America's prison system viewed with horror by the world

youtube.com/prisonlongtimecoming

real inmates in a web reality series

The problem of our overpopulated prison system is that we have way too many non-violent drug users in the system. If marijuana was legal it would remove thousands of inmates from the system and would save money for a government that desperately needs to save some money in what is becoming an economic crisis in America.

Younger brother was busted for possesion (of coke) almost a year ago. I am going through it. I even used some drugs when I was younger, I'm NOT speaking out against something that is completely foreign to me. My younger brother is going through a riduculously annoying pain in the ass process right now and I'm ALL for it. I hope he learns his lesson for it and I'm damn glad he's having to pay the piper for his fuck up. Don't think for 1 minute that this is all foreign to me. I can't say that it NEVER happens but I don't believe most 1st time offenders end up doing hard time in prison, most get a slap on the wrist, some probation and an opportunity to starighten up and fly right. I'm not attending the pity party for people who don't pay attention when given the opportunity to correct their actions.

Liberal Extinction,

We are not saying that tax payers money should be spent on a fun jail time however we are saying that people with drug addiction need help and you dont get the help you need mentally, emotionally, or spiritually in jail. They need counselling, often times when people get out for addiction they are okay for a while, but then they are surrounded by the same people and its hard. They need help that will help them sustain their new lifestyle out of jail. Just wait till its someone in your family...Lets see who will be fighting the system then.

--Jade

I also believe that prison should be SOOOO unpleasant for a criminal that when they do leave they will avoid going back at ALL costs.

I'm not against some careful scrutiny on criminal cases and avoiding the most extreme of punishments for people that there is some REASONABLE doubt as to their guilt or innocence. I can live with that and sincerely hope that the truly innocent are found innocent. You also have to admit and acknowledge that there are far too many appeal cases being drug out for years, if not decades b/c lawyers are trying to get a case thrown out on some bullshit technicality. Would I like to see every death row inmate DNA tested before being put ot death? Sure I would IF there is DNA evidence present to test it against. Like I said, I don't want to see some 19 y/o kid that got busted with a quarter oz of pot doing hard time with a convicted murderer. I think the best thing for the prison system would be to house like criminals in the same cell blocks or even facilties. If you do the crime you do the time with like minded criminals. I do think that throwing the wrong inmate into the wrong situation causes a lot of problems, hell the non violent offenders are simply turned into punching bags for the violent offenders, who wouldn't do anything in their power to find protection in that case. There will NEVER be a "perfect" system that convicts (properly) ONLY the guilty and never lets an innocent slip through the cracks at least as long as human interaction is part of the process. Likewise there will never be a perfect system that catches EVERY criminal. I do however believe that there are enough undeniably guilty criminals in the system and we are failing to completely purge them from our midst, they're serving no purpose other than a drain on our society. I don't think that executing a convicted murderer, repeat pedophile, serial rapist, and other similar offenses IN ANY WAY takes away our humanity or reduces us to his/ her level. Keeping trash like that around only de-sensitizes us to the horrific nature of their crimes. Kill 'em, move on, and forget about them if their guilt is undeniable.

Name 1 sound reason why an animal like Charles Manson is still alive.

Liberal Extinction,

Our incarceration system perpetuates repeat offenders by virtually taking away the ability to land a job after becoming a convicted felon. There were also programs for continuing education that were cut because educating criminals decreases the crime rate. Some of these guys don't learn because they are undereducated.

If your utmost concern is to stop crime, then opt for rehabilitation programs and call for a change in business policies that ease the transition from felon to contributing member of society. Taking away oppertunity to become more than a criminal will not take away the criminal element; it only strengthens it.

Also a hard, rigid legal system does not offer any give for people falsely accused or imprisioned. For sake of the arguement, let's say you were falsely convicted of a crime you did not commit(yes, this does happen). You can appeal your case, but unless you have new evidence then you will most likely lose it. You will also need money and will have to work on your case from prison. Meanwhile, you will be treated like every other prisoner and possibly subject to sexual assault, physical assault, guard abuse, or several other violations of human rights.

Murderers, rapists, molesters... they are the worst in the human spectrum of character. No matter how evil a man can be, or how much wrong he's done, you cannot take away his humanity because that would make you sink to his level.

LIberal_Extinction... This is about the Constitution and morality. You don't believe in either? What if it happened to someone in your family? It isn't as black and white as you think it is. It is very easy to go to prison these days for doing almost nothing. Not everyone in our prisons are guilty of a crime and even if they are, constitutionally cruel and unusal punishment should not be tolerated because as a people we should be better than that. This isn't about being a bleeding heart liberal that wants to set criminals free, it is about putting the LAW above our own baser human instincts. It is also about being a country that is better than those they incarcerate. In the case ofthe U.S. however, that is something we cannot say and that is truly sad.

Yea cove, I do believe that the current system is in need of serious reform. I believe that death row needs some serious spring cleaning, it's too over crowded with people leeching off the system with defense attorneys looking for "technicalities" to get them off. I think that there are plenty of repeat offenders in the system that have not/ refuse to change their ways and become productive members of society that need to executed. If people can't benefit the society that they are part of then there is no reason whatsoever to house the trash. I think that people convicted of petty crimes (even recreational drug users) should NOT be housed with general population as long as they behave themselves and serve their time out in a peaceful manner. Hell if I had my way only criminals guilty of similar offenses would be housed in the same cell block. Let the hood rat gangsters be housed with other hood rat gangsters and who gives a rats ass if they want to kill each other off, they're saving us all time and money. Let the pedophiles and rapist gang bang themselves into oblivion, hopefully natural selection will pick that trash off with diseases. House convicted murderers with other convicted murderers, hell you get the idea. Make prison an absolute hell on earth for violent offenders so that they do have a reason to think twice knowing full well that it is their destination if they choose to attack someone else. As for the petty criminals, sure, give them a chance to make themselves right, if they refuse to and escalate themselves to worse crimes then guess what, they go in and stay in for LONG LONG TIME.

If a criminal cannot mount a reasonably sound appeal within a year or so, guess what, times up!

Liberal_Extinction :-(

Conservative_Extinction :-)

Liberal_Extinction, don't you think that our current system is in serious need of reform?

Man some of these insane rants are just killing me. I don't care WHAT your crime of choice is; drugs, rape, murder, robbery, ETC. If you are a criminal I don't want you roaming freely about the streets, the law abiding citizens in our society do NOT deserve to have to put up with that shit. Stop assigning victim status to the law breakers and start protecting those who are content to follow the law and EARN what they have/ want. I believe SOME people can be rehabilitated and would be all for programs to help them do so, I also believe that MANY repeat offenders are given 3rd, 4th, 5th chances etc and they NEVER seem to learn, get them the hell out of the gene pool. I don't care what political philosophy you follow, there are laws in this land and until they are changed people should be required to follow them or serve their time for breaking them, end of story.

Do I think that prisoners need to be beaten, tortured, raped etc? No, not at all, but I also think they need to have TV's, radio's, magazines and other creature comforts that make their stay more pleasant. Prison needs to be the worst experience of their lives, it needs to remain a DETERRENT, not a summer camp.

man, you are so right about that Jade...the biggest coke dealer in our town was finally arrested, and he got off with little more than a hand slap...

this is a guy who has openly claimed that some rich business man set him up in the first place, and I can pretty much guarantee you it's business as usual...lawyers, judges, they are all part of his client base, so of course he walks.

every now and then they go into the public housing projects and bust the petty dealers and send them off to jail. Everyone in this town who knows anything about drugs, knows this guy is the coke dealer....but he walks, and we call this justice...yeah, liberty and justice for all.

It seems that some people are locked up on petty offenses while the "real crooks" are free to run the streets. While practically everyone goes to jail for drug addiction, its hard to convict murderers, rapist, or other people who are harmful to society. Seems kind of like a backwards system

--Jade

justwannafindmytrue-

America has been messed up ever since the end of slavery, when a reconstruction plan for southern states was created that left minorites a social outcasts for another century.

Since then, the news has been bought by private investors to influence popular opinion and obscure the truth.

The privately owned federal reserves keep the country in debt to line their own pockets.

Every war since World War I was lied about, manipulated, or otherwise falsely waged(take a look at Prescott Bush for example... he gave money to the Nazis).

The premise of America as a champions of righteousness is a lie. Our streets contain murders, rapists, and homocidial mainacs and instead we prosecute drug users.

These guys should not make a killing by killing us from behind bars.

The prison system in this country has been an abomination for many years.

Everything in America is messed up right now, its been this way for about 8 years now, i wonder why?

The US prison system is another example of how a small, powerful, and select group of people control American society. And, make money doing it.
Their motto is "keep them ignorant, and stupid". Which comes from their golden rule "divide them an we rule".
Throw them in jail (keep them uneducated). Keep them in jail, (keep them divided from the rest of America).
Pass this enforced culture on to your family and children.

Nwillens, don't you also think a martian looking at our behavior would think to himself "WTF are they thinking using abortion as a means of birth control?" Maybe, just maybe? Not to change the subject but the "martian" argument is pretty weak.

'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'.

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.

WOOOAAHHH, Change gone coommeee....

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!

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. .

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.

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.

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.

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.

@ 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.

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!"

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!

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

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.

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!

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.

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...

Lawyers don't make laws, lawmakers do.

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

Everybody is GUILTY until proven otherwise. Period

G Dubya.

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)

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

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.

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

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.

"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.