I think it has to do with punishing rather than rehabilitating. I think prisons exist for the sole purpose of punishing people for their actions. They are there to make examples out of people meaning that if you want to stay out of prison, don’t do what this person did.
is it lonely, up there on your pedestal?
seriously, get over yourself. what if one of your kids got popped for a DUI or possession or some other offense? yes, i know, you didn’t raise your kids that way and they’d never dream of doing such a thing. it could never possibly happen to you. but imagine for a moment that it did, and tell me you would say “well, son, that’s too bad. i hope they lock you up and throw away the key.” of course you wouldn’t. you’d scramble to get them the best possible legal defense and sign over your home so they could make bail and basically do everything in your power to make sure they never saw the inside of a cell.
hit up a support forum for parents of inmates sometime, and listen to how many of those people taught their children not to break the law, and where their kids ended up anyway, for various and sundry reasons, and get some perspective into your holier than thou, narrow minded view of life.
of course they do. the term “correctional facility” is a joke. you don’t think they actually mean to rehabilitate anyone, do you? not a single person in the history of ever has been rehabilitated by the prison system. the best that can possibly happen is that the ex-con manages to turn their life around in spite of their prison experience.
According to the DOJ study I mentioned before, neither of these things are close to being true. There were 588,000 black inmates in 2010. In 1860 the slave population was estimated in the US census as 3.95 million. According to the DOJ study only 21% of black inmates are in prison for drug offenses
I post this only to fight ignorance, not to say your opinion isn’t valid.
Most drug users and those involved in the “scene” especially for pot consider it part of a culture they belong to, rather than miscreant fun like say petty vandalism or joy riding. It is part of their identity and who they are, you might think that is sad but it is what it is, it isn’t JUST enjoying the high.
For the most part people are in prison/jail/parole because they broke the law, and knew it when they did it. I can’t have much sympathy for those that did it knowingly.
As to why they did it, I’d say a desire for wealth and poor self control is pretty much it.
Why are people not reading the question? Even the subject line? The question is about the disproportionate percentage of people imprisoned in the U.S. compared to other countries. “Gosh, why do you suppose anyone anywhere is in prison?”
“Oh, generally it’s because they broke the law.” That’s not a very thought-provoking discussion, now is it?
Read thisBook.
We have a lot of factors somewhat unique to America that contibute to a larger than average prison population. #1 we have more police officers investigating crime. #2. We have a lot more wealth in this country and temptation. #3. We have a minorities that have failed for many reasons not always their own fault to move up into the main stream economicaly.
#4. We are a spoiled society, lacking in general moral principles
I think it’s more that the wealth is so concentrated to a relatively small number of people, which causes social strife. I don’t think it’s that we have more for people to tempted about, they’re just angry about the injustice. If we had the same amount of wealth but it was distributed more evenly, that would reduce crime.
It does seem like the “fuck you, I got mine” attitude is more prevalent here, if that’s what you mean. I think there’s a lot more competition and pressure here in some ways than there is in, say, Scandinavian countries. They’re not expected to produce, produce, produce, and acquire, acquire, acquire to the exclusion of other important aspects of life. So people who can’t acquire enough on their own and see the people at the top mostly just not caring, sometimes they make their own means. And the people at the top do commit a LOT of white collar crime also, which shows that attitude is not at all limited to the lower class. The upper class just has the ability to do it “clean” and nonviolently. I think they’re the one group that MIGHT be deterred by very harsh sentences. Coincidentally, they’re also the ones who often don’t get harsh sentences. And there we continue the cycle of social strife.
In case anyone hasn’t seen this super nice Norwegian prison, it’s interesting to see. It is hard to believe that people going to that prison have lower recidivism rates than people going to our hellhole prisons. But it’s true.