Posted on 08/14/2018 3:05:48 PM PDT by Kaslin
Prison reform has normally been an issue embraced by Democrats, not Republicans. But, perhaps, like so many other things in the Trump administration, this, too, is about to change.
Last Thursday, President Trump held a roundtable discussion at his Bedminster, New Jersey, property, five governors were in attendance.
According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, 37.8 percent of prison inmates in the U.S. are black, 58.3 percent white, 2.3 percent Native American and 1.6 percent Asian. Yet, blacks are arrested more, charged more, sentenced more harshly and confined to prison longer, even for minor infractions.
In Georgia, according to Department of Corrections; U.S. Census Bureau data, 61.6 percent of prisoners were black, 33.7 percent were white, while the general population in the state in 2013 was 31.4 percent black, 54.8 white.
Gov. Nathan Deal of Georgia spoke of the progress made in his state in reducing the disproportionate number of blacks in prisons: "We have seen, since I became governor, a 10-percent decrease in violent crime in our state, a 20-percent overall decrease in crime. We have seen our African-American percentage in our prison system drop significantly ... black males has dropped almost 30 percent."
Black female inmates, he said, "dropped about 38.2 percent. Our African-American commitments to our prison is at the lowest level it has been since 1987."
Deal said re-entry into society is a vital part of lowering the recidivism rate. Common among those in prison was a lack of education. Seventy percent, he said, had not graduated from high school. Georgia stepped up its GED program and job training. "We found that if you give them a blue-collar skill, you reduce your recidivism rate by 24 percent. If you give them just the education of getting a high school diploma, it's reduced by 19 percent."
This issue has been kicked around for years with little done. Prisons are overcrowded and antiquated.
A disparity in sentencing, lack of competent legal representation for poor and minority defendants, overcrowding -- and the fact that prisons aren't known primarily for reforming too many inmates -- all contribute to a system that has placed 2.3 million criminals behind bars, "more than any other nation, according to data maintained by the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College London," reports The New York Times. These include a sizeable number of non-dangerous, nonviolent offenders who would be better off outside prisons and in programs designed to change their life direction, even paying back those from whom they have stolen or otherwise harmed. It's called restitution.
Politically, this is an issue that will resonate well in minority communities for obvious reasons, but more than politics should be involved. Reforming our criminal justice system, which is often more criminal than just, is the moral and right thing to do.
The Senate is expected to consider a modified version of a House bill that would reduce the current mandatory life sentence for some drug offenses to 25 years. The Senate bill would also prohibit the doubling of mandatory sentences for some drug and gun crimes and it would give more sentencing discretion to judges. It also would make retroactive the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act that narrowed the discrepancy in sentencing guidelines for crack versus powdered cocaine, another issue that has disproportionately affected the black community.
Secretary of Energy Rick Perry noted that while governor of Texas he was able to "shut down eight prisons, saving more than $3 billion dollars a year in prison costs, and conservatives look at that now and go, 'That was smart on crime.'"
Saving money while instituting programs that work, giving people hope and another chance at a better future are Republican themes. Democrats should join them. If they do, they can share the credit for things that succeed in transforming troubled lives.
I am all for prison reform. I just don’t want anyone saying there are a bunch of people imprisoned unjustly. There may be a few, maybe. Eye witnesses are not always accurate, circumstantial evidence is better, and a combination of the two is best. In my training I learned that when I felt I had enough for conviction, to work doubly hard to disprove what I had. This to to ensure there are no surprises when the prosecutor takes over.
Why Have Penitentiaries Anyway?
Most people realize that the court and penal systems in North America are seriously broken and must be fixed, yet contemplating doing away with penitentiaries sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Barely 200 years ago, an experiment began which has cost us untold billions of dollars. Just last year, this experiment resulted in 1.4 million adults incarcerated in federal and state penitentiaries (a figure which has quadrupled since 1980) at a cost of nearly $40,000 each.
As Alan Elsner pointed out in a recent Washington Post article, 2.2 million people are engaged in catching criminals and putting and keeping them behind bars, and “corrections” has become one of the largest sectors of the U.S. economy, employing more people than the combined workforces of General Motors, Ford and Wal-Mart, the three biggest corporate employers in the country. In many “prison town” counties, the number one employer is the Department of Corrections. This is a staggering expense of over $50 billion, an amount that increases by additional billions for each year of the last 25 years of explosive prison growth. As the prison population ages, the taxpayer is paying for medical procedures he can’t afford for himself, and the victims of these criminals realize no compensation at all.
Few realize that the first penitentiary in the world was founded in Philadelphia in 1792. Jails had always existed for the purpose of holding the accused until trial, after which the guilty would pay a fine, make restitution to the victim, be banished, be executed, etc. However, the concept of warehousing criminals to cause them to repent was entirely new.
Imagine a criminal justice system where penitentiaries didn’t even exist, but where a person paid for his crimes rather than having society pay to keep him incarcerated.
One such nation existed. If you stole someone’s property, say a sheep, and were caught with the animal in your possession, you repaid the victim with two sheep, but you didn’t go to a penitentiary. The victim also got a financial settlement, satisfying the desire for victim restitution in our time.
If you sold the stolen sheep, thereby being more involved in the crime, you paid the victim four sheep.
If you committed a capital crime, (murder, rape, kidnapping, etc.) you paid with your life, but you didn’t go to a penitentiary. Such facilities didn’t exist in this nation. They were not needed.
Such a system would completely do away with our newest growth industry, penitentiaries, and restore the victim of crime financially.
I’m not going to tell you where I got the idea for this system, but it’s from a reliable source. Of course, it will never happen here because a powerful lobby has grown up around the prison system that will fight hard to protect the status quo. Correction officers have formed powerful labor unions, and their financial contributions to our politicians will easily outweigh the will of the people. I know, I know, I’m such a young man to be so cynical.
I doubt PRISON reform will change much.
Don't they REALLY mean COURT reform?
Why not KEEP them in school to begin with?
(Since our 'schools' are becoming more and more like prisons anyway.)
True; but we SUBSIDIZE bastardy in this country!
Yes. Patrick Moynihan foresaw what would happen. He was a Democrat, and he tried to warn people, including his boss, Lyndon Johnson. He was laughed at.
In 1964, as an aide to President Lyndon Johnson, he was the first to diagnose the crackup of the African-American family — then in its early stages but today devastatingly obvious to all but the most obdurate. His candor earned him the anger of contemporaries, Johnson included — but he was right, and knew it.
I agree. Vile homosexual rape in prisons should be stopped.
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