People end up in prison for a reason.
Though how I wish it wasn't so.
Though how I wish it wasn't so.
Many times it's because one of the things above happened, they got out, wanted to go straight, and no one would hire them for anything because they had a criminal record. They tried to live straight, get some job training, but were low on money, could barely feed themselves with foodstamps and ended up stealing and back in prison. Or maybe it as something stupid like being caught begging with an open container not in a little brown bag.
America has 1% of its population in the system (either incarcerate or on parole at some point in their lives). That's insane.
Yea they end up there for a reason, but it's not the reason you think.
The people who should be in jail (most congressmen and women, most senators, all the CEOs that ran banks during the 2008 financial collapse) aren't because they have power and money, which buys them a different level of justice than you or I.
Now obviously it's bad that 1/4 of prisoners are there for trivial reasons. In particular, we need to end the drug war. But you seem to think that the prisons are full of people who were caught with a speck of weed or who stole a loaf of bread to feed themselves, and that really isn't true. Minor crimes usually result in a fine, community service, or at most a few months in jail (which is not the same thing as prison). For the most part, people in prison are there because they did something genuinely bad. The original article mentioned one specific prisoner by name, an Adam Johnston; I found what I think is his record [3], and he's serving twenty years for murder.
[0] https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p09.pdf
[1] "Public order crimes" means "weapons, drunk driving, court offenses, commercialized vice, morals and decency offenses, liquor law violations, and other public-order offenses".
[2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Felony_S...
[3] http://www.drc.state.oh.us/OffenderSearch/details.aspx?id=A4...
In terms of number of people sent to prison, they're less prominent: again from the BJS article, admissions to state prisons in 2009 with sentences >= 1 year broke down like this: 27% violent; 30% property; 29% drug; 14% public order; 1% other.
> People end up in prison for a reason.
- banthum, in grandparent of your previous comment.
> Ye[s] they end up there for a reason, but it's not the reason you think.
- djsumdog, in immediate parent of your previous comment,
In this case, it was because he killed a man during a robbery.
http://odrc.drc.ohio.gov/OffenderSearch/details.aspx?id=A414...
I'm sure you would be happy to participate. Problem solved.
Anyway, you invented a whole solution which had nothing at all to do with what I said; I never advocated against jails or anything to the effect, please improve your reading comprehension and construct better strawmen to sidetrack me with.
With my comment, I only wanted to point out this exact hypocrisy. So thank you for confirming that my cynicism is justified. I feel better about myself now :)
There's.. a lot of bad people in prison, and for good reason -they've done empirically terrible things, and many without remorse - no matter the "POV"
Sorry but there's no such thing. Justice is relative. In many countries you can be considered justified in murder while simply kissing a person of the same sex or protesting can make you be locked up. In fact, If you want to argue that killing someone is empirically terrible, people avoid jail for it all the time if they're on the winning side of a war, in self-defense (in many countries even for defending their honor), or if they're of a high enough status (rich people and cops/politicians). Assuming that only bad people go to jail is naive and assuming jails are only full of bad people is generalizing.
Once we get people in the system, it is likely they will be in and out of it their entire lives. And what is even worse, it doesn't have to be this way (We refuse to take more compassionate measures like countries with a lower recidivism rate, for example). We choose this. Maybe it is partially our own fault that some folks wind up "bad".
it makes two big assumptions that leaves it open:
1. only state prisons are considered 2. only people in prison for a year or more are considered
there's nothing in the comment showing that shorter term inmates are a smaller population, nor that they aren't mostly non violent offenders, nor that federal prisons aren't mostly non violent offenders.
In total, the comment just shows that there are violent and nonviolent felons in prison
In general, people with sentences longer than a year go to prison, and sentences shorter than a year go to jail. Roughly 57% of incarcerated people in the US are in state prisons, 9% in federal prisons, and 33% in jails [0]. In my earlier comment I noted that 52% of state prisoners are in for violent crimes, 18% for property crimes, and 18% for drug crimes. For jails, based on this source [1] I estimate 18% of the jail population is in for violent or weapons offenses; 3% for weapons; 30% for property crimes; and 31% for drug crimes. This source [2] suggests around 18% of federal prisoners are in for violent crimes; 17% for weapons/explosives/arson offenses; 11% for property crimes; 46% for drug crimes; and 8% for immigration reasons.
In my original comment, for state prisons, I counted violent crimes, property crimes, and 1/2 of other non-drug crimes to estimate that 76% of the prison population did something genuinely bad. For jails the number will be lower, both because there are fewer violent offenders and because the non-violent offenses tend to be less severe; if we count violent crimes, 1/2 of property crimes, and 1/2 of other non-drug crimes, we get 44%. For federal prisons, if we count violent crimes, property crimes, and weapons/explosives/arson offenses we get 46%. We can weight those three numbers by the sizes of the different groups to arrive at an overall figure of 61% for all incarcerated people in the US. (Of course, these numbers depend heavily on what you consider a "bad" crime.)
So of the entire incarcerated population of the US, about 1/2 to 2/3 are incarcerated for something genuinely bad. While you're correct to point out that this is lower than the 3/4 figure for state prisons, Broken_Hippo is still wrong to claim that "most" prisoners are in for things like non-violent drug offenses.
[0] https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpus13.pdf
[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Felony_S...
[2] https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen...
The shittiest of people have friends/family who will vouch to journalists "he loved his family"(awesome achievement), "he was always up for a laugh" (or such euphemisms)... they've grown up talking self-serving bullshit and opposing the system in any situation.
The only inmate named in the story was a white guy who who murdered someone during a robbery.
http://odrc.drc.ohio.gov/OffenderSearch/details.aspx?id=A414...