Posted on 11/28/2007 5:24:39 AM PST by libstripper
According to a brand-new and extensively covered study by the JFA Institute, a George Soros funded group, the U.S. prison system doesnt deter crime and is "a costly and harmful failure.
Prison is supposedly so useless that the U.S. prison population could be cut in half with no effect on crime.
This distrust of prison reducing crime is not new, but many have a hard time believing the simplest rule of economics: if you make something more costly, people do less of it. People accept that this principle applies to what we buy in grocery stores, but not to bad things that people might do.
So how plausible is deterrence? Let us take a couple examples from sports.
When college basketballs Atlantic Coast Conference increased the number of referees per game from two to three in 1978, the number of fouls dropped by 34 percent. Why? Basketball players fouled less often because they were more likely to get caught. In fact, the actual decline in fouling was probably even larger, since fouls that may have gone unnoticed by two referees were more likely to be caught when there were three officials.
Baseball players respond no differently. The American League has more batters hit by pitchers than the National League, but this difference only occurred after 1973, when the American League removed its pitchers from the batting lineup in favor of designated hitters. Since American League pitchers no longer worried that they themselves would be hit in retaliation if they hit an opposing batter, they began throwing more beanballs.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
I have read the same thing. I was thinking of a more streamlined process........:-)
Right to carry, castle doctrine, stand your ground, and self defense immunity laws seem to be working pretty well.
It hasn't stopped the sociopath brother of a friend of mine, though even she would dearly love to see him behind bars.
A serious problem with imposing the death penalty for any but the most serious crimes is that a criminal who has not been caught but is marked for death has nothing to lose by anything he might do to avoid capture. While the death penalty may have a stronger deterrent effect than a prison term, the reduction in initial crime may be offset by the extra crimes that criminals do to avoid capture.
Suppose two people commit roughly similar crimes; one is sentenced to death, while the other is "merely" sentenced to life without parole. According to the liberal argument, the legal costs of the first one will exceed the legal costs plus imprisonment costs of the second. I wish someone would explain to be why this does not imply that either:
Not AMERICAN Jails!!You've never been to prison. My roommate in college was a nurse at a high security prison medical ward. The stories of what goes on in there are so disgusting I would get banned immediately if I told them on FR.
Cable TV, exercise rooms, libraries, three square meals a day, medical coverage, dental benefits - a lot of our inmates live better than the people paying the taxes to support them.
We should run our jails like the Romans ran their sulfur mines and quarries. Recidivism would be ZERO - for the survivors.
Not much but incarceration does prevent the crimes that the incarceree would have otherwise committed, or redirects his criminal activity to a more confined and controlled environment.
While I fully support each of those points completely the recidivism rates show it's not enough.
“You’ve never been to prison.”
No. But I have had experience in government I don’t care to elaborate on related to this subject.
I’m sure most of what you are referring to is due to the fact that we allow inmates to run the prisons. It isn’t the James Cagney days with the “hole” for trouble-makers.
Prisons and Jails should be tough - Joe Arapaio type tuff, where the control and discipline comes from the people running the jails not from gangstas and thugs who swagger around and runthings. And they kind of amenities I desscribed are available - all too often.
I guess there are some differences between states in this respect, but thanks to the ACLU and Court decisions, criminals aren’t treated as criminals by correctional facilities and the taxpayers bear the burden.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.