4 ms·

Classic to see the correct take get downvoted. If anyone's interested in actually learning about the causes of mass incarceration, I'd strongly recommend John

• tyrust 7y ago
  Then what is it?
  • JesseAldridge 7y ago
    According to the Amazon summary from the linked book: "a major shift in prosecutor behavior that occurred in the mid-1990s, when prosecutors began bringing felony charges against arrestees about twice as often as they had before"
    • frankharv 7y ago
      If you don't want to do time, Don't do the crime.
      • smokelegend 7y ago
        How does that work exactly when the crime is against a plant you use for personal medical reasons. Love it or hate it, medical weed is cheaper and easier to produce then most opioid alternatives. [i.e. morphine, codeine, oxytocin, etc.] And its safer to produce, process, and distribute to end users [consumers]. So grandma gets a felony conviction because she grew her medical weed in her backyard garden and now has 10-15yrs of her life wasted in a prison cell... How exactly does the math of justice add that up? Grandma grew 20 plants because she wanted to make her medicine and have enough left over to make some edible cookies... Grandma's of America union doesn't exist, grandma is left to the mercy of a corrupt justice systems that mandates minimum federal sentencing guidelines regardless of a defendants circumstances. The math doesn't add up, it's cruel punishment and unfair treatment of the law. I mean if grandma had a meth lab then yeah she deserves to "due the time" but for weed, no one should go to jail for weed... it's a complete waste of tax money..IMHO
  • a1369209993 7y ago
    Plea bargains. Although the root fault is that a "guilty" plea costs the court less resources than a "not guilty" plea. If you wanted to solve this properly, you'd require that even if the defendant pleads guilty, there still has to be the full process of jury selection, presenting evidence and arguments (even if the defence's argument is "yeah, I did it") and deliberation (which, by design, gives twelve opportunities for someone to say "what the hell are we doing; this is clearly bunk" without that person being under threat of twenty-five-to-life for contempt of cop). Edit: oh right, and you also need to make offering plea bargains (outside of state's-evidence cases) a twenty-five-to-life felony for the prosecutor.
• celticmusic 7y ago
  The government isn't going to be lobbying itself to pass minimum occupancy laws. The motivations are better. No one is saying it's going to solve world hunger, but it's a good first step.
  • the-pigeon 7y ago
    Just being government run is just one ingredient in a successful prison system. Next you need to find good people that strongly want to accomplish the organization's goals. And who are smart enough to actually do that. And you need to make sure those leaders have adequate funding and time to make the necessary changes. As well as having a legal system that is at least half-way working correctly.
    • davengh 7y ago
      So... in the U.S. we have 0.5/3?
  • philwelch 7y ago
    The government itself, no. The correctional officers' union, yes. Outlawing private prisons is probably a good step, but it's neither necessary nor sufficient to eliminate the vested interest in mass incarceration.
    • vga805 7y ago
      it's probably necessary. and i must ask, you've studied philosophy? that's the only time i see people talking about "necessary and sufficient conditions"
      • saghm 7y ago
        FWIW, I've never studied philosophy (unless you count formal logic, but we never talked about "necessary and sufficient conditions" in the two courses I took), and I use that terminology a fair amount. I'm not sure where I picked it up, but it certainly wasn't in philosophy classes.
• dougmany 7y ago
  For the lazy: Pfaff is convinced that aggressive prosecution is the biggest cause of over-incarceration. His argument here is compelling. He notes that while incarceration rates began to climb in the 1980s as a response to rising crime, those trend lines continued through the Nineties, even though crime was steadily falling. Why did that happen? Examining all the relevant variables (crime reports, arrests, charges filed, and convictions), Pfaff found himself looking squarely at the prosecutor’s office. As less crime was reported, arrests dropped proportionately, and among those who were charged with a crime, conviction rates held steady. But prisons continued to fill, because prosecutors were filing felony charges against ever-growing percentages of their dwindling arrestees. From https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2017/02/20/john-pfaff-locked-in/ https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2017/02/20/john-pfaf...
  • t34543 7y ago
    Look at Philadelphia Krasner. There is recent controversy but his agenda of plea reform is a fantastic start.
  • jimclegg 7y ago
    The change in monetary system caused a cascade of despair. https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
    • jimclegg 7y ago
      More specifically here is the incarceration rate change when the monetary system changed. https://wtfhappenedin1971home.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/incarcerationrate.jpg?w=780 https://wtfhappenedin1971home.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/in... PS. Don't downvote me if you don't know economics morons.
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• x86_64Ubuntu 7y ago
  The War On Drugs is a mechanism prosecutors use to get people into the system. We can't dismiss the changes in law brought about from a moral panic and how that affects who and how people are taken in.
  • jacobush 7y ago
    Also, total numbers aside, the War on Drugs was tailored from the start to affect blacks more.