TNC
03-18-2005, 07:02 PM
Edition Date: 03-17-2005
Too many imprisoned
For a nation that prides itself on being "the home of the free," the number of our own people behind bars is appalling. We spend $35 billion to keep over 2 million in prisons or jails. There are about 1.5 million children with one or more incarcerated parents. As violent crime declines, both recidivism and incarceration have been steadily increasing due to over-zealous jailing. However, incarceration does little to diminish criminality, it simply holds our citizens in what journalist Ted Conover calls "human warehouses."
Prisons are where we keep our drug addicts, mentally ill, and those in our underclass — the poor, the black and the uneducated. It's where we place those who have failed our society, or rather, whom our society has failed. Our current system employs a "retribution" method and ignores rehabilitation. We've taken the simplest route rather than the most effective.
If nothing is done, the statistics will continue to worsen. Currently, the number of the incarcerated is multiplying while resources used by this system increase. This problem is complex and multifaceted, but we cannot sit idly because the trouble and dysfunction are too staggering. It's time to make change in a system that desperately needs it.
Greta - Boise
Too many imprisoned
For a nation that prides itself on being "the home of the free," the number of our own people behind bars is appalling. We spend $35 billion to keep over 2 million in prisons or jails. There are about 1.5 million children with one or more incarcerated parents. As violent crime declines, both recidivism and incarceration have been steadily increasing due to over-zealous jailing. However, incarceration does little to diminish criminality, it simply holds our citizens in what journalist Ted Conover calls "human warehouses."
Prisons are where we keep our drug addicts, mentally ill, and those in our underclass — the poor, the black and the uneducated. It's where we place those who have failed our society, or rather, whom our society has failed. Our current system employs a "retribution" method and ignores rehabilitation. We've taken the simplest route rather than the most effective.
If nothing is done, the statistics will continue to worsen. Currently, the number of the incarcerated is multiplying while resources used by this system increase. This problem is complex and multifaceted, but we cannot sit idly because the trouble and dysfunction are too staggering. It's time to make change in a system that desperately needs it.
Greta - Boise