Bernie said we have too many people in our prisons the other day.
He said we have more people in US prisons than China does in their prisons with a much greater population over there.
Sanders also said that China was a “communist authoritarian country”.
I can agree with Bernie on that but then he swung into the racial composition of our prison population without making reference to the guilt of the prisoners or the crimes they committed to land them in prison.
Rudy Giuliani (a man I often don’t agree with) got smacked around some years ago when he tried to make the point that more African-Americans just happen to be the perps than their proportion of the population.
Its a fact, its not racism to say it.
But back in the 1940’s, 70 or so years ago, there were stats indicating that the leading religious affiliation of our prison population was Roman Catholic and an anti-Catholic author who was an associate of Socialist Norman Thomas actually put this into print around 1950.
The socialist author, Paul Blanshard, spent much of his life after that in Vermont where another socialist named Bernie Sanders would wind up living in.
We do have too many prisoners. On the state and local level the reason for most of the incarcerations are mental health and the liberal take over of schools. If you want to fix the issue you need to reduce the freedom of those with mental health and drug issues and force them to deal with their problems. Terminating teacher unions and letting parents determine what’s best for their kids would fix the education issue.
On a federal level something like 40% of incarcerations are illegals. Shutting the flow would have a major impact on more then just the prison population. All Illegals crossing the boarder are required to pay the traffickers or carry drugs. This has lead to the massive heroine problem hitting the middle class.
The upshot is we have more freedom, but with freedom comes responsibility, to reduce the prison population people need to be empowered with education and held to high standards.