Ain't nuthin' new.
I love this guy pic.twitter.com/eB7GfjlbUR— •lina• (@agirlcalledlina) March 4, 2019
Showing posts with label prison. Show all posts
Showing posts with label prison. Show all posts
Mar 5, 2019
Today's Tweet
Ain't nuthin' new.
Aug 4, 2017
Crime And Punishment
Sturm und Drang abounds over the "Murder-by-Text" trial (and as of yesterday the sentencing) of Michelle Carter.
The Hill, David Shapiro:
With the news in that a Massachusetts judge sentenced homicide-by-text defendant Michelle Carter to fifteen months in prison and six years on probation, many are outraged at the perceived leniency of the sentence.
They may have a point, but only because brutally harsh sentences have become the norm in American criminal justice, and with devastating effects. The past decades have witnessed massive “sentencing inflation” as periods of incarceration have become longer and longer.
In the past 40 years, the incarceration rate in the United States skyrocketed by 500 percent. The United States now locks up more of its people than Russia and China — some 2.2 million of us. According to the Sentencing Project, “Changes in law and policy, not changes in crime rates, explain most of this increase.”
The Hill, David Shapiro:
With the news in that a Massachusetts judge sentenced homicide-by-text defendant Michelle Carter to fifteen months in prison and six years on probation, many are outraged at the perceived leniency of the sentence.
They may have a point, but only because brutally harsh sentences have become the norm in American criminal justice, and with devastating effects. The past decades have witnessed massive “sentencing inflation” as periods of incarceration have become longer and longer.
In the past 40 years, the incarceration rate in the United States skyrocketed by 500 percent. The United States now locks up more of its people than Russia and China — some 2.2 million of us. According to the Sentencing Project, “Changes in law and policy, not changes in crime rates, explain most of this increase.”
If Carter’s sentence seems short, it is because we are weighing it on a broken scale.
Increasing rates of incarceration at best has a minimal effect on crime, and may have no effect at all. In other words, mass incarceration is all about politics, not public safety.
We've been through a long and damaging period of "Law-n-Order" that's done little but make real the grotesque Dickensian villainy of the Prison Entrepreneur, and a Coin-Operated Justice System.
Maybe we're seeing something of a backlash now.
But we still have to contend with certain Daddy Staters, per Charlie Pierce:
Were you wondering if Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III was still the prickly authoritarian yahoo that he's always been, now that he has gotten on the bad side of the president*? Wonder no longer, says The Washington Post.
Increasing rates of incarceration at best has a minimal effect on crime, and may have no effect at all. In other words, mass incarceration is all about politics, not public safety.
We've been through a long and damaging period of "Law-n-Order" that's done little but make real the grotesque Dickensian villainy of the Prison Entrepreneur, and a Coin-Operated Justice System.
Maybe we're seeing something of a backlash now.
But we still have to contend with certain Daddy Staters, per Charlie Pierce:
Were you wondering if Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III was still the prickly authoritarian yahoo that he's always been, now that he has gotten on the bad side of the president*? Wonder no longer, says The Washington Post.
Dec 25, 2015
Yale Not Jail
As much as I hate to agree with Jesse Jackson, he was right about one thing. We spend way more money on keeping people in jail than we spend on the schooling that everybody knows makes it a lot less likely that any given kid will end up in prison.
And here's a tiny peek at just how stoopid we are in that particular regard:
20.2 Million = College Students in USAmerica Inc
$21 Billion = What we spend on College every year (Avg Cost, Public 2- or 4-year schools)
2.2 Million = Prison Inmates
$74 Billion = What we spend on Prisons in USAmerica Inc every year
Arithmetic please: We have almost 10 times as many students as we have inmates, but we spend more than 3 times as much on the inmates as we spend on the students.
Why does that make sense to anybody?
Read up at smartasset.com
And here's a tiny peek at just how stoopid we are in that particular regard:
20.2 Million = College Students in USAmerica Inc
$21 Billion = What we spend on College every year (Avg Cost, Public 2- or 4-year schools)
2.2 Million = Prison Inmates
$74 Billion = What we spend on Prisons in USAmerica Inc every year
Arithmetic please: We have almost 10 times as many students as we have inmates, but we spend more than 3 times as much on the inmates as we spend on the students.
Why does that make sense to anybody?
Read up at smartasset.com
The American prison system is massive. So massive that its estimated turnover of $74 billion eclipses the GDP of 133 nations. What is perhaps most unsettling about this fun fact is that it is the American taxpayer who foots the bill, and is increasingly padding the pockets of publicly traded corporations like Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group. Combined both companies generated over $2.53 billion in revenue in 2012, and represent more than half of the private prison business. So what exactly makes the business of incarcerating Americans so lucrative?
Oct 24, 2014
Jul 21, 2014
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