Oh good; I was worried you decided to simply ignore me.
I respect what you are doing for our society, and for doing it two decades. Without making any claims, I would like to ask your opinion on the topic if you don’t mind.
To start with, why do you think the United States have such a large prison population?
Our country has more prisoners than China, despite the latter nation having a much larger overall population.
Sorry it took so long to get back to you. My father is in the hospital and my days have been taken up with his care.
Disclaimer - I lack knowledge of how other countries manage prison systems so I can’t speak for China.
There are many reasons for the increase of our prison population. It’s difficult to pin it down to one or two things. This is my opinion of why 1. Women are being sentenced to prison at much higher rate than in the past. While men exceed women in incarceration rates and always will, the disparity in sentencing is closing. 2. It’s easier for criminals to be caught now. With better policing, better technology, and citizen groups watching for crime, LE is able to locate and find evidence for convictions. 3. The increase of cheap drugs means more people using, which means more people selling, more people trafficking, more people manufacturing. 4. Citizens are tired of being victimized. For every crime committed the is a victim, whether a direct or indirect victim. Citizens contact their local and state officials and say enough is enough. 5. Changes in the law regarding punishment of certain crimes. A good example is DUI. Years ago someone driving drunk may get a few days in jail and their license suspended. Now most states will send a DUI to prison after 2-3 convictions. There are others but this should help folks understand.
For the record I do not believe prisons should be in the business of making a profit. I think in most cases private prisons are a bad deal. In my state we had a very large private prison that our state took over after abuses in the management were discovered. Not abuses of prisoners, but not providing the services they were contracted to do. However we do have a private incarceration facility whose main focus is treatment. The inmates are locked up but it is minimum security, short term, 90-120 days, and the inmates are in treatment most of the day. That facility works well.
Im not sure what you mean by ‘in jail for smoking pot’, I can post more than a few that have been arrested for marijuana possession (with no other crime involved), so their crime would just be having the drug on them, ( which say, would have been found at a traffic stop or encounter with police)…Is this what you are wanting?
Overall though, I still say, law enforcement has no place in the ‘war on drugs’ or drug addiction, addiction is a medical disease, the CDC needs to take over and let the police get back to actual crime, but the problem is, there is not enough ‘other crime’ to justify such a large LE community, take out drugs and drug related crimes and what are you left with?
You made the claim that you know there are people in prison for only smoking pot and I asked you to back up that claim. You haven’t done so yet. The folks in prison for marijuana are mostly there because they were either selling it or trafficking it. When I say trafficking I mean in the pounds range. In the prison I worked in I believe the largest amount was 27 pounds.
I am not convinced that addiction can be simply labeled as a medical issue, If so, what about addictions to food, shopping gambling, sex, porn, thrills, money, hording and so on? Are those medical issues too? While I concede there is a medical component to drug/alcohol abuse the answer is not simply medical treatment. I understand the neuropharmacological effects of substance use and initial treatment may be medical to address stopping the use of substance. Once a person stops substance use, it becomes a cognitive behavioral issue, one that must be treated by cognitive behavioral changes. The person must change the behavior and there isn’t a pill for that.
Here is the other side to your theory. Most often substance abuse isn’t the only crime. To get drugs most people will commit multiple crimes, theft, burglary, steal from an employer, write bad checks, steal identities to get credit cards. Behavior becomes unpredictable so there is often abuse or neglect in the family.
During my career I can’t tell you how many reports I’ve read but it is in the thousands and there is a common theme in most, long criminal histories before ever going to prison.
