Let me tell you what hurts the most I’m a convicted felon and I can’t workNo matter where I go to try to get paid … That’s the everyday life of a convictTrying to make it while they’re saying to me: The judge said, “Don’t trouble nobody,” Probation said, “Don’t trouble nobody,” “Stay out of trouble, don’t trouble… return to article
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Reader Comments (14)Page 1 of 1 pagesWomen only make up 7% of the prison system? Surely this means that we are vastly discriminating against men. Just a women should be more evenly represented in the Congress, they should have equal representation in prisons.
That said, lets dump all the drug users out of prison. If for no other reason than to save money. And while we are at it, lets change the laws that put them there in the first place.
Posted by wolf on Jun 1, 2006 at 4:13 PM A grudging concession from an idiot who probably supported mandatory sentencing when the Republicans and conservative Democrats advocated them to persuade a terrified pre-911electorate to vote for them. Now the “costs” appear to be more excessive then the welfare which once barely sustained them.
Incarceration is just another conservative euphemism for welfare, which itself was just another American euphemism for criminal social neglect.
Posted by Major Major on Jun 1, 2006 at 5:35 PM Our rate of female incarceration is actually quite significant, although I can see how a “mere” seven percent might seem like nothing, at first. Women are, in fact, the fastest growing segment of the prison system(s), not only in the federal system, but in all 50 states.
A new report commissioned by the Institute on Women & Criminal Justice finds that female imprisonment in the U.S. has grown no less than 757 percent since 1977. For more on this, please visit the Women’s Prison Association site, for their report, “Hard Hit.”
Posted by Silja J.A. Talvi on Jun 1, 2006 at 6:19 PM Jeb Bush, Governor of Florida proposed the toughest gun-crime law in the nation in 1998: 10-20-LIFE. Under 10-20-LIFE, a felon who used a gun to commit a crime like armed robbery would face at least 10 years in state prison.
The 1999 Florida Legislature passed sweeping legislation that provides for enhanced minimum mandatory prison terms for offenders who commit crimes with guns.
The results under 10-20-LIFE are impressive. In only six years, from 1998-2004, 10-20-LIFE has helped drive down violent gun crime rates 30 percent statewide.
During the 10-20-LIFE era, armed criminals robbed a total of 10,567 fewer people and killed a total 380 fewer than they would have if these crime numbers had remained at 1998 levels. These crime decreases occurred even as Florida’s population increased over 2.5 million (16.8 percent) between 1998 and 2004. Punishing criminals who use guns is making our state safer.
YOU LIBERALS CAN’T SPIN THOSE FACTS
Posted by tina1 on Jun 1, 2006 at 11:54 PM sorry, but it’s not just liberals who are against these overly repressive crime prevention policies which are in the end not bettering our society but making us more a nation of scared sheep.
statistics without sources are just a worthless opinion
Posted by davinci on Jun 2, 2006 at 5:09 AM Jeb Bush, the inbred brother of the Chickenhawk-in-Chief, who nearly lost the election in 2000 because he couldn’t steal enough votes to put his brother over the top? Governor of the Great State of Florida, where airhead Republican bimbos compete against each other to become trophy wives to Rich and Famous Octogenarian Republican crooks?
Ah, Tina. Go back to Canton before you get burned. You’re completely out of your depth in Florida.
Posted by Major Major on Jun 2, 2006 at 5:37 AM While this is an undoubtedly naive question, i would like to see if there is a cogent answer available here.
Are women underrepresented in prisons? Why should men make up an astonishing 93% of inmates? Why should we believe that women *should* be equally represented in politics (they obviously are not, now), but not in prison? Perhaps the entire system is corrupt, or perhaps there is an intrinsic reason for the discrepancy? I wonder, is it a sign that our system is getting “fairer” since the female prison population is growing so much faster than the male population (if this also happened in the political regime, perhaps it is just a sign that women and men are becoming more equal, for both good and bad).
In a “fair” system, would women account for (roughly) half the prison population? And blacks for 20% (or whatever their demographic number happens to be)? And rich people just a little, since there are so very few of them? Or are statistics like these useless for some reason?
Whatever the answers might be, i don’t think a 1% lock up rate is reasonable. Does anyone know what percentage of the population is locked up in France or England or some other civilized place? Surely the US war on drugs has failed in a spectacular fashion.
I am sorry that the questions are so naive and that they touch on a sensitive subject, but i am genuinely curious to see if anyone has thoughts that might make sense of the data.
Posted by wolf on Jun 2, 2006 at 10:59 AM 1) Wolf, the article lists incarceration rates for other countries for a comparison. and other countries are lower than the us’s
2) it seems like what you are getting at, wolf, is that boys and girls are different. and i completely agree. boys and girls are different and boys perpetrate the vast majority of crime and violence. At the same time, yes this should give pause to feminists demanding an equal number of professors of mathematics and physics at universities. its not all discrimination.
3) Tina, the main point of the article is about the drug war and victimless crimes. I believe many liberals find the drug war abhorent, but are plenty willing to lock-up people using guns to commit crimes.
Posted by Siskiyouz on Jun 2, 2006 at 4:58 PM More to the point, is human nature essentially or potentially good or evil?
If good, then is the purpose of prison to rehabilitate the people who fall from grace and nurture their wayward souls back to the flock?
If evil, then are we compelled to punish the people who fail to accept their social responsibility and respect legitimate authority, and isolate them from the responsible, God-fearing majority?
Is the predominant percentage of “nonwhite” inmates in American prisons a function of American racism and economic segregation, or simply a racial predisposition to resist racist expectations?
In a nation whose majority of residents are descended from white European emigrants who extirpated the Indians, enslaved the Africans, conquered the Mexicans and exploited the labor of Asian immigrants, is it even possible to pretend that racist attitudes of white supremacy no longer exist?
In a culture of male-dominant exploitation where men are generally regarded as “work objects” and women are generally regarded as “sex objects”, whose purpose is to “be productive” and gratify the expectations of their respective superiors, does the liberation of women from male sexual expectations and the liberation of men from the economic expectations of the social aristocracy promote social harmony or generate a rightwing backlash against the people who assert their dignity and human rights against those who attempt to deny them?
Posted by Major Major on Jun 2, 2006 at 5:43 PM Hey davinci,
Here is the link to the STATISTICS for the state of Florida. The 2004 “index crime” rate is now the lowest in 34 years for Florida, and the violent crime rate is the lowest in a quarter century.http://www.dc.state.fl.us/oth/10-20-life/index.html
And Siskiyouz,
FYI ... drug users do create victims. Druggies are thiefs, they rob and steal to support their habit.PS - It really doesn’t matter what you moonbat liberals want or say, criminals will do hard time. How do you like them apples?
lol....
nothing you can do about it .... lol....
Posted by tina1 on Jun 2, 2006 at 6:52 PM LEAP -law enforcement against prohibition
French figures are less than one in a thousand, but could be reduced.
Posted by frog on Jun 5, 2006 at 4:04 PM Once again, I’m moved by Talvi’s human interest in the dispossessed and the cruelty that characterizes our institutional and social practices.
I was particularly moved by the stories she shared of the innmates and former innmates who expressed their hopes and sorrows regarding their futures.
Underpinning the social policies and beliefs that have led our country to criminalize society is the history of intolerance. Intolerance is supported by self-righteousness, which functions as a veil to conceal self hatred and personal inadequacies. Intolerance is directed toward what is external, the “other” as phantasm, and self hatred to what is internal, the human fallibity that undergirds our sense of omnipotence and benevolence.
The relationship between the internal and external, self-preservation and intolerance, is supported by race, gender, class, religious, and regional preferences, which are strong determinants for establishing policies that criminalize people unfairly.
Internally, their are groups of Americans who go to great lengths to safeguard themselves against the “Other,” which not only appears in the guise of another person, but as external reality in general.
The internal and external thus function as a rigid binary structure that creates the illusory social and psychological support that allows the “good” to be absolutely “good” and the “evil” absolutely “evil.” There is no room for gray in between.
The alarming jail sentences for non-violent offenses can be attributed in part to a form of criminalization that is not addressed through reahabilitative measures, but through a belief that the criminal act is synonymous with the individual who committed it. The crime is not merely punished in time, as a temporal act, but in space, an infinite space that sutures the criminal permanently to his/her crime.
Time is generative. It should not be veiwed as something that is transhistorical and fixed beyond time. The generative aspect of time allows for periods of renewal and recovery. We should likewise give those who committed crimes, especially those who have committed nonviolent crimes, an opportunity to rebuild their lives.
Posted by Epistrophy on Jun 5, 2006 at 6:19 PM Epistrophy
No problem at all for some.
A congressman who abuses prescription drugs gets off, a poor nobody gets 25 years.tina1
Remember Prohibition ? That encouraged crime, too.
Posted by frog on Jun 6, 2006 at 1:33 AM Reading the article.....I am reminded of the punitive nature of amerikan society....basically from the first so called indentured servants who had their contracts violated ; making them slaves for life...till present day , when corporate contractors compete for gov’t contracts to built prisons , and then house the prisoners....we live in a system of gov’t that looks at social problems as something too profit off of...by restriction of individual freedom...Thus the rush to incarcerate 10’s of thousands of people a year....we thought slavery ended back with the Civil War ; but in truth the war is still going...........just the tactics have changed....
Posted by Redhorse on Jun 11, 2006 at 4:35 AM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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