient is ignorance/delusion/indoctrination. If too many people in high-paying positions of direct responsibility to others had a realistic point of view of society and social dynamics, they wouldn't stop at helping people with their problems on a case by case basis, they would start attacking the institutions that cause these problems systematically.
First off, the term "mental illness" means absolutely nothing yet everyone likes to pretend it has a specific meaning.
This is not to save money or alleviate overcrowded prisons.
This is to pave way for further destruction of due process and general tyranny.
This is to break down the barriers between government and health care and to compromise the privacy of medical information.
This is to make "mental health services" ubiquitous and to lower the burden of forcing people to go into counseling or taking mind-altering medication.
This is all meant to be justified by portraying an algorithmic process as objectively morally correct.
We need to make the criminal code (and legal code in general) publicly distributable for free. Following that, case law needs to be available in a second document linking to the legal code so people can keep up on legal precedents set in court without having to be a lawyer, have access to a law library, or spend thousands on a LexusNexus (or other) legal services company in order to have acceptable knowledge of the ins and outs of the current law.
Following that, we need to analyse laws on the books and simplify them by eliminating obsolete laws and merging similiar laws together based on domains of infringement.
All of this would be time consuming, and all of this would would 'lowering the job load available' for lawyers and other bureacratic types, but the overall benefit to society, reducing corruption, etc could be great.
If the law is simple and clear it makes it far easier to run afoul of it, and also far easier to prove if someone broke it. Modern laws are so complex and unclear that 'game players' have no problem getting away with things, while your average citizen is fucked every time, making for good stats for prosecutors while not actually doing anything about the crimes that DO need to be successfully prosecuted.
OK this is how to save the world.
Punishment is just an expression of anger. It doesn't make the world better unless it fixes the underlying problem. We have "correctional institutions" but we don't correct. Prison is still just a place to dump someone as a form of punishment.
Autonomy and accountability go hand in hand. So when citizens in good standing reach legal age, start them out with the Basic Autonomy (TM) package. It gives you all the freedoms and powers you expect. You get it because society trusts you to keep your shit together, more or less.
We spend so much per prisoner that we certainly can afford to offer actual correctional support to those who can't manage this autonomy.
If you screw up in some way, you don't necessarily go to jail. You temporarily forfeit some measure of both autonomy *and* accountability. You lose a freedom but you also aren't expected to handle certain responsibilities. Like let's say you're caught DUI. You lose the freedom to drive, but you're provided whatever transportation you need to be productive. It's like what you'd do with your kid. Make sure the kid can get to school/work, but otherwise ground them.
If you're caught laundering money, you lose your business and license. Maybe there's some weird way to make this temporary, like if the government runs your business while your rights are suspended. The government also prohibits you from associating with certain people. But anyway, there's no need for jail time.
If you can't hold a job, or don't want to, you're basically treated the way we treat adolescents. It isn't a bad thing. It is what it is. You're fed, clothed, sheltered, free to work part time if you want, etc, but the state keeps a close eye on how you spend your time, just like parents would. It isn't fun but it isn't terrible either. You can get help to improve your ability or increase your drive to regain autonomy. Of course if circumstances beyond your control have stripped you of the ability to work, things go a bit differently.
If you kill someone deliberately, your access to people is heavily restricted. I guess this is a case where imprisonment is the only option. It's tough because when you imprison someone, they necessarily lose some powers they might have been able to handle just fine.
If you have power over other citizens, you have concomitant responsibility. For-profit prisons are de facto impossible because the whole point of the system is to balance power and accountability. As a result of that balance there is no profit to be made.
If you commit fraud, you owe the people you cheated. You lose most freedoms until you earn the money back because all of your wages are garnished. You lose the power to gain new property so the state assumes the responsibility.
Giant financial institutions are limited in their ability to grow by their ability to account for their power. "Too big to fail" doesn't happen because a bank is required to hold an untouchable cash reserve that's released if it ever fails, and this amount depends on how much damage the economy would suffer. We already require banks to keep a fractional reserve, but that fraction increases along with your impact on the market. There are other factors, such as how competent top executives are deemed to be. Can't find someone good to replace your top person? Then you need to release reserve into the market. Somehow. Not sure how.
If you take a risk so great that in failure you'd never be able to account for the loss, a portion of your gains are garnished such that in retrospect, the risk was manageable. You also temporarily lose the power to take certain risks.
I don't know what to do when economic growth in general is limited by a scarcity of accountability. Maybe nothing.
National security will upset the balance. Not sure how to manage that either.
Mentally deficient? Bwahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! You conservatives are the ones who believe in sky faires and think science is of the devil. Also if you're white and dropped out of school, you're probably a conservative as well. Again, who's the dumbass here? Keep thinking you guys are so smart. We'll more easily keep you distracted while we change the world for the better.
We don't talk about that because it's racist and illogical. Please define "thug culture". Once you define your targets, how, exactly, does one eliminate thug culture? Arrest everyone with saggy pants and a snapback hat? Ban rims greater than 18 inches on cars? Fighting a culture is about as successful as fighting terror. Furthermore I'll use one of your conservative's favorite fallacies: If we blame thug culture for crime, then we'll need to ban Christianity and pretty much every other religion as well. Oh and those white people were the ones pinning stars on certain other races back in the day so clearly white culture should be stopped. Even today white culture is attempting to resurrect the Crusades. This is one slippery slope you're trying to walk down, dude.
God dammit, Joe! I should have known it was you. All I saw was a preview sentence of some unintelligible English-like substance so I decided to click it for a translation and guess who it was!