happy Netherlands Queen’s Day!
The FIRST and ONLY Blog focused on Christians Who Love Beer!
and a chart on Prisons.
and there’s no “official recession“.
The FIRST and ONLY Blog focused on Christians Who Love Beer!
and a chart on Prisons.
and there’s no “official recession“.
April 30th, 2008 at 9:46 am
So what do you think is the cause of the high prison population?
April 30th, 2008 at 9:55 am
A high conviction rate by prosecutors, juries and judges. [/sarcasm]
I have theories, but they aren’t fully formulated.
how about you?
April 30th, 2008 at 10:18 am
I think that the war on drugs has been a collosal failure and have resulted in a huge influx of first-time non-violent prisoners who then use the prison time to become hardened and recidivist offenders. I also think that our conviction policies are biased towards African-Americans and this has led to a huge percentage of black men live in the prison system. I think that 3-strike laws are stupid as are mandatory sentencing requirements and that both of these have also contributed to our high prison population.
Here are some articles
that explain
my point of view more.
April 30th, 2008 at 11:56 am
i’m with you on the whole ‘war on drugs’ things. something there needs to change.
and the ’sentencing guidelines’ that were introduced in the 80’s (starting in MN (yay! were a leader)) was supposed to eliminate any biases in prison terms. but i don’t know if it has worked as it was planned.
something needs to change, but i don’t know who is putting for actual recommendations for change.
on another similar subject, the ‘zero-tolerance’ policies that schools institute also remove the ability to make reasonable decisions based on individual circumstances.
May 1st, 2008 at 9:25 am
here’s an interesting article that i just ran across on race and prisons. it’s really long and i need to reread it because i just skimmed through it the first time.
May 1st, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Hey…I just wanted to say thanks for the link love.
May 1st, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Greg,
anytime…
May 13th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Ok I know that it is frowned upon in the blogosphere to rehash older posts, but I just ran across this opinion article at NYT and thought I remembered that we had discussed this earlier.
May 13th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
hmmmm. now to square that article with the one I linked to….