California now has the biggest prison system in the Western industrialized world, a system 40 percent bigger than the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The state holds more inmates in its jails and prisons than do France, Great Britain, Germany, Japan, Singapore, and the Netherlands combined. This is worth reading. And tell me if I am wrong.
Go to :
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19152.htm Thank you for the article, Anwaar; it certainly does open one's eyes, if one reads it thoroughly. Basically it states that prisons are big business, very lucrative for the private sector and this saves the government money by reducing the federal work force, as stated in the article:"Private prison companies are the most obvious, the most controversial, and the fastest-growing segment of the prison-industrial complex. The idea of private prisons was greeted with enthusiasm during the Reagan and Bush Administrations; it fit perfectly with a belief in small government and the privatization of public services. The Clinton Administration, however, has done far more than its Republican predecessors to legitimize private prisons. It has encouraged the Justice Department to place illegal aliens and minimum-security inmates in private correctional facilities, as part of a drive to reduce the federal work force."
When you asked the question, "And tell me if I am wrong," I reread your original article here. Are these the points you are refering to?:"Your society, sir, has now been transformed into a culture of carnivorous marauders, most of them with a past criminal record. Allow me to give a glimpse of this violent nature of the society of which you are a mouthpiece."
"All now roam the streets of America like cocked guns and ticking bombs. Talk of ice men who move about in the shadows with bombs and grenades and pistols Mr. Buckley."
"Yours is the most violent society in the world presently Mr. Buckley."Because if indeed these are the points you are attempting to make, I'd say the article proves you wrong; that the only reason so many per capita are in prison is because more people are being sent to prison for non-violent crimes than ever before. Consider the following statements from the article you've posted:"About half the California prisoners released on parole are illiterate. About 85 percent are substance abusers."
"Almost two thirds of the people sent to prison in California last year were parole violators. Of the roughly 80,000 parole violators returned to prison, about 60,000 had committed a technical violation, such as failing a drug test; about 15,000 had committed a property or a drug crime; and about 3,000 had committed a violent crime, frequently a robbery to buy drugs. The gigantic prison system that California has built at such great expense has essentially become a revolving door for poor, highly dysfunctional, and often illiterate drug abusers. They go in, they get out, they get sent back, and every year there are more."
"The raw material of the prison-industrial complex is its inmates: the poor, the homeless, and the mentally ill; drug dealers, drug addicts, alcoholics, and a wide assortment of violent sociopaths.
About 70 percent of the prison inmates in the United States are illiterate. Perhaps 200,000 of the country's inmates suffer from a serious mental illness. A generation ago such people were handled primarily by the mental-health, not the criminal-justice, system. Sixty to 80 percent of the American inmate population has a history of substance abuse. Meanwhile, the number of drug-treatment slots in American prisons has declined by more than half since 1993."
"The number of drug offenders imprisoned in the state today is more than twice the number of inmates who were imprisoned for all crimes in 1978."
If 50% more are imprisoned now, why has the number of violent crimes gone down by only 20%?:"Since 1991 the rate of violent crime in the United States has fallen by about 20 percent, while the number of people in prison or jail has risen by 50 percent."
"The economist and legal scholar Michael K. Block, who believes that American sentencing policies are still not harsh enough, offers a straightforward explanation for why the United States has lately incarcerated so many people: "There are too many prisoners because there are too many criminals committing too many crimes." Indeed, the nation's prisons now hold about 150,000 armed robbers, 125,000 murderers, and 100,000 sex offenders—enough violent criminals to populate a medium-sized city such as Cincinnati. Few would dispute the need to remove these people from society. The level of violent crime in the United States, despite recent declines, still dwarfs that in Western Europe.
But the proportion of offenders being sent to prison each year for violent crimes has actually fallen during the prison boom. In 1980 about half the people entering state prison were violent offenders; in 1995 less than a third had been convicted of a violent crime. The enormous increase in America's inmate population can be explained in large part by the sentences given to people who have committed nonviolent offenses. Crimes that in other countries would usually lead to community service, fines, or drug treatment—or would not be considered crimes at all—in the United States now lead to a prison term, by far the most expensive form of punishment. "No matter what the question has been in American criminal justice over the last generation," says Franklin E. Zimring, the director of the Earl Warren Legal Institute, "prison has been the answer."'
I am also reposting the following article which gives even more insight into our so-called justice system:America’s Injustice System Is CriminalWednesday, December 13, 2006
by Paul Craig Roberts
The Christmas season is a time to remember the unfortunate. Among the most unfortunate people are those who have been
wrongly convicted and imprisoned.The United States has a large number of wrongfully convicted. There are many reasons for this. One is that the US has the largest percentage of its citizens imprisoned of all countries in the world, including China. One of every 32 US adults is behind bars, on probation or on parole. Given a wrongful conviction rate, the larger the percentage of citizens in jails, the greater the number of wrongfully convicted.
According to the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College in London, the US has 700,000 more of its citizens incarcerated than China, a country with a population four to five times larger than that of the US, and 1,330,000 more people in prison than crime-ridden Russia. The US has 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's prisoners. The American incarceration rate is seven times higher than that of European countries. Either America is the land of criminals, or something is seriously wrong with the criminal justice (sic) system in "the land of the free."
In the US the wrongful conviction rate is extremely high. One reason is that hardly any of the convicted have had a jury trial. No peers have heard the evidence against them and found them guilty. In the US criminal justice (sic) system,
more than 95% of all felony cases are settled with a plea bargain.Before jumping to the conclusion that an innocent person would not admit guilt, be aware of how the process works. Any defendant who stands trial faces more severe penalties if found guilty than if he agrees to a plea bargain. Prosecutors don't like trials because they are time consuming and a lot of work. To discourage trials, prosecutors offer defendants reduced charges and lighter sentences than would result from a jury conviction. In the event a defendant insists upon his innocence, prosecutors pile on charges until the defendant's lawyer and family convince the defendant that a jury is likely to give the prosecutor a conviction on at least one of the many charges and that the penalty will be greater than a negotiated plea.The criminal justice (sic) system today consists of a process whereby a defendant is coerced into admitting to a crime in order to escape more severe punishment for maintaining his innocence. Many of the crimes for which people are imprisoned never occurred. They are made up crimes created by the process of negotiation to close a case.This takes most of the work out of the system and, thereby, suits police, prosecutors, and judges to a tee. Police do not have to be careful about evidence, because
they know that no more than one case out of twenty will ever be tested in the courtroom.Prosecutors do not have to make decisions about which cases to prosecute or risk losing cases.
By coercing pleas, prosecutors can prosecute every case and boast of extremely high conviction rates.When prosecutors had to decide which cases to prosecute, they had to examine the evidence and to investigate the defendant's side of the story. No more. The evidence seldom comes into play. In place of a determination of innocence or guilt, prosecutors negotiate with lawyers the crimes to which a defendant will enter a plea.
Prosecutors have lost sight of innocence and guilt.
What we have today is a conveyor belt that convicts almost everyone who is charged. Every defense attorney knows that today prosecutors can purchase testimony against a defendant by paying a "witness" with money, dropped charges, or reduced time to testify against the defendant. Many prosecutors become highly annoyed at any disruption of the plea bargain conviction process. A defendant that incurs the prosecutor's ire is certain to be framed on far more serious charges than a negotiated plea.
Going to trial is no guarantee that an innocent person will be acquitted. Prosecutors routinely withhold exculpatory evidence and suborn perjury. Generally, jurors trust prosecutors and are unaware of their inventory of dirty tricks. Few jurors can tell the difference between bogus evidence and real evidence. For example, psychologists and criminologists have established beyond all doubt that eye-witnesses are wrong 50% of the time. Yet, jurors usually believe eye-witnesses unless they think the witness has it in for the defendant and is lying.
Prosecutors--and there are still a few--who are meticulous about their cases and fair to defendants show poor results compared to the high convictions attained by prosecutors who run plea bargain mills and frame-up factories.
Today's criminal justice (sic) system is results orientated, not justice orientated.In the past judges could give light sentences to people they believed had been wrongfully convicted. But "law and order conservatives" have taken sentencing discretion away from judges. Today prosecutors hold all the cards.Many conservatives believe that prisons are full of hardened criminals who liberal judges are determined to release to prey upon society.
In truth, the largest percentage of prisoners are drug users who are victims of the conservatives' "war on drugs." Drug offenses account for 49 percent of federal prison population growth between 1995 and 2003. Many of these prisoners are mothers arrested for drug use. The greatest victims of the drug laws are the children whose mothers are incarcerated.
As females become sexually active at younger and younger ages, state legislatures have stupidly raised the age at which it is legal to engage in sexual activity. Today, a significant percentage of new prisoners are young men imprisoned for engaging in sexual activity with teenage girls. In the US, criminal justice (sic) has more to do with ruining people than with punishing criminals.
I have written often about wrongful convictions. We know that wrongful conviction is a serious problem when the advent of DNA evidence has led to the release of a significant number of innocent people who were convicted of murderer and rape, and when a number of law schools feel that it is necessary for them to operate innocence projects that work for the release of the wrongfully convicted.
Prosecutors are like President Bush. They absolutely refuse to admit that they ever make a mistake and have to be forced to disgorge their innocent victims. Nothing makes a prosecutor more angry than to have to give back a wrongfully convicted person's life.
Lt. William Strong and Christophe Gaynor are two of the hundreds of thousands of wrongfully convicted Americans whose lives have been ruined by an irresponsible and corrupt criminal justice (sic) system.
In Virginia, Lt. William Strong, the son of a military family, grew tired of his wife's unfaithfulness and filed for divorce. The unfaithful wife retaliated by accusing Strong of marital rape. Neither police nor prosecutor investigated the charge. Instead, they proceeded to set Strong up for plea conviction. The arresting officer recommended Strong's attorney, an incompetent who owed his cases to the police.
Strong insisted on a trial, but the arresting officer and attorney convinced Strong's parents that with a plea their son would be out in a year. No one told Strong or his parents the implications of a plea, and Virginia Judge Westbrook Parker, playing to feminist voters, gave Strong a life sentence of 60 years.
The case has many unsavory appearances. If reports are true, the arresting officer paid numerous visits to Strong's unfaithful wife, as did Strong's attorney, and the arresting officer ended up separating from his wife and leaving the police force.
The perk kit exists and Strong could be given a DNA test, but Virginia refuses on the grounds that Strong admitted his guilt. Strong says the semen, if any, is that of the wife's boyfriend.
Strong has been in prison for 15 years on the basis of zero evidence. He is in prison because he and his parents trusted the police officer and the criminal justice (sic) system.
Another Virginia case is that of Christophe Gaynor. Gaynor was the coach of an adolescent skate board team, which he took to New York City for a competition. One of the adolescents expressed his intention to buy drugs. Gaynor forbade it and threatened to report the boy to his parents.
The irresponsible kid retaliated by accusing Gaynor of sex abuse. There was no evidence. There was no investigation. Gaynor had never displayed any homosexual tendencies. The entire team knew the accusation was false. Gaynor went to trial. He was framed by the prosecutor with the help of the judge, who intimidated Gaynor's witnesses by incarcerating one of the kids overnight without cause. Gaynor was sentenced to 32 years with no possibility of parole on the basis of no evidence, just an unproven accusation. His trial was full of irregularities, and the same judge who sentenced him denied Gaynor a new trial.
Ten years later, this past summer Noah J. Seidenberg, who brought the unproven accusation against Gaynor, died apparently of drug overdose at the age of 24 years.
There is no institution in America that is a greater failure than the criminal justice (sic) system. The system can do nothing but fail, because the search for truth and justice plays no part in the system.
The prosecutor's career depends on his conviction rate, not on discovering the guilt or innocence of the accused.Virginia's governor could pardon Strong and Gaynor. But feminists and "child advocates" would scream and yell, as would prosecutors and "law and order conservatives." Nothing matters to these groups but their own single-issue, and justice is not part of it. In America justice cannot be done unless a governor is prepared to sacrifice his own political career in the interest of justice.
What kind of people are we when we exercise no oversight over a criminal justice (sic) system that destroys the lives of innocent people with lies?
I'd also add that I have a brother who's been rotting in prison for life, convicted of 1st degree murder, even though he's schizophrenic which should have acquitted him on the grounds of insanity. His disease became full blown while serving in the U.S. Navy, he was honorably discharged after serving 6 years and holding a sailor of the year award. He voluntarily committed himself when needed to the V.A. hospital throughout his years after his discharge and would stay until discharged from the hospital. However, upon a Reagan administration decision to only pay veterans their military pay after one month of hospitalization instead of from day 1 of hospitalization, he was released before his pay kicked in. He called our mother and said they were releasing him early. Mum called the V.A. and stated that she visited my brother the day before, he was not well [stabilized] yet and why were they releasing him? The V.A.'s reply was he's as good as he's going to get. A few days later, just after a wedding of mine, he dressed in military clothes, armed himself, shot and killed a child of our neighbor's [who all attended my wedding], shot and killed the neighbor's nephew, and wounded 5 others during a picnic in their backyard...my brother then turned the gun over to my neighbor, Mr. P., and asked Mr. P. to kill him. We were always told he was no danger to himself or others. He had delusions that the military and the KGB were after him, that they put microphones in his ears and talked to him incessantly....all classic signs of schizophrena....the procecutor said my brother made this stuff up. It was felt by the arresting officers that the Navy sent my brother to trial years after this happened...he was in a place for the insane.....they told me, "People like your brother never go to trial. But after the victims tried to sue the Navy, your brother was brought to trial. We were all shocked."
So you see, I have witnessed our judicial system in a close up and heartwrenching manner....It, our government, and the military can rot in hell for all I care....that's what they've done to my brother. Ask my mum what she thinks of our judicial system...even my neighbors [the victims] don't blame my brother.
Your call, Anwaar.
Michelle