How Did We Become Incarceration Nation?

Our political and media elites should be ashamed of themselves. It’s taken nearly 20 years for them to realize that we are the largest police state in the world — that we have more prisoners than China or Russia both in absolute numbers and as a percentage of the population.

This Rip Van Winkle awakening is now leading to handwringing calls for the release of minor “offenders” and rethinking the arrest of people for selling cigarettes on street corners or “driving while black.”

Incredibly, the head of the FBI frets that a new crime wave may result from being too mindful about preventing overt, racist police brutality — the so-called Ferguson Effect. But of course, he has no explanation for how the “home of the free” became a gulag.

That explanation will be hard to come by until elites admit that they destroyed any and all efforts to create public jobs and expand social programs for those struggling to survive. They incarcerated the War on Poverty.

If we listen carefully to today’s crop of politicians, we will find precious few (Bernie) who have the nerve to call for the creation of public jobs to bring down the 50% unemployment rate for black youths. Instead, they still sing from the old conservative hymnal about how “stimulating” the private sector will provide good jobs for all.

Source:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/les-le...b_8452628.html

Thank goodness these privatized prison are being shut down. I simply cannot believe this practice has been going on for this long.

Does this mean the Pissburg pissants will have to look for housing elsewhere?

And will JL have a plan for all the new reparation-eligibles released from the private prison closures?

This is an issue that would appear to unite everyone from Ted Cruz to the Koch brothers to Bernie Sanders. Unjust incarceration and ridiculous prison sentences is something that Ryan and other Republican Congressmen have been working hard on. They came up with a bill. Unfortunately they can't get it passed because Democrat Congressmen have problems with language for mens rea reform. In plain English, the Democrats believe people should go to jail for crimes they never knew they committed.

I hope all sides come together and get something done, at both the federal and state levels. The toll on human lives is enormous.

First, stop the extreme waste of money which is the war on drugs.
this will be very difficult to do as there are way too many lobbies that want it top stay and escalate because of the money that would be lost if it stopped. People, unions, corporations, and an ever increasing government profit or expand as a result and the cost is not nly on those that are railroaded through the system but upon the taxpayers that are obligated to borrow the money to pay for it.

This should be the first step in reform.

Then eliminate for profit prison except to house illegals while waiting deportation and for terrorists.

Once that is done, then we should look at sentencing reform and decrease or increase as is appropriate for the crime.
Nobody should profit from the incarceration of our citizens.

Wow, Johnny, this is the longest you have lasted in a while!

Well done.