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Comment by sandworm | Hacker News Reader

Prisons are the symptom, not the disease. They are the visible end result of social policies. Those policies are dictated by an elected government. It far easier to criticize prisons than to address the beliefs that create them.

America lacks any proper mental health care for the poor, a political decision. America lacks proper treatment programs for drug addiction, a political decision. America prides itself on being "tough" on crime, a political decision. America is swamped in guns, turning many minor crimes into accidentally lethal encounters --> political.

The prison problem starts and ends with US politics.

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"Prisons are the symptom, not the disease" - not if you look at it like those that keep the current system alive and thriving. For them, each of those 4,916 facilities is a profit center renting multi-millions every year (or $Billions overall every year).

As soon as you stop allowing to turn prisons into profits with inmate occupations guaranteed by the DoJ but instead come back to a different understanding and deliver various social functions and protections of our societies in the way they are intended to be (Not for profit as a service to society that you finance / support with your taxes) this will change and together with it most likely the stop of "unnecessary arrests" as they have recently be called by the NYPD will become more permanent.

Otherwise soon the "Ministry for Information" might charge you for "information retrieval" and the cost of your execution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_%281985_film%29)

Only 8% of the prisoners in US are in private facilities according to DoJ: http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p13.pdf -- where is your source for the claim that every prison is a "profit center" ?

How many of them have to use overpriced banking and telephony services because some monopoly needs to make a profit?

As well as the commissary, which is often operated by a private company.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/magazine/what-a-tv-show-ca...

The wages paid to prisoners for their (required) labour means someone somewhere is saving money/making a profit.

How that interacts with the costs of keeping them etc I don't have any feeling for

If we're going to use medical metaphors for our disaster of a justice system, how about we just admit our prisons are a secondary infection?

Not a US citizen, but I was under the impression that the "War on Drugs" was another major contributor to incarceration. Intent to sell (bad) and indeed even possession (harmless?) of marijuana could land you in jail, correct?

Yes. Drugs, at least the illegal ones, can/do/will land you in jail and eventually prison. Marijuana possession alone is enough, depending on how much you have and/or how it is packages (ie "with intent to distribute"). This depends on which state you are in, whether you are caught while crossing a state line (air travel) and the colour of the uniform on the officer who catches you (federal v. state). Some states have decriminalized possession but the US fed has not.

As a general rule, US "jails" house people awaiting trial and/or serving short sentences. "Prisons" house people with more than one year to serve. Prisons are generally much nicer places than jails.

(I went to a US law school, spent lots of time dealing with low-level offenders all of which were drug related. It's a horrible horrible system.)

Thank you for that last part. As a non US citizen i never knew there even was a difference between jails and prisons. Interesting :)

I should have added that prisons are physically different. Most of the structures recognizable in the OP are prisons, multiple buildings separated by open yards. Jails are more likely to be a single converted building, with the roof open for exercise. They cannot be spotted on google maps.

Take a look at this infamous jail.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_Towers_Correctional_Facili...

"Prisons are generally much nicer places than jails"

If this piqued anyone's interest, you can see this in a little more detail in Louix Theroux's "Miami Mega Jail" two-part documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSM_UvZ-Jic (part 1 only, if you enjoy you should be able to find part 2). Like the GP I originally thought jail = prison, but it's definitely not and could even be a good deal worse in some cases.

While simple possession could land you in jail, it's very rare for that to happen. There are 750,000 weed arrests in the US and maybe 500 people are in jail for simple possession only.

The big way weed gets you to jail is because it's a conviction that breaks your parole and you get sent back for your previous crime.

Please do some research on this. I guarantee you there are more than 500 people in jail at any given time for possession of weed. At least two out of roughly 40 people in my pod when I spent a week in jail were there for possession of marijuana alone.

Actually, I just remembered, one of those was in jail for possession of marijuana paraphernalia not even marijuana.

Simple possession or with intent to distribute?

Or are we talking about awaiting a bail hearing?

When you are arrested in the United States, you are taken to jail. After you have your bond set, you will be released upon someone posting bail. You stated that it's very rare for simple possession to land you in jail. There was one person in jail for having been arrested with weed, and another arrested for paraphernalia. Both may have received a sentence of time served plus probation, but that doesn't negate the fact that lots of space in our jails at any given time is being filled up by people arrested with marijuana.

I know a guy who went to the Midwest to sell small amounts of weed. Some "Silm Shady" type bought from said friend. Slim Shady decided to shoot someone over a bag. Said friend is in jail for 20 years. Said friend knew nothing of the murder, but the judge felt said friend should be punished--because he supplied an Idiot with weed, and broke federal and state law. The sad part is somehow he talked his brother into joining him in the Midwest. 'Hay, leave your Waiter position. We can sell small amounts of Mendocino's finest, and as long as we keep the weight low; we can live comfortably, with low risk.' His older brother got caught up in the drama, and was thrown in ail along with his brother. The judge called them Drug Kingpings. They found less than a pound of weed in the house, but still threw the book at the two.

> I know a guy who went to the Midwest to sell small amounts of weed. ... we can live comfortably, with low risk

Don't do the crime if you can't do the time, as they say.

I find it really hard to feel sorry for criminals that are selling so much drugs that they can live comfortably on drug money. That's a significant amount of illegal activity.

They knew about the risk, and they took it. Now they have to live with the consequences of their decisions.

Dude, if the same thing happened in an enlightened society, they would be free people right now.

How many crimes have you committed this week?

There's enough scientific studies out by now that show that marijuana use is not really a problem.

The fact that an unjust law is still on the books just means that politics and law move too slowly.

I don't know how anyone can stand behind an unjust law "because law, duh," and that's why you're getting downvoted.

> That's a significant amount of illegal activity.

No one questions that. The question is over what amount of HARM was done and what is a reasonable response to that.

In other words, if you accept the existing laws at face value, then this is, indeed, terrible "drug kingpin" behavior deserving of severe punishment. And (ducking Godwin's law) if you accept the laws of North Korea, then thousands of people deserve lives of horror and torture for the crime of being born to a prisoner at a re-education camp. The question that I believe we should be asking is whether such laws are just and the punishment appropriate.

Backed up by Rolling Stone at http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/lists/top-10-marijuana-m...

That article only speaks to the prison population. It doesn't count those in jails, those serving less than one year. For simple possession it is unlikely that anyone would be sent away for more than a year so I'm not surprised that so few are in prisons. Jails are a totally different story. They've got lots of people in after being arrested for pot.

For possession of marijuana it depends on where you are. In Philadelphia where I am in college, possession up to an ounce of marijuana is now just a $25 fine. However in the suburbs where I am from they have zero tolerance and you will go through a lot of crap. So it depends on where you are and what drug you have.

"Prisons are built with stones of Law, brothels with bricks of Religion." William Blake

Aren't mental health, drug addiction, and crime issues also symptoms of some disease?

>Those policies are dictated by an elected government.

Oligarchy is responsible for the biggest abuses of the prison system, NOT "dictatorship by an elected government".

The fundamental driving forces of the high number of prisoners is the push for more draconian policies by corporations that build prisons (> profits) and corporations that use them as a cheap source of labor (> profits).

>America prides itself on being "tough" on crime

"Tough on crime" was the marketing message used to ensure compliance by the electorate. Like all sales pitches, it did not accurately depict the actual product - e.g. mandatory sentencing for non-violent drug offences.

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