Mainly there you are addressing those types that belong in prison / jail by their actions (throwing feces, for example). Yep, that gets you a jail sentence.
Our jails are not overflowing because of those on the fringe with mental disabilities like you suggested. Our court rooms and legal system is over flowing because of the bureaucracy of which it has become....that feeds itself on those of all income and mental stability classes.
Again, deliberately violent people belong in jail.....the reality is our prisons are full of people outside of that category (while we oftenly let those deliberately violent people out......and so so under the guise of "overcrowding" when its convenient).
Again, our whole legal system is set up to feed itself. I am not speaking of getting rid of "punishment" whatsoever. I am simply saying we should take the current form of "prison/jail" time punishment and replace it with another form of "time" spent doing other things.
The prison/jail systems have become nothing but a revenue / job enhancers for tens of thousands in ridiculous bloated State and Federal budgets...
Only the drugs and SOME of the child/support alimony cases struck me as possibly not where they needed to be. I did not see a huge bureaucracy devouring dollars. I saw a bunch of people working extremely hard and not too inefficiently.
And I don't think the sociopaths and personality disorders are all that rare frankly. There are a heck of a lot of people out there who just do not get it.
the reality is our prisons are full of people outside of that category
Sez who? I'm willing to be educated. I just don't' think that's right, and I don't think Martha Stewart is a good example.
Do you have a disagreement with the idea of punishment? If I defraud you non-violently is it enough for me to make you whole? If I can afford it should I just pay enough extra to make the government whole for the time of the judge, clerks, DA, police, etc? Would that be enough?
If punishment is okay, what makes you say all this about prisons and bureaucracies? I have a friend who is a guard at a maximum security penitentiary. They're sure as heck not overstaffed. There over-staffing would be good -- anything to show the guys that it's just not worth it to break bad on another prisoner or a c.o.
I could see some kind of work release for white collar folks in programs say in education. But if somebody eats up the proverbial widow's pension and can't restore her, I think a time, maybe even a long time, of not getting to choose what's for supper or whether to stay up late to night and sleep in tomorrow might be a good thing.
I see lots or repeated assertions that the courts and the jails are bloated and self-justifying or whatever. I don't see a better alternative that takes into account what it costs to get the people to make such a thing work OR the question of some kind of punishment. These aren't children for whom all punishment is, we hope, educational and remedial. Most of the folks in jail knew perfectly well that what they were doing could get them in trouble, and they thought the chance was worth it -- or they didn't think, itself a culpable failure.
I think it's GREAT that young Ms. Hilton is going to do three or so weeks in the pokey. Can you say, "Wake up call?"
If the point is to get value out of these people and to use their skills, I think you need to wargame it a little. For Paris, she was given chance after chance to abstain from driving. She just wasn't interested. Martha Stewart might have been trust-worthy when it comes to driving herself to home ec classes at P.S. 229, but the whole thing about a lot of white-collar crimes is that there people were in fiduciary positions, that is TRUST positions, and they abused the trust.
SO what do you do if they're coming to class so hungover they can hardly function? or if they suddenly get a protracted but subtle respiratory problem which means that they can't always make it to class, and their physician of choice is booked for 6 weeks. What if they just walk away one day -- and you catch 'em two weeks later in Tijuana?
You're going to have to extradite them, you're going to have to have hearings and what not to determine what to do with them. And what are they doing in the meantime and where are they?
I think the notion is lovely. I don't see how it can work, and especially how it can generate value enough to pay for itself- or even to be cheaper than normal incarceration.