prison system is costing americans billions.....why is this acceptable?

Question

and it grows everyday. canada has 1 in 1862 are in jail,,,in the US its 1 in 361.

clearly the US produces more criminals,,,,education is proven to be the solution, but americans prefer to throw people away........

Answer 1

We have a much higher crime rate than Canada thus the inarceration rate differential. But the best way to deal with this would be to lower the costs of the penal system and provide a higher level of education. Unfortuneately, a lot of Americans would not take advantage of better education unless it was forced on them. Also, a hughe proportion of those incarcerated are for drug crimes, if we legalized marijuana it would alleviate a lot of problems.

Answer 2

There was a tv program not so long ago on the bbc about the American justice system, per head of population, the USA has more people in prison than any country on earth, even more than China and north korea!..Big prison sentances are given for what, elsewhere would be seen as trivial offences!..Tough on crime is ok, but America have taken it to the point of being ridiculous!..Giving a man 2 years for not being able to pay an electricity bill!.How stupid is that?.But its obvious that its all political, i wouldnt like to be black or latino in the United States right now, if you are, your chances of being sent to prison for a very long time for a trivial offence is pretty good!.If some judge in "Fatback" Missipippi gives a black man 3 years for farting in a public place, that judge is probably going to be re-elected for doing it!..And dont think im being absurd!..This is the sort of thing that happens in the southern 'bible belt' all the time, check it out!.......

Answer 3

Education may be the solution, but not the way it is now. Boys are taught to be little p ussies in school now. They are also assumed to be criminal by nature, that being male is somehow a pathological defect. [See "The War Against Boys," by Christina Hoff Sommers.]

If it's 1 in 361, that's still less than 1% of the total US population.

Also, the prison and judicial system is often decried as being "racist," because there are so many blacks incarcerated.

And yet around 94% of those incarcerated are MALE. Yet we never hear anyone screaming that the prison system is "sexist." Why not?

Love Jack

Answer 4

Because we watch television. Local news. People who watch local TV news fear crime more than people who get their news from newspapers or radio. Local news has a motto- "If it, bleeds, it leads." That is, if a school bus doesn't turn over that day, a crime is the first story.
Our high incarceration rate has to do with the fear of crime by middle class people who think their SUV's will be jacked.
A politician cannot be soft on crime and be elected to dog catcher (he's soft on pit bull attacks).
The fact that you can get more time for a baggie of weed than for jacking an SUV or even rape, has something to do with it too.
The other part of the problem is that anything to do with rehabilitation is so out of favor. People won't pay for it. Even a simple thing like literacy and GED classes. Much of our prison population is either functionally illiterate or if they can read, they dropped out of school. As for training for a skilled trade forget it.
costs too much. This also comes from people who say prisoners should not have cable TV to watch. Well if they can't have TV, and they can't learn to read what are the guards supposed to do with them? Make them break rocks? Well great, that just makes them bitter and angry.
Wouldn't it be better to line them up and say We are going to school you and have it be true? If you can't do the algebra, don't do the crime.
Am I off topic? REad this
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/jobs/17convicts.html

Answer 5

As populations increase, so does crime. It is not a flat ratio, but an exponential increase as population and density increase. One major reason why we have a higher ratio of crime is because of this dynamic. It is not the only reason however.

Education does not lower crime rates. It just makes smarter criminals. Crime is caused by will and opportunity alone.

In America, however, there are too many people in jail because we have too many laws, our legal system is more localized than the Canadian system due to local autonomy, and because our recidivism rate is high.

This is hardly an issue to be completely resolved in this forum, but if you like, we can continue this conversation via email.

Answer 6

Because prisons are not about justice.They are an expression of rage by a conservative heiracrchy uninterested in truly stopping hard crimes.


America has a right-wing aristocrisy that spoon-feeds the little conformists on the bottom hate the way Canada does not.

Hey Jack-not all schools teach boys to be kitties.Basic respect for your fellow man is emasculated? Crazy.

Answer 7

i wish i understood the prison system. i also wish i understood the prison sentencing system, for that matter. i can't understand why they sentence drug offenders to more time than murderers. i know that it is claimed that there is rehabilitation offered to drug addicts, but it doesn't seem that is a main objective of the prison system at all. i am appalled at the lack of knowledge most of us have in this area, because we are all affected by the end result. i am going to start investigating this on my own and may become active in efforts to modify the largely incomprehensible, counter-productive prison system. i think if we all spent a little time looking in to this, we all would want some changes. maybe we can bring up more questions on here regarding various things we see in the newspaper, etc. to bring it to the attention of more people. if so, we could increase awareness.

Answer 8

Education has not been proven to any kind of solution to crime. Most of the people in jail in America are in there for drug crimes. Drug laws should be done away with. That would free a lot of people.

Answer 9

PROFIT !!!

Why does the FDA approve additives that harm us, or recommend diets that make us fat, lazy, and apathetic?

Why have salaries barely gone up in decades, retirement plans dwindle, worker's rights and benefits have gone slack, medical care's quality is decaying, while insurance rates climb but cover less?

Why has our tripled fuel prices brought in record profits for oil companies?

Why are cigarettes and alcohol legal?

Ask the HAVES...I've got to run off to my 2nd job.

Answer 10

I don't believe there are "more" criminals in US than anywhere. We just catch ours first of all. Secondly, Canada is full of "drunks" which is much more susceptible in their country. We arrest "drunks". There are many difference....but, to assume Americans are uneducated is a great misconception!!
The facts are not properly compared in this forum.