America's prison system viewed with horror by the world

"Prison reform" is an oxymoron. The United States is not interested in legitimate reformation of it's prisoners because it would mean investing in mental health care, substance abuse treatment, and education. We have a terrible record in all three categories.

One word - drugs. America's prisons are full of people arrested for drugs.
I had the unfortunate experience of having to go to court to be a witness. I sat there all day waiting for my turn. I saw dozens of cases in passing and every single one was drug related. All the judge did all day long was sentence people to jail for the most petty drug offenses.
Drug abuse or addiction is a medical problem and it should be treated by doctors and hospitals not police and judges.
The war on drugs in this country is absolutely insane.

That's very true Tikbalang.
It's an epically simplistic and foolish way of handling the problem.

Our sentencing structure is ridiculous. You have people doing hard time in federal prisons for marijuana possession. It is insanity. Our prisons are no better than those in a third world country. But then, Abu Ghraib was only an extension of that system. And these days, our prison system is privitized like everything else. The more prisoners you have the more $$$$$$$$ you make. It is state sanctioned slavery for a profit.

Obviosly there is no money spent on re-education in the system for drug and alchohol offenders. If you go to jail because of drunk driving (even if you were only at the legal limit and otherwise a law abiding taxpaying citizen)you are placed with more dangerous people -either awaiting trial or sentenced for their crimes,- imagine what can be learned from this sort of experience! SHAME ON AMERICA for even calling it Department of CORRECTIONS

Currently according to the Federal Statistics there are approximately one in every thirty two adult U.S. citisens behind bars!(Bureau of Justice Statistic 3/18/08)

Everybody is GUILTY until proven otherwise. Period

G Dubya.

I would rather be a rapist or murderer in a US prison than sentenced in Saudi Arabia or China.

Lawyers don't make laws, lawmakers do.

Props to uroborus8. We don't rehab anyone. Our prisons are filled with people who are not criminals, but simply ran afoul of an inflexible, outdated law system, and, more disturbingly, police forced to keep quotas to keep their jobs. Yet another failing in this country...

One might think that to stop breaking the f'ing LAW would be a better way to stay out of jail. The freedoms of the US allow for more people to break the law. Unfortunately since society is moving more towards the "easy way out" and further away from EARNING the things you want, this trend will continue. Moral relativism in our schools is a large part of the problem, instead of telling kids that it's NOT ok to act like a retard they are told it's ok, it's their life choice and the only criminal is the person who doesn't respect their life choice. Society as a whole looks to everyone else when assigning the blame for their problems.

WorldPeaceTV, great post. Your 4 reasons are accurate. In addition to those 4; the U.S. government no longer respects the citizens of America. Things which used to be unacceptable are now the norm.

* Elections decided by 9 judges instead of US - acceptable.
* Torture - acceptable.
* Illegal wire tapping - acceptable.
* War of aggression against a country who had not attacked us, using fake, fixed facts - acceptable.

For those of us who remember better times, it's an 'Assault on Reason'. How has this happened?

When we changed from a 'Leader' to a 'Decider' it has changed the structure of our Constitution. America was not set up for a 'Decider' (King George). Sad!

Well, at least the terrorists won’t want to attack us for our freedom. The ‘Decider’ has already taken that away. Freedom is a thing of the past!

Liberal_Extinction, moral absolutism is fundamentally flawed, primitive, and naive, at best. Moral absolutism might be right in a world where only black and white exist, but in this world there are numerous shades of grey between black and white, plus a wide spectrum of colours. For example, a child of three or four who doesn't have a concept or understanding of death and who lashes out either in anger or self-protection and kills another child is not a murderer, but moral absolutism would condemn this child as such. I could give you thousands of examples to demonstrate that moral absolutism is simply wrong.

you think we have a bunch of innocents in our prison systems? think again. over 50% of the inmates are in for violent crimes. 20% for burglary/thefts. 20% drug related and the remainder for civil disputes

they do need to be reformed. they need to be made bigger. why. because more and more people in this country, citizens or illegals, are continuing to break the rules.

when the country to our southern border has the highest violent crime per capita rating in this hemisphere, it spills over into our country because our country is where they are running to

diode, I think you are overlooking the fact that most of the burglaries, thefts and violent crimes are in and of themselves "drug related." Highly competive cartels and gangs violently fight for their shares of the market. Drug abusers who have developed addictions seek methods for obtaining their fixes by any means necessary. And let us not forget the corruption that occurs in some of our police departments (including CIA).

Anyone seriously concerned about protecting the borders and/or the War on Terror should keep in mind that the War on Drugs is counterproductive to both. Drug cartels and terrorists grow wealthy on the huge profits produced by the blackmarket. And if law enforcement didn't have to focus so much on the campaign they could spend their time on more important issues like the borders and ports. Al Capone and Pablo Escobar became rich and powerful for exactly the same reason!

The following is from the Law Enforcement Against Prohibition website: "After nearly four decades of fueling the U.S. policy of a war on drugs with over a trillion tax dollars and 37 million arrests for nonviolent drug offenses, our confined population has quadrupled making building prisons the fastest growing industry in the United States. More than 2.2 million of our citizens are currently incarcerated and every year we arrest an additional 1.9 million more guaranteeing those prisons will be bursting at their seams. Every year we choose to continue this war will cost U.S. taxpayers another 69 billion dollars. Despite all the lives we have destroyed and all the money so ill spent, today illicit drugs are cheaper, more potent, and far easier to get than they were 35 years ago at the beginning of the war on drugs. Meanwhile, people continue dying in our streets while drug barons and terrorists continue to grow richer than ever before. We would suggest that this scenario must be the very definition of a failed public policy. This madness must cease!"

@ Vierotchka

Yet you fail to see the rapid decline of personal responsibility that is corroding productive society due to moral relativism. Moral absolutism may not be the PERFECT answer but serving up excuses for everyone that fucks up isn't the answer either.

Vierotchka,

Technically speaking, moral absolutism isnt the only alternative to moral relativism...one could be a moral objectivist (that is, think there are objective moral principles) who finds some moral obligations greater than others (that is, the obligation to preserve innocent human life is greater than the obligation to tell the truth about the Jew hiding in your basement during WW2). But to call the notion of holding some ethical values as universal 'primitive,' itself underscores a primitive understanding of ethics.

With regards to your thousands of examples of how objective morality is 'simply wrong,' I think it would be wise for you to first note the distinction between cultural value and cultural practice. For example, while some simple observers of Indian and American cultures might find a disagreement in the cultural practices of eating beef (i.e, we eat beef, they don't) its important to note that we share the same values. Both cultures resist eating Grandma, but there is a disagreement about whether or not grandma might be reincarnated as a cow. Here, the values are similar even though the practice would seem to suggest otherwise.

In short, there are transcultural, objective (if not absolute) moral values. Because of this, we can rightfully criticize the immoral prison-industrial complex with the force of a shared moral understanding.

Liberal_Extinction, moral absolutism is the WORST answer of all, and moral relativism doesn't seek to serve up excuses for everyone who "fucks" but does seek to see things in context and according to the mental, psychological and other conditions of the people involved.

BooksBrown, I never said anything about objective morality at all. I was talking about moral absolutism versus moral relativism.

ok, but absolutism isnt all that different from objectivism. they both allow for a transcultural, transhistorical critique of moral behavior. They both allow for people to say, "Cut that shit out. It's wrong!" And when they say it's wrong, they aren't saying..."me and the guys, today, think its wrong...but tomorrow, the moral tide might shift." They are saying its wrong, in all places at all times (notwithstanding a conflict in values, where the objectivist has an out). I dont even think there are any real absolutists anymore.

in any case, by relegating morality to passing emotive whim, we lose the power of our moral critique.

I would have to say drugs also. Drugs offenses are landing people in jail by the thousands, every single day. I think there needs to be standards set to the amount of drugs or even types of drugs that land you in jail.
For example, I don't believe someone with a small amount of marijuana should have to face jail time. Save our prisons for the murderers. rapist, pedofiles, and other violent criminals. Taxpayers are forced to pay for these people sitting in jail. While all along, our governments pockets are getting fatter by throwing more people in jail, but they complain when they have to build new ones. This is a vicious cycle that unless something is changed, we're never going to be able to break it. Someone has to make a change, or we'll end up having more prisons than hotels.
We can't lock up everyone who does drugs. If you look at the long term effects that this is going to have on our future generations, our outlook doesn't look well. On every application you fill out, it ask you... have you ever been convicted of a felony? Or misdemeanor that is non-traffic related. Eventually, our work force will feel the impact of so many convicted people that it's going to be hard to find people to hire. I think we are already facing this problem today.

I thought prison was supposed to suck. I think it might suck even more in some other countries than it does here in the U.S., but I do think all the drug-related charges filling up state and federal penitentaries are a most unnecessary culprit. .

It's incredible that the US can be considered a "developed country." If a martian looked at our indicators like infant mortality rate, percentage of people with health insurance, number of annual executions...and incarceration rate, it would probably come to the logical conclusion that we are an authoritarian, underdeveloped state which looks out solely for its elite interests. Let's elect a president who will change these statistics around!

WOOOAAHHH, Change gone coommeee....

Hawkmang, your post hit the nail on the head. The 'War on Drugs' has been a travesty. It has torn apart as many American families as the drugs themselves. The ‘War on Drugs’ is a 'War of Choice' against ordinary Americans. You can't have that many people in jail for non-violent crimes, without damaging families.

Most of the things that are happening to our rights, started with the 'War on Drugs'. We even had a ‘Drug Czar’. I don’t know about you, but when I was in school, a Czar was a bad person in a non-free society.

The 'No knock searches' made many things acceptable.
Forfeiture of property for non-violent drug busts. The forfeiture was guilty till proven innocent. People had to get lawyers to get the money/property back. People accepted it, it wasn’t them, they didn’t care.

Mainstream media played along. They knew cannabis was not a dangerous drug. They did the same thing in the lead up to the war with Iraq and are still doing it today. They spun both wars and still are. Journalists might as well be ‘talking heads’, they really aren’t journalists anymore.

'Prison for Profit' - No wonder they are perpetuating the 'War on Drugs', who else is making money from it? Tearing apart families for want of more dollars. Didn't Michael Jordan make an outlandish amount of money playing basketball? Isn't he living the 'good life'? When is enough, enough? 'People over profit' should be the 'rule', not 'profit over people'. 'Profit over people' sounds so 'Un-American'.