Posted on 11/26/2015 8:08:37 AM PST by Kaslin
The Thanksgiving season is upon us, and as most Americans look forward to spending this special time of year with family and friends, many other Americans, including 2.7 million children, are forced to spend the holidays without their mother and/or father, through no fault of their own.
In all too many homes, there will be an empty seat at the Thanksgiving table.
The U.S. criminal justice system incarcerates more citizens than any other country in the world including, incredibly, those with authoritarian (or worse) governments. That makes it impossible to ignore the high cost we pay as a society for a cycle of shattered communities, broken families and Americans that are lost to a life of crime.
While these people are behind bars often for a reason, we must ask ourselves: Is this really how we want our children to be raised by relatives or foster parents? Is this cycle something that we want to continue, or is there a way to break that disturbing cycle, at least for the children of some of the incarcerated?
There's hope on the horizon for many of these families. There's a gathering consensus giving rise to a national movement toward a more effective criminal justice system one that promises to improve public safety, to save taxpayer dollars and to strengthen families through data-driven reforms at the state and federal level.
Those reforms have already demonstrated their effectiveness in states such as Texas and Georgia. It's all the more striking in that these are both deeply "red" states that no one would suggest are in any way "soft on crime."
U.S. taxpayers spend $80 billion per year on the state and federal jail and prison systems, and billions more in collateral consequences to our families and communities. The time to reverse course on this destructive path is now.
We can protect the public while also reducing prison sentences for low-level, nonviolent offenders, who make up a majority of our prison population. Our system should instead focus costly public-safety resources on those criminals who truly pose a serious public threat. A good first step would be enactment into law of the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2015, which was introduced in the U.S. Senate on Oct. 1and which enjoys surprisingly broad, bipartisan support. This and a number of other pieces of legislation currently being considered by Congress offer reforms that would greatly improve the plight many Americans face.
Alternatives to incarceration, such as restitution, as well as recidivism-reduction programs, have effectively decreased prison populations in many states, and through programs operated by faith-based and community organizations, many inmates have changed their lives, and now contribute to society and care for their families instead of becoming career criminals.
The best-known example of faith-based communities working to reduce recidivism and to turn lives around is Prison Fellowship, a Christian outreach group founded in 1976 by onetime Nixon administration Special Counsel Chuck Colson after he served seven months in federal prison himself on Watergate-related charges.
The Leesburg, Va.-based Prison Fellowship's operating premise is simple, but heartfelt: "Remember those in prison," it says on its website's homepage. "Even the most broken lives and situations can be restored and made whole when we respond to God's call to serve men and women behind bars." Prison Fellowship's mission includes material, emotional and spiritual support for the families and loved ones of the incarcerated.
At this time of year especially, it's important to remember the inherent dignity of each human life, including those having served time in our nation's jails and prisons, and those closest to them.
The time has come for Americans on both sides of the political divide to join hands to support meaningful criminal justice reform that breaks this cycle of incarceration and instead provides a cycle of redemption and second chances.
If not for the incarcerated, let's do it for our children this Thanksgiving season.
“Then how should nonviolent offenders be punished?”
1. Take their stuff. If they have a pot to piss in, take it and auction it. BUT ONLY as part of a judicial process.
2. Fines and restitution.
3. Electronic handcuffs, curfew, electronic monitoring, community service, chain gangs.
4. Consider a return to corporal punishment.
5. Start thinking real hard about what should and should not be felonious conduct.
I grew up around an addicted family member. I’m well aware that the family gets screwed. In spades.
That said, the state has done zip to fix addiction other than squander your and my dollars, in large amounts, to implement judicial “solutions” that don’t work. But it will continue because it’s profitable. Far more profitable than locking up violent felons. We’re awash in convicted sex offenders who are “safe” to have in our neighborhoods. We’re awash in violent illegal aliens. But by gosh we use precious and limited jail space for drunks and junkies.
And that needs to change. Any ideas as how that can come about?
Thank you for that. I like good news.
As always when there is a question of the interaction of God and a large group of people, the change has to be allowed within the heart of the people.
In a few decades of bible studies I have seen some patterns in how this happens. On earth it looks like down, up, down, up, down, up etc. Evangelism breaks out and is accepted. Blessings follow. Eventually a new generation, if not the directly blessed generation itself, will assume they deserve all this good stuff rather than it having been gifted by God to an undeserving humanity, they congratulate themselves for it, and down things go again.
I wouldn’t rule out being near the end of a down and ready for another up at this point. All concerned people could certainly do worse than to pray to the Lord and invite it. However when invited, it helps if they are beginning to make room in their hearts for it too. Jesus will help in the clean up job, but you have to be willing to ask Him in when He shows up with the offer.
Funny thing, God has a way of mirroring our attitudes towards others, even the bad sinners, towards us. We might not sin that bad... yet. But that is one movement of the grace of God away. We should be ready to declare, along with the patriot who just got a parking ticket, that it’s absolutely fair even though we had no idea we would slip that bad when it happened.
Thanks. I hadn’t expected a religious explanation, but welcome it.
On thst note, I’m going back to family and spend some time reading the Torah. God Bless.
The Law (Noahide or Mosaic) never could or did stand alone to benefit a sinful people. It can only result in a downward spiral of failures and a damnation end without the presence of a merciful Christ, the divine sin bearer.
This is why Christianity was such an “AHA!” moment for the world. It revealed what thinking people always knew made sense, but could never see. Jesus is “implementation details” — as it turns out, mightily important in the story, but if one never acknowledges the need for the Christ, then the New Testament role for Jesus can’t make sense to one either.
Substance abuse is not the equivalent of political or religious liberty.
The absence of nanny government is an important element in fomenting religious and political liberty.
The absence of law and order and the proliferation of stoners creates a society unfit for decent people to live in.
Amen! The less we spend on ANY drug users, addicted or not, the better.
There is no reason to expect a "proliferation of stoners" - the end of Prohibition didn't result in a proliferation of drunks.
Only because it coincided with the Depression- no money to buy alcohol.
Alcohol is very cheap...if you know how to make it. It’s the taxes and marketing that jack up the price.
Only because it coincided with the Depression- no money to buy alcohol.
I know of no evidence for a proliferation of drunks at the end of the Depression, either.
World War II... And it is not until afterward that alcohol use returned to its pre-Prohibition level.
Cheap doesn’t make something right.
And even then (or now), did it constitute a proliferation of drunks?
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