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DFTFT. Instead, feed Steve_NO and isaac. They're wrong too, of course, but they're also capable of reasoned, intelligent discussion. I'd love to feed Steve_NO and Isaac! ![[Linked Image]](http://www.mysmiley.net/imgs/smile/characters/character0076.gif) Seriously, Steve_NO and Isaac are honorable men, and whether or not they agree, they will not purposely misrepresent what another has said. They've got integrity. Penny
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. --Hebrews 11:1
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Uh-oh... you fell for the troll!!!  Penny
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. --Hebrews 11:1
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Campfire Sage
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DFTFT. Instead, feed Steve_NO and isaac. They're wrong too, of course, but they're also capable of reasoned, intelligent discussion. I'd love to feed Steve_NO and Isaac! Seriously, Steve_NO and Isaac are honorable men, and whether or not they agree, they will not purposely misrepresent what another has said. Penny If only that were so.
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Campfire Ranger
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Crack + Meth + the over prescribing of opiate based pills = More prisons.
Mike
God, Family, and Country.
NRA Endowment Member
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Well, that's my assessment, anyway... I can't claim that I have read every single post in all the threads... Maybe I've been blinded by their charm...   Penny
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. --Hebrews 11:1
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Campfire Tracker
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Uh-oh... you fell for the troll!!! Penny Troll? That hurts. Was merely trying to provoke a little thoughtful discourse. @ or so posts later I fessed up. LOL
Democracy is not freedom. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch. Freedom comes from the recognition of certain rights which may not be taken, not even by a 99% vote.
*Marvin Simkin* L.A. Times (1992)
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If being disliked by a couple of monkey's with a football, along with the Crazy 8, is supposed to make me reconsider my stance on subject matter like drugs, imprisonment and cults (or anything else) it ain't working. When responding to this bunch 'heavyweight' doesn't show up on my radar screen....laughable, does.
grin
All American
All the time
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I couldn't care less what you think about drugs. What you need to reconsider your stance on is honesty and integrity. You're the one who has to look at yourself in the mirror every morning.
Barak's right... you're needy and want the attention, even if it's negative.
Penny
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. --Hebrews 11:1
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Is this your idea of a scathing remark? If I wanted or needed attention I'd be all over several posters remarks....but, you must not have noticed I disappeared from these pizzing matches by those that really believe they have a grip on reality. I don't want to know what y'all do grip, but it ain't reality.
And by the way, I haven't seen any sign that your twin has ever been right, or correct.
All American
All the time
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Penny, if you think really hard you can figure out who used to post a lot, took several much ballyhood leaves from the board, made a triumphant comeback, and then quit posting just about the same time Stan started posting. Once you figure that out, you'll know exactly what is going on with Stan.
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Campfire Regular
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Perhaps the link below will get us back to the original discussion that was prompted by Tlee's article and is much more interesting than the name calling this thread has deteriorated into. http://blog.kir.com/archives/NCCD%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf
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Campfire Kahuna
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Campfire Kahuna
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The causes for the overreliance on imprisonment in the US are multifold. Crime rates, occaional spikes in certain
types of crime (both actual and perceived), media coverage of the worst cases, public perceptions, political opportunism,
and misdirected laws, policies, and practices certainly play roles. The fi ndings reported in this fact sheet suggest
that it is time for a serious review of US incarcareration policies and practices. Over a quarter of a century ago,
NCCD president Milton Rector wrote, �The rate of imprisonment in the United States, which takes pride....in its
protection of liberty and freedom, is considerably higher than the rate in any other industrialized nation. To ignore
it is to condone the fl agrant waste of money and lives and the crime-producing effects of needless imprisonent; to
allow it to continue would be irresponsible support of....leaders....who perpetuate the myth that more imprisonment
means better protection of the public.� That pretty much sums it up. We lock up more people and flat do it for the wrong reasons. Very good article Sir, thanks for posting it.
George Orwell was a Prophet, not a novelist. Read 1984 and then look around you!
Old cat turd!
"Some men just need killing." ~ Clay Allison.
I am too old to fight but I can still pull a trigger. ~ Me
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Penny, if you think really hard you can figure out who used to post a lot, took several much ballyhood leaves from the board, made a triumphant comeback, and then quit posting just about the same time Stan started posting. Once you figure that out, you'll know exactly what is going on with Stan. Think really hard? Dude, the divide between bedrock Americans and RP diciples is stunning.....
All American
All the time
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Campfire Ranger
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� the name calling this thread has deteriorated into. � � further proof that we need more Campfire Days and weekends. The prototype Raton gathering proved � beyond doubt or dismissal � the incalculable benefits of our getting to know each other, however briefly, in person.
"Good enough" isn't.
Always take your responsibilities seriously but never yourself.
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Gee Tod,
Even Montana attributes it's success to the "War On Drugs". Tell your fellow citizens your theories now, sport!!
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
"It becomes this idea of unselling a product," says Steve Pasierb, president and CEO of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, the nonprofit group in New York that produced the famous "This is your brain on drugs" public-service announcements. "Instead of driving up perception of benefit, we drive perception of risk. Instead of driving up social acceptance, we drive social disapproval. And what you find is you literally move consumers away from your product." Most experts in this state attribute the success to a strong advertising campaign and an emphasis on education. Reducing demand has always been far more successful than attacking supply. I know exactly what is going on from the law enforcement side. This war is being won not with arrests and putting more people in jail, but by education and advertising. Please read my previous post on what the 'war on drugs' means. As I noted, if you consider the war on drugs enhanced sentences, more arrests, etc, it has been a failure. I already pointed out Montana's success with the 'Meth - not even once' campaign.
Be the person your dog thinks you are.
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+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ I like the catch and release concept.  For me the hunt/investigation is what's interesting. After i testify and Prosecution/Defense does their duty, i don't care what happens to them. They can either go to a country club or a chain gang. For those crimes against a victim, the victim for the most part doesn't care either, it's the fact that the suspect was caught. If the suspect has money and there was damage, injuries etc. to the victim, most victims want restitution. Unless you've seen it you won't believe it, i've had victims, who wouldn't cooperate in prosecution, not due to fear, but due to it being inconvenient to them. They just wanted the suspect caught and their property back or restitution for medical bills, or other damage etc.
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Yep Tod...You keep on campaigning in Montana that the WOD ain't working and the government should stay out of it. We are speaking of the war in drugs from the perspective of enhanced sentencing and higher rates of incarceration. Read the title of this thread. You should probably quote my actual post, rather than imaging what I said. Let's actually look at what I've said over the course of this thread: Here's a thought. Educate people about the dangers of drugs. If they are adults, let them make up their own mind, and pay the consequences for their own actions.
I don't think anyone here believes the majority of prisoners are innocent or even victims of society.
How is society served by putting someone with a drug problem in person for 5 or 10 years at a cost of $25,000 per year?
Educating your children about drugs is far more effective than passing more laws which are really aimed at controlling the behavior of adults. Keep in mind the origin of this argument was about adults, and the issue of children was inserted to appeal to the emotional side. It's exactly the same argument used by the anti-gun folks.
Finally, I think we all recognize that drugs have a devastating effect on peoples lives. But can you show any evidence that the increased incarceration rates or the war on drugs has actually made a difference, other than filling up our prisons?
By contrast, areas with active and aggressive drug education campaign has seen a decline in drug use, particularly in the case of minors.
Education may not be as viscerally satisfying as throwing people into jails. But it certainly seems more effective.
The point is that throwing lots of people in jail for drug violations hasn't fixed the problem. Drugs are still available, drug use is still much higher than any other modern industrialized nation. 25 after Nixon's declaration and the war on drugs has accomplished nothing. It has been and abject failure.
It depends on what you consider the 'war on drugs'. Here in Montana we have had a pretty successful education campaign against Methamphetemine - one that I fully support.
think what many of us are dismissive of are increased penalties and longer jail times for users - an outgrowth of the whole 'zero tolerance' mentality. It costs about $25,000 of taxpayer dollars to keep one person in prison per year. Our average incarceration rate in the US is right around one percent of the entire US population. This is about 4x the rate of incarceration of Red China. And yet we still lead the industrialized world in both drug use and crime. By contrast we can look at countries like Holland that have very liberal drug laws, and yet have much lower instance of drug use.
What can we draw from this? Probably that all the increase emphasis on harsher punishment and more time in prison has little or nothing to do with fixing the problem. I know you get paid to twist other people words, but in this case there's a written record for people to go back an look at.
Be the person your dog thinks you are.
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No liberal wailer wants to admit that an ethnic minority is more prominent in prison because that ethnic minority is more prone to disobey society's laws.
Ken your assessment, at first blush looks rational. But after some educated consideration it would become clear to you that some of our minority population is over-represented in our prisons because we have made them victims of an oppressive environment. How can these people be expected to pick themselves up by their own bootstraps and fly right when they have no real opportunity in this white mans country. I myself feel guilty for the harm we have caused these minorities, and I think we should hold them to a lesser legal standard than we do our racially advantaged criminals. We need to institute parity in our prison system by only jailing the most egregious minority offenders so that our minorities are represented in the prison population to the same percentages that they exist in our communities at large. Comments as always are welcome. It has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with socio-economics. The more money you have, the less likely you'll be convicted or spend time in jail. It's actually fairly easy to demonstrate that there is a direct relationship to the likelihood of conviction and imprisonment vs income.
Be the person your dog thinks you are.
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Campfire Kahuna
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Campfire Kahuna
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I read most of the thread. The reason this nation has become dependent on prisons, is that it's citizens have evolved into a society that is largely unable, or unwilling, to defend itself. Most people will gladly pay a government to lock up "theats". Don't want to lock 'em up for dope? Don't. They'll end up dead or imprisoned for something else.
The only thing worse than a liberal is a liberal that thinks they're a conservative.
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Campfire Outfitter
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From todays Washington post, without comment. By Keith B. Richburg and Ashley Surdin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, May 5, 2008; A01
NEW YORK -- Reversing decades of tough-on-crime policies, including mandatory minimum prison sentences for some drug offenders, many cash-strapped states are embracing a view once dismissed as dangerously naive: It costs far less to let some felons go free than to keep them locked up.
It is a theory that has long been pushed by criminal justice advocates and liberal politicians -- that some felons, particularly those convicted of minor drug offenses, would be better served by treatment, parole or early release for good behavior. But the states' conversion to that view has less to do with a change of heart on crime than with stark fiscal realities. At a time of shrinking resources, prisons are eating up an increasing share of many state budgets.
"It's the fiscal stuff that's driving it," said Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based group that advocates for more lenient sentencing. "Do you want to build prisons or do you want to build colleges? If you're a governor, it's kind of come to that choice right now."
Mauer and other observers point to a number of recent actions, some from states facing huge budget shortfalls, some not, but still worried about exploding costs.
� To ease the overcrowding and save California about $1.1 billion over two years, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) has proposed freeing about 22,000 prisoners convicted of nonviolent, nonsexual offenses 20 months earlier than their scheduled release dates. He also wants to place them on unsupervised parole, saving the state the cost of having all parolees assigned to an agent.
� Lawmakers in Providence, R.I., approved an expansion last week of the state's "good time" early-release rules to cover more inmates serving shorter sentences. The new rules, which will put more inmates under post-prison supervision, are expected to save Rhode Island an estimated $8 billion over five years.
� In Kentucky, where 22,000 state inmates are housed in county prisons and private facilities, lawmakers agreed to allow certain nonviolent, nonsexual offenders to serve up to 180 days of their sentences at home, and to make it easier for prisoners to earn credit for good behavior. The move could save the state, which is facing a $900 million deficit over the next two years, as much as $30 million.
� In Mississippi, where the prison population has doubled during the past dozen years to 22,600, Gov. Haley Barbour (R) has signed into law two measures that will reduce it: One to let certain nonviolent offenders go free after serving 25 percent of their sentences, and the other to release some terminally ill inmates.
� South Carolina, meanwhile, is looking to abolish parole, in part to slow the growth of its prison population since there would be fewer people returned to prison for parole violations.
Proposals to free prisoners are still met with opposition, particularly from law enforcement officials who fear that a flood of released felons could return to their communities, and from victims groups that worry that justice is being sacrificed for budgetary concerns.
The California plan has drawn criticism from the Legislative Analyst's Office, the state's nonpartisan fiscal adviser, which warned that 63,000 mid-level offenders would "effectively go unpunished, serving little or no prison time" and would not have active supervision.
The proposal also worries local governments and police in California, particularly in Los Angeles County -- home to the nation's largest prison system, which supplies about a third of the state's prison population. "It's kind of like the volcano has erupted," County Sheriff Lee Baca said. "To let out 63,000 prisoners on summary parole -- which means no parole -- is not good policy."
Bob Pack, 52, of Danville, Calif., is particularly disturbed by the prospect of softer punishment forthose convicted of drunken driving. In 2003, Pack's two children -- Troy, 10, and Alana, 7 -- were struck and killed when a drunk driver's car jumped a curb and ran onto a neighborhood sidewalk. The driver had three prior drunken-driving convictions.
Said Pack: "I guarantee you that if this program is fulfilled, somewhere down the road -- it could be three months or a year -- there's going to be a family in court over the death of a loved one, because of someone who got out early."
But for now, state officials are finding themselves under mounting pressure to cut costs and are looking at their rising prison population.
Between 1987 and last year, states increased their higher education spending by 21 percent, in inflation-adjusted dollars, according to the Pew Center on the States. During the same period, spending on corrections jumped by 127 percent.
In the Northeastern states, according to the Pew report, prison spending over the past 20 years has risen 61 percent, while higher education spending has declined by 5.5 percent.
California -- which has the country's worst fiscal crisis, with a potential shortfall of $20 billion -- has seen its prison-related spending swell to $10.4 billion for the 2008-2009 fiscal year. About 170,000 inmates are packed into California's 33 prisons, which were designed to hold 100,000. About 15,000 prisoners are being housed in emergency beds, in converted classrooms and gymnasiums.
Rhode Island's prison population peaked and its 4,000-inmate prison capacity was exceeded in recent years, prompting a lawsuit and a court settlement. "The soaring inmate census has created a crisis here," said Ashbel T. Wall, the state's corrections director. "We've been busting the budget continuously. . . . Our prisons have been packed."
New Jersey is one state making changes out of a desire for more efficiency. Gov. Jon S. Corzine (D) is proposing legislation to expand drug courts to channel more nonviolent, first-time drug offenders into treatment instead of prisons, and also to expand supervised parole. Another proposal would change the parole policy so parolees were not automatically returned to prison for minor drug offenses, said Lilo Stainton, the governor's spokeswoman.
She said that in New Jersey's case, the changes are not budget-driven. "We think this is a more humane and sensible way to treat people," she said.
Michigan is grappling with a massive prison population, mainly because "truth in sentencing" rules make the state less generous about granting paroles. Michigan's incarceration rate is 47 percent higher than that of the other Great Lakes states, according to experts.
Michigan has become one of the few states that actually spend more on prisons than on higher education -- about $2 billion for prisons, and $1.9 billion in state aid to its 15 public universities and 28 community colleges. "It's insane," said Barbara Levine of the Citizens Alliance on Prisons and Public Spending in Lansing. "The governor is always talking about how we need to be high tech. But these days, the best career opportunity is to get a job as a prison guard."
In fact, according to Thomas Clay, a prisons and budget expert with Michigan's nonprofit Citizens Research Council, the state government employed 70,000 people in 1980, including 5,000 working for the prisons system. Today, the number of state workers has dropped to 54,000, but 17,000 work for the prisons.
"You've got two decades of failed policies," said Laura Sager a consultant in Michigan for Families Against Mandatory Minimums. She said mandatory sentencing laws and tough penalties for drug offenses in the 1980s "bloated prisons and prison populations, and the taxpayer is paying a very high price."
Now with states struggling with budget deficits, she said, "you have pressures that make it palatable to take a second look."Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/04/AR2008050402054_pf.html
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