TONY206 said:
What is your stance on drug and other non-violent convictions?
Do you plan to implement more lenient sentences or an alternative to prison, such as rehabilitation centers?
What do you want to change with the current justice system?
Obviously the whole Prison concept in America is flawed. We have the largest prison population in the world with over 2 Million locked in cages and an additional 4 million in the prison system (parole, house arrest, etc.), the majority of which are non-violent criminals, minorities and the overwhelming majority come from poor families/households and most of these convictions come from dug related crimes.
One thing we must keep in mind is this system is weighs heavily against poor individuals who cannot afford good representatives at trail and are forced to stick with public defenders. Any upper class or rich citizen is almost guaranteed to get the charges dropped completely or receive a much lighter sentence than that of a working class or poor individual, so that in itself is a major flaw.
Crime hasn’t really gone up or down in the past 20 years, for the most part it’s remained stable, yet our prison population continues to grow each year. The percentage of violent offenders held in the state prison system has actually declined from 57% in 1978 to 47% in 1997. However, the prison and jail population has tripled over that period, from roughly 500,000 in 1978, to 1.8 million by 1998. According to data collected by the United States Justice Department, from 1978 to 1996, the number of violent offenders entering our nation's prisons doubled (from 43,733 to 98,672 inmates); the number of nonviolent offenders tripled (from 83,721 to 261,796 inmates) and the number of drug offenders increased sevenfold (from 14,241 to 114,071 inmates). As such, 77% of the growth in intake to Americas state and federal prisons between 1978 and 1996 was accounted for by nonviolent offender:
source
This is a result of our prisons becoming more and more privatized and lets face it - we are at the point where we can honestly say without a doubt that the prison industry is big business. It is a huge money machine. In 1978, the combined budgets for prisons and jails amounted to $5 billion. By 1997, that figure had grown to $31 billion (which is even higher now(same source)). Lets think of a simple example- a man gets busted for small amounts of illegal drugs, he then is sent to rehab ($), he has to pay fines ($), court fees, lets say he gets busted again because he's addicted what comes next? More fines more rehab, jail time which equals more $. You can see the cycle here. The system is not helping this man it is exploiting him of his weakness. The very nature of the prison and the system, the brutality of it is it almost guarantees the prisoner will return if he/she is ever allowed out for the very same crime (over 75% of inmates will return to prison).Obviously this system is seriously flawed.
We need to completely revolutionize the prison system. We need to focus on rehabilitation rather than punishment, and by rehabilitation I do not mean sending someone into a cell for 23 hours and having 7 hours a week of group "drug rehab" or "anger management", I mean mandatory education and job preparation for the REAL world (not working in a kitchen). We need much more lenient penalties for drug convictions and nonviolent convictions, again focusing on helping the individual and rehabilitation.
