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Comment by jwatte | Hacker News Reader

The rest of the civilized world has known that rehab (and social/mental support) is cheaper and more effective than prison for > 30 years.

But the "tough, not supportive" meme in US policy keeps warring people, time, and money. Vote Republican, everyone, because "tough on crime" is tougher than namby-pamby "science" that can never give a clear answer!

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The Drug War has been a bi-partison effort: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Bk2t0MuvKs. Pretty much everyone lost their fricking mind in the 1980's and 1990's, when the modern drug war was implemented.[1] Clinton doubled-down on the drug war even as he had to lie that he'd "never inhaled" while smoking marijuana. Even many conservatives (40% of republicans today support legalizing marijuana), would not agree with the hardline positions mainstream democrats took on drugs back then.

[1] I just watched "Straight out of Compton" and was reminded of Tipper Gore's war against music in the 1990's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_7NSXnlQ64. "Liberal democrats" like her were a pillar of the drug-war movement back then.

California is desperately in need of more prison space and Texas is planning on closing prisons and figuring out how to change the laws so fewer people go to jail.

No competition between who handles criminality better between the two states. And one of them is the biggest democrat state and the other the republican. Doesn't prove anything exact this is not a republican versus democrat issue.

It sounds like the prison market is ripe for disruption.

CinderBnB, the jail-cell sharing economy.

Having trouble paying off your mortgage? House an inmate in your basement and earn over $20,000 per year!

Jails overcrowding? Facing budget cuts? Save money by outsourcing inmates to individual jailers!

Reviews:

"We were very hesitant to accept out first inmate, but with our medical bills, it seemed like the only other option was selling the house. Danny turned out to be a sweet young man. Really loves my home-made peach cobbler. I let him have the old PC; he says he uses it to watch educational videos." - Francine Humphrey

"The owner failed to lock the cell and the prisoner waked out the very first night. Edit: CinderBnB customer service was very understanding and offered a full reimbursement for search and recapture" - Sgt. Dale Flannigan

"My lawyer says that according to county law I technically qualify as a tenant, so once my term is up they'll need to evict me but can't keep me locked up" - Shawn Taylor

Hillary and Bill Clinton were the biggest supporters of "tough on crime" in the 1990s. Your premise falls flat accordingly. The Democrats also put huge numbers of people in prison with their participation in the war on drugs.

Bill Clinton's presidency saw the most people added to the prison population of any president in US history. His tough on crime, tough on drugs policies successfully added roughly 650,000+ people to the prison numbers in just eight years. That's a record that is unlikely to ever be topped.

Clinton was a man of his times. You have to remember that in 1993 all you knew was that violent crime had been surging upwards for decades. You had no way of knowing that it was about to peak and recede.

Violent crime had not been surging upwards for decades. The 90s' highest year, 1993, was about where it was in 1980 when Reagan took office, under whose governance the rate dipped a bit before coming back up (how's that for leaving the place better than you found it?). What we saw was the rate ticking up only slightly in Clinton's first couple of years.

http://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Prod...

And nothing better than to simultaneously note that a support of unionized cops on the street + demographics-based decline in crime soon to follow would be an almost guaranteed winning policy for re-election for a Dem.

Possibly there is a soft definition of what constitutes "violent crime"? The numbers on Wikipedia show a clear trend that doesn't abate until the mid 90s. Am I reading that wrong?

(click "show" on the table to see the data) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#Cri...

While the policies of the party you chose ends up being the only thing that matters during election time, I still think its important to separate them from discussions of certain issues. While I understand that the purpose of the figure pointing is to help dissuade others from voting for the party who enables the issue, in my experience the people who its directed at tend to take it personally; or at least an attack aimed at them specifically. As a result the whole thing ends up being counter-intuitive.

I feel that it would be better to simply speak about the issues specifically and keep their relation to a party out of it until election time. Many people in the US associate with their parties almost like they do a sports team, the better way to persuade them to vote for the other side is to have them make the decision themselves after being properly informed. When they make the decision themselves we are able to circumvent this feeling that they are being attacked and has the dual benefit of allowing us to have another informed voter during the election cycle.

This "team" mentality is not exclusive to one party, I strongly suggest people belonging to both sides to be critical of their respective parties and the actions of representatives they voted for.

>30 years - huh? I just looked through wikipedia's Drug Liberalization page and didn't see anything earlier than Portugal's 1999 decriminilization, except that Uruguay never even criminilized them. So what are you referring to?

There isn't much in fact. Most of the so-called civilized world still puts drug offenders in prison, a lot. Just take a look at Japan's extreme drug laws for example (they apparently don't count as civilized).

The parent is claiming a few, mostly tiny European nations represent the majority of all civilized nations.

Depending on what the word "civilized" is supposed to mean it could be true. Nations where the death penalty is still given are not considered civilized in Europe, so there's that. (But everyone chooses not to care in America's case :))

A lot of the developed world does not really enforce the laws on mere users. Certainly nowhere as strictly as it was enforced on inner-city african-americans.

Simple drug possession is one of those offences that is mostly used as a hammer to whack people who are "nuisances".

Which drug addicts are going to prison for 30 years? Pray tell.

I believe you misread the sentence. "> 30 years" refers to the length of time "the rest of the civilized world" has held these beliefs, not the length of a prison sentence.

3rd strike convictions per mandatory guidelines: http://famm.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Chart-All-Fed-MMs...

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