Prisoners in the USA

B-bob, great thread. I don't think we have discussed this much recently. remember I predicted awhile back that we would start seeing an increase due to increased unemployment.

Slightly off subject, but the misuse of prison labor by private comanies is horrible. I believe China is just about the only other country that allows this. (Going off memory from a friend of mine who is interested in the topic).

Hey any of you unemployed in Austin? Here's an article about Dell's use of prison labor.
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Protest slams Dell's use of prison labor
Friday, January 10, 2003 Posted: 10:50 AM EST (1550 GMT)


LAS VEGAS, Nevada (AP) -- Some environmentalists dressed in prison uniforms say they are a high-tech chain gang.

They demonstrated Thursday outside the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to protest Dell Computer's use of inmates to recycle computers.

"I lost my job. I robbed a store. Went to jail. I got my job back," chanted five mock prisoners wearing "Dell Recycling Team" signs and linked by chains.

The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition says Round Rock-based Dell's computer recycling program is a sham.

And the coalition says Dell is putting prison workers in danger because they aren't protected by federal safety standards.

"Dell is an environmental laggard," said protester Fred Kirsch, 26.

Saving money
The coalition also complains that instead of using cheap prison labor, Dell could provide others with jobs.

A Dell spokesman acknowledges that the prison labor does save the company money, but says inmates meet all standards.

Dell's computer exchange program lets owners of obsolete Dell machines pay shipping costs to return their computers.

Ted Smith, executive director of the coalition, said Dell doesn't do much to promote the program.

Hilton said the protest was partially the result of miscommunication, and said his company and the coalition have the same goal.

"I think our challenge now is educating our customers about what their options are," he said. "I think there's a lack of awareness of what to do with an old computer."

Lagging foreign rivals
Victor Ramirez, 30, who uses a Dell computer at his job as a graphic designer for the Chicago Transit Authority, laughed as he watched the protest.

"They'll throw everything in a landfill," Ramirez said of Dell. "They don't care. They're all about the money."





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This is a very difficult issue. On the one hand, for obvious reasons, the solution can not be to change the laws to allow for more crime. One can also not release the thousands upon thousands of rapists, murderers, and child molesters into the general population simply to reduce the number of people in prison. I believe the only logical answer to this dilemma is to target low income areas that are prone to crime. There is a very strong correlation between low levels of economic status and crime. There are also demographic issues such as race and age that correlate highly to crime. The solution can not simply be to eliminate these people. Obviously our economy needs a lower class. I mean, who else is going to pick up my empty martini glass when I rest it on a bar at an elite nightclub? Who else will change the oil on my very expensive luxury SUV? I believe the solution is to target these crime-prone areas and teach them the difference between right and wrong. Private funds and charities should be used to do this.

 

Damn you McGruff, you mangy good for nothing mutt!

 

Let the drug users go and you'll cut that 2 mil in half.

trader yer such a silly rabbit.

 

Well, B-bob, the prison population has skyrocketed since we started the War on Drugs policy in 1972. In fact, from 1990 to midyear 1999, our prison population exploded by 711,818 (according to the DOJ). That means that in the 90s, we averaged an increase of 71,000 additional prisoners (for comparison, we lost 58,200 or so in Vietnam). We increased our prison population by more every year in the 90s than the number of people who died in the entire Vietnam war.

A more than significant portion of these people were arrested for nonviolent drug offenses and a disproportionate number are black or brown people. The prison industry has privatized in parts of the country and is being run for profit, and there are many companies that rent out prisoners at pennies a day, paid to the slaveholder, I mean prison corporation. In many ways, prohibition has created a new underclass of people that function as a slave trade.

From 1984 to 1996, California built 21 new prisons and only one new university. Outlays for corrections now total considerably more than outlays for education, despite the fact that the ONE proven way to reduce drug use and abuse is education, specifically higher education. People who have done time are around 10 times more likely to use drugs than people with college degrees. There might be some drug use in college, but people who go through college generally do not use drugs later in life.

To answer your question, the prison population has exploded because of prohibition.

To ask one of my own, what kind of society do we live in where we spend more incarcerating our people than we do educating them?

Is this really the "Land of the Free?"

 

Not really to me. Let people who have never hurt anyone else out of prison and that would do it for me. And don't give me that lame old "drug users are hurting themselves" crap. In a regulated, taxed system, virtually all of the harms of drug use could be mitigated by educating the people using them and not marginalizing and criminalizing a huge segment of our society.

I would never argue for any of the criminals you mentioned to be let out of prison. If we let all the drug offenders out, those people could rot in jail for their entire sentance due to the tons of space available.

And they aren't doing this now???

Actually, there is a stronger correlation to age than any of the other things you mentioned. Race is a factor in enforcement more than actual rates of criminal activity and there is a huge racial disparity in sentancing, but all the races commit crimes at roughly the same rate. Economic status also has much more of an effect on enforcement and sentancing, but roughly the same percentages of rich and poor people commit crimes. The rich just commit crimes like Enron and Worldcom rather than robbing a Stop-N-Go for $58.

It sounds like you are trying to end that elitist crap with a call for education, but it is muddled. Education is more effective than incarceration for drug use and regulation of the so-called "victimless crimes" like drug use is a much more effective model for control.

 

Those druggies deserve to be in jail. Rotting in prison is the only thig that will make them see the light.

 

There are a few problems with this. Prison labor existed before large amounts of drug users were incarcerated. The underclass of people you are talking about is thus not new, and since they are voluntarily entering into this group by commiting crimes, they are not really a class at all, any more than members of this BBS are a class of people (this would not be considered an underclass with such distinguished people as myself and T_J ). I don't think prisoners can be forced to work in programs like the Dell one mentioned above and if they do chose to participate are given some sort of payment (I am not positive on this point, but I think that is correct). If something is volunteer and returns a wage, it could hardly be called slavery. So if you take created, new, underclass, and slave trade out of your sentence it will be factually correct, and also meaningless.

 

End the war on drugs and stop sending harmless pot smokers to the American Gulag. Did you hear about all the tent prisons in Arizona that currently have prisoners outside in 114 degree heat?

The American prison industry is a plague on our society, as is the War on Drugs.

 

You do the crime, you do the time. Pure and simple.

If society as a whole still feels drug related crimes should still be crimes, those people who get caught still have to do the time. Seems fair enough. As far as absurd comparisons to the PRC or Cuba that you'll see in these threads, we also enjoy exponentially higher freedoms than people in those countries, with much less surveillance than those people are subject to. Personally I feel the WOD is misguided and prison overpopulation is merely one of the benefits we'd reap if we reversed course, but the answer to that is not to break drug laws, its to repeal them.

 

OK, granted. In that case, we have expanded the prison labor system drastically. In addition, the labor system was not run by a for-profit prison system until lately, the prisoners were doing work to help offset the costs of their incarceration (prison laundry, kitchen, raising crops, etc.).

As soon as they go behind bars, they become part of an underclass that is stigmatized throughout the rest of their lives. Ex-cons find difficulty finding work, finding adequate shelter, and in general reintegrating with society. They find themselves marginalized to the point that the only perceived option is prison, a place where there is a roof, meals, and some form of structure.

Actually, in order to receive "good time," or time off for good behavior, the inmate MUST work, with the only compensation being the time shaved off their sentance. In the days before the American Revolution, it was called indentured servitude, but it was still just slavery for a defined amount of time. The prison still rents out this labor to companies who want to say that their work is done in the US rather than in Malaysia, the only other place to get labor so cheap.

So I guess we can take created and new out and replace it with expanded, which makes the sentance read "In many ways, prohibition has expanded the underclass of people that function as a slave trade for the privatized, for-profit prison industry."

If anyone can justify the incarceration of mostly black and brown people for behavior engaged in by all classes of people, including our current President, I would love to hear (and shoot down) those arguments. The drug war has gotten us into this mess and only regulation of the industry will get us out.

 

Actually, if you are poor, brown, or black, you do the time, if you are white or in the middle to upper class, you will probably get off with a warning.

First of all, it is not exactly society as a whole that believes these things should be crimes. I posted a thread not too long ago about the increase in support for regulating mar1juana sales and consumption. I posted a poll on prohibition on the BBS here a couple of weeks ago and that poll (admittedly not the most scientific) found nearly 80% of people here on this BBS think we are headed in the wrong direction.

Secondly, the reason many in our society believe that drug use should be a crime is because of the misinformation, lies, and propaganda spewed out by organizations like the ONDCP and PDFA (funded by the alcohol and pharmaceutical industries, BTW). If we based our drug policy on science, taking into account the best ways to treat addiction as well as the most effective methods of controlling use by minors, mar1juana would have been legal in 1972, after the commission appointed by Richard Nixon reported that MJ use is more benign than alcohol use.

I want some of what you are smoking, because it must be really really strong. Our freedoms continue to get whittled away daily (Patriot Act, no-knock raids, asset forfeiture, etc.) and we are becoming the most surveilled people in the world. You are either high or deluded to make that statement.

I agree that we still have more freedoms than many other countries, but we are no longer the country that affords its citizens the most freedoms.

This is what I am trying to do by pointing out all the crap that the drug war has piled up on us. Prohibition is an expensive, counterproductive policy that relieves the very real problems inherent in drug use and abuse as much as gasoline reduces the problems inherent in a house fire.

 

You do the crime, you do the time. Pure and simple.

This reminds me of one of my favorite stories about the Texas criminal justice system and mar1juana.

In the early 1970's Texas used to have near life imprisonment for small amounts of mar1juana. Even a few joints. No one in Austin wanted to be the pinko druggie to change the law.

What happened is that the jury system took care of it. Prosecutors began losing cases in which they had taped evidence, good witnesses and even admissable confessions. Juries just started acquitting the person facing 50 years or whatever for a joint or two. (I'm sure Hayes would have objected strenuously) It was the discouraged prosecutors who finally started putting heat on the Leg to change the stupid law.

BTW someon told l me that in South Texas, prosecutors currently offer probation to first time offenders transporting up to 500 pounds of pot. In Houston that makes the newspaper as another great victory for the HPD. Turns out that is all the people there will give a first time offending neighbor.

I didn't believe it, so I asked a criminal lawyer friend who is from there and he confirmed that it was true.

 

I am arguing the justifiability of this law and you come back with this tripe? I understand that there aren't any good reasons for prohibition to continue, but you could just admit it rather than changing the subject.

This concept is called jury nullification and had been a strong part of our legal system for quite some time until lately. These days, judges throw out entire jury pools when the pool is educated as to its rights regarding nullification (Rosenthal case in Cali), and people are indicted for jury tampering for attempting such education.

Prohibition is a policy that has had chilling effects on our society and has increased the violence inherent in the system.

(side joke)
"Come to see the violence inherent in the system? Help, help, I'm being repressed!"

I know someone who went to jail for a month for six joints, how does that strike you as a resonable expenditure of law enforcement dollars?

You make the case that society should just rebel against the system by using jury nullification in order to get prohibition overturned. You say this at the same time that you say "You do the crime, you do the time. Pure and simple." Americans are so brainwashed by the prohibition machine that they don't even know about jury nullification and when someone tries to educate juries, they are indicted.

I notice that you do not put up any defense of prohibition as a policy. Is that because you don't have any ground on which to defend it? Can you cite any evidence that shows that the war on drugs is having a positive impact on our society? I can cite evidence and an extremely long list of negative impacts prohibition has on our society, economy, and freedoms.

 

Exactomundo......Andymoon. Legalize mar1juana and the prison population drops in half, or perhaps more than that. Last year, according to NORML, 700,000 people were arrested for crimes dealing with mar1juana. And I will have to agree with Andymoon, most of them are black or hispanic. Why can't we overlook a harmless vice and allow people to do something that they're going to do regardless of the law? And why should we have to pay for an evil war on drugs that sends huge segments of our population to prison for victimless crimes, curtails economic and personal liberty and ties up resources that could be used elswhere?

 

B-Bob, I remember reading somewhere (don't ask for the link!) that if Texas were a country, it would have one of the world's largest prison populations. I can't remember where it would be ranked, but I remember being shocked at where Texas would place. Definitely top ten, but third seems to be the number I remember.

Pretty shocking #'s.
Non-violent offenders, especially those on minor drug charges, should be on the street. It's gotten nuts. And it's costing a fortune.

 

Exactomundo......Andymoon. Legalize mar1juana and the prison population drops in half, or perhaps more than that.

Or, instead of legalizing it, just make it a misdemeanor to use and fine people instead of putting them in jail. Save money from the costs of incarceration, save money from prison construction costs, and generate revenues from users.

 

Unfortunately, decriminalization (the type of system you describe) keeps many of the harms of prohibition by keeping the distribution in the black market. In addition, you lose all of the tax money that could be gleaned. Why should regular taxpayers pay the social costs of drug use when we can make the drug users pay for it themselves?

IMO, use in public should remain illegal, but would be a ticketable offense with a series of escalating fines, which also raises more revenue from the users.