Apart from some of the tyrannies, the U.S. — a democracy — is the quickest to punish and in vastly larger numbers than the rest of the world. Per the citation below:
“The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/us/23prison.html
Needless to say there is some discrimination built into our punitive system — more than half those imprisoned are minority group members in part as a result of the targeting of minority communities for arrest and punishment. Our monies — quite expensive for imprisonment — could be far better spent on education and jobs. Even Obama seems reluctant to break with this pattern to start some sort of WPA program targeting unemployed — as did Roosevelt during our last big economic crisis. And our NY governor is announcing massive cuts in our education budgets as one of his goals for solving NY’s budget crisis. No one is speaking loudly about closing down some of our NY prisons not needed to house our prisoners with the decrease in crime of late — local pols fear a strong prison guards union.
I don’t know precisely what the sources are of our vengeful attitudes that make punishment the solution for social problems. One suspects that each new wave of immigrants to this country has been resented by its predecessors and accused of crime — the Lou Dobbs syndrome. And brutality was the way slaves were controlled.
How to change attitudes I do not know. Perhaps economic necessity will help? Some states are considering large releases of prisoners — by judicial order for overcrowding in California.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/102256/early_release_for_prison_inmates_in.html
What do you think?
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“A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope.” (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
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Ed Kent 212-665-8535 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
2 users commented in " Punishment Does Not Solve All Problems! "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackLiberalizing the use of the death penalty would move things along. Taking a page from the PRC and charging the family for the bullet would put the ball in their court instead of putting our court’s on the defensive. Perhaps, you would be happier in mainland China, where there aren’t so many imprisoned. If you should not obey the more serious of their laws, leave your wife a couple3 of bucks for the bullet and I hope your organs are up to snuff as we aren’t really interested in low quality donor organs.
Ed, I think part of the problem is that we are very short-sighted AND we want immediate results.
Politicians get voted into office with promises of building another prison. But the politician that says let’s establish more pre-school programs and after school programs and jobs – well, many of those results won’t be seen for another 15 or more years.
I fault the news media and politicians for the most part. If they took the time to educate the public on what REALLY works to reduce crime instead of caving in to the public’s ignorance and immediate gratification issues, maybe some changes for the better could be made. Both now and in future.
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