Pew Study: Cost of Locking Up Americans Too High

[BridgeTheGap]

Washington - One in every 31 U.S. adults is in the corrections system, which includes jail, prison, probation and supervision, more than double the rate of a quarter century ago, according to a report released on Monday by the Pew Center on the States.

The study, which said the current rate compares to one in 77 in 1982, concluded that with declining resources, more emphasis should be put on community supervision, not jail or prison.

"Violent and career criminals need to be locked up, and for a long time. But our research shows that prisons are housing too many people who can be managed safely and held accountable in the community at far lower cost," said Adam Gelb, director of the Center's Public Safety Performance Project, which produced the report.

The United States has the highest incarceration rate and the biggest prison population of any country in the world, according to figures from the U.S. Department of Justice.

http://www.truthout.org/030309O

[elocs]

1. I read about this last night here.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5171634

[Vini_Vidivici]

2. Well, obviously there are several things wrong here

This is a sign of our society going down the drain. Too many problems to list here, but yes........crime has increased.

I'd say our system is horribly flawed in that it costs "so much" to keep people in prison. And many more of the voilent repeat offenders need to simply be executed. That is fair and just. And something is seriously wrong with the system when it costs so much more to end the existence of an inherently evil and counter-productive individual than it does to feed and house the scum for life.........that is insane.

This part: "But our research shows that prisons are housing too many people who can be managed safely and held accountable in the community at far lower cost," this is utterly ridiculous. This humanist, so called "progressive" mentality is seriously flawed. Time and again we see crimes comitted by re-offenders. If the scum had been kept off our streets to begin with, the crime never would've been committed.

We have become so very weak as a Nation.

[asteroid2003QQ47]

3. Ignoring the wishes of those who opt out of "our society" is problematical. eom

[kerrywins]

4. But We Already Know the Answer

When the federal government ignored the powers it was limited to (in the constitution) and gave itself the power to punish those who possess and sell any substance our fake lords say we do not have the right to possess and sell.

[steven johnson]

5. AP: States pull back after decades of get-tough laws

After years of trying to use the criminal justice system to do social engineering and control illegal drug use, it is apparent that the experiment was not successful.

This is the basic flaw in the Far Right's approach to solving societies problems. Using a bigger stick to club them ignores the fundamental problems.

But after cracking down and incarcerating hundreds of thousands, cash-strapped states including New York, Kentucky and Kansas are pulling back. They face an uncommon confluence of dire economics and prisons bursting at the seams and several have changed, in whole or in part, their stances on hard punishment.

Their reasons: the get-tough laws didn't always work, especially when it came to slowing recidivism, the revolving door of prisoners who get out, mess up again, and come back. There were legal challenges, and questions about whether the punishment always fit the crime.

And of course, there's the money. In tough economic times, the expensive laws are increasingly being deemed expendable.

Last week, New York reached an agreement to repeal the last vestiges of the Rockefeller drug laws, once considered the harshest in the nation.

States pull back after decades of get-tough laws