Fact is, we have WAAAAAY too many people in jail as it is. If we were to only charge and incarcerate those who pose a safety risk to the rest of society then you could probably monitor the entire population in half as many facilities with 1/3 of the correctional officers we have today.
Interesting claim. First off, I take it you're against incarcerating white collar criminals, then-- after all, we could just take their money and blacklist them from all financial institutions. No safety risk to us, no need to stick our Enron execs behind bars.
Secondly, if you look at both federal and state prison stats http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm only about 21% of the prison population are drug offenders. Overall, over half of the entire prison population are violent, with the remainder falling into property/public order offenses. Thirdly, if you talk with the correctional officers out here in California, the drug offenders tend to be safer and more cooperative, thus reducing the necessary officer-to-prisoner ratio. A higher concentration of violent offenders will only up the necessary ratio, so I have no idea from where you derive your figures.
The US incarcerates people largely to punish them for stuff they do to themselves.
I realize you'll get plenty of rah rah here since you're pushing a popular Slashdot political viewpoint, but if you're talking drugs, I don't see how 21% is "largely." A better argument would be that the US incarcerates people largely to deter behavior of which the elected government does not approve. Perhaps you feel that some government decisions do not help society; I certainly agree that there is plenty the government can always do better, but you don't address any the major process equity tradeoffs necessary in shaping this policy. The only sad thing in your comment is that you've bought into some broad political groupthink without critically considering the facts or policy implications.
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Interesting claim. First off, I take it you're against incarcerating white collar criminals, then-- after all, we could just take their money and blacklist them from all financial institutions. No safety risk to us, no need to stick our Enron execs behind bars.
Secondly, if you look at both federal and state prison stats http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm only about 21% of the prison population are drug offenders. Overall, over half of the entire prison population are violent, with the remainder falling into property/public order offenses. Thirdly, if you talk with the correctional officers out here in California, the drug offenders tend to be safer and more cooperative, thus reducing the necessary officer-to-prisoner ratio. A higher concentration of violent offenders will only up the necessary ratio, so I have no idea from where you derive your figures.
The US incarcerates people largely to punish them for stuff they do to themselves.
I realize you'll get plenty of rah rah here since you're pushing a popular Slashdot political viewpoint, but if you're talking drugs, I don't see how 21% is "largely." A better argument would be that the US incarcerates people largely to deter behavior of which the elected government does not approve. Perhaps you feel that some government decisions do not help society; I certainly agree that there is plenty the government can always do better, but you don't address any the major process equity tradeoffs necessary in shaping this policy. The only sad thing in your comment is that you've bought into some broad political groupthink without critically considering the facts or policy implications.