Not locking them in cages. The US locks up people at 10X the rate of every peer nation, literally. By my logic, this implies 90% should be free right now, via one mechanism or another.
I'm saying we shouldn't have unjust laws. But since we do, we shouldn't treat them all as slaves. I'm saying we shouldn't have innocent people in prison, but that's impossible to prevent. And since we do, again, we shouldn't treat them all as slaves.
I'm more interested in prison for rehabilitation than I am as punishment. I'd rather we reduce the recidivism rate than bask in schadenfreude. I'm more interested in addressing why we have the highest per capita incarceration rate of any first world nation.
Why is it underhanded to let out people whose government has locked them in cages? Sounds like freedom to me. Now where's the nearest maximum security prison...
Obviously. It’s just that I believe the people that would be/are locked up under the current laws (and the laws in my 30ish years of life) deserve what they get.
Conversely, I believe there are a lot of people in the US walking around freely that deserve to be locked up.
I think we should aim at prison capacity of about 90% of the population. Let's face it. About 1% of society can actually live on their own. Another 10% might be able to sustain themselves with work. That leaves about 90% that will eventually end up in jail because of their economic conditions. It's not a bad thing. 10% can watch them, feed them and cloth them, while 1% pays for everything with their pocket money and finally has peace and quiet. /s
I'm quite comfortable but would never advocate slavery for any human being. If anything these prisoners should be paid a minimum wage and funds only released post completion of sentence. A significant % of recidivism is due to being poor and having little to no options from my understanding.
>Because when you break the law and get caught, you give up your freedom to choose.
That is so terribly out-dated. The fact that a prisoner loses their freedom for a specified period of time should be the total of their debt to society.
Some reform on this front would be good but I think it will be many decades before the US is ready to confront these things, if it doesn't fall apart beforehand due to the ever increasing divide, both geographically and ideologically.
Be that as it may, and maybe they shouldn’t be free. But I don’t think they should be in prison either. You can have your freedom punitively stripped away from you without being held in prison.
I feel like the US system is focused on punishment of the criminals instead of protecting the public from these criminals. Locking them away should be a necessary evil since we have no better (more humane) solution, not an active punishment because it makes some people feel better or superior.
Consider how many people are stuck in cages for no good reason over this. If some organization other than the government were kidnapping that many people, solving that problem would be a high priority.
Besides, the opportunity cost is zero to not lock these people up. It's not as if some other problem is going unsolved in favor of taking this law off the books.
Never said that. My sarcastic rant was there because locking people up is simply not a good enough solution.
I can guarantee you the vast majority of people in prison can be reformed and reintegrated. But most prison systems don't want that. They work towards punishment/revenge, and as a bonus, give out slave labor for dirty companies.
Suggesting "locking more people up" is a good solution is so bad that it's laughable in my view. It's so short-sighted and simplistic that it's not worth arguing about. Locking more people up translates to locking more poor people up, for the crime of being poor.
I even added a "/s" to make it clear I was being ironic, but clearly that didn't work as I intended.
Should we throw all mothers (and fathers) in jail that take care of their own kids for free? Should we jail everyone who does things for free? We could put something like 99% of Americans in jail. Some presidents and politicians would love a solution like that. Good thing you came up with the a brilliant way of justifying this. What incredible insight into macroeconomics!
It's not a cop-out, it's exactly how other countries have eliminated this problem.
The US is the largest incarcerator in the world, yet it still has these problems. Your suggestion is that we can imprison our way out of this, but prison makes people poorer, in some cases permanently, which ultimately makes the problem worse.
The US already proportionally has the most prisoners out of any country in the world, and I'm wary of any solution that includes making that problem worse. That kind of thing has giant socioeconomic costs and, looking at the crime rates, doesn't seem to work at making the country safer. I just don't think that finding yet another reason to put a whole bunch of people in prison (average cost per month between $2000 and $4000 at a quick google) over a bike worth $1000 is really going to make anything better in the long run.
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