Category Archives: Crime and punishment

incarceration and other options

Guns, guns and more guns!

Broken in the USA, Crime and punishment, Perspectives

Chapter 29 Guns, guns and more guns!

Just when you thought I had offended just about everyone, well not quite. I have several friends that are staunch NRA supporters. Actually I am not at opposed to gun ownership as long as they are registered. I see registration as an important item for law enforcement. I am in favor of our law officers having the latest armament available. My concern is regarding the “facts” regarding murder rates in the US vs. other countries. I often the comment “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people”. That does make sense, but the facts seem to indicate otherwise. Let’s compare our experience to a few other “civilized” countries:                     Source: http://chartsbin.com/view/1454

Current Worldwide Homicide/Murder Rate

Country or Area Rate (rate per 100,000 population) Note Source
  Australia                                                         1.23  

Belgium                                                             1.83

Canada                                                                1.67

Denmark                                                          1.4

France                                                               1.35

Germany                                                             .8

Iceland                                                                  0

I could go on, but you get the idea

U.S.A.                                                                 5.22

The issue is, are we safer because we have more guns (or less gun control)?

The other comment that I hear often is: “it’s a Constitutional issue; the 2nd amendment gives me the right to own as many and whatever type of weapons that I want”. I would suggest that this is not entirely true, and even if it was we might want to modify our thinking based on the facts. Let’s look at the entire wording of the 2nd amendment to the Constitution:  “Amendment II A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

Yep, that is the entire amendment. It should be obvious that the intention of this right had to do with the need to maintain the militia, which at the time made excellent sense. At the time of the writing the Bill of Rights in 1789 the standing Army (created in 1784) was extremely small and the founding fathers realized the need to call on local militia troops should the country face another threat from a substantial foe. In 1812 the opportunity presented itself:  Source: http://www.weegy.com/?ConversationId=BA44DE6B                                                         “The United States was not prepared to prosecute a war, for Madison had assumed that the state militias would easily seize Canada and that negotiations would follow. In 1812, the regular army consisted of fewer than 12,000 men. Congress authorized the expansion of the army to 35,000 men, but the service was voluntary and unpopular; it offered poor pay, and there were few trained and experienced officers, at least initially.[61] The militia objected to serving outside their home states, were not open to discipline, and performed poorly against British forces when outside their home states. American prosecution of the war suffered from its unpopularity, especially in New England, where anti-war speakers were vocal. “Two of the Massachusetts members [of Congress], Seaver and Widgery, were publicly insulted and hissed on Change in Boston; while another, Charles Turner, member for the Plymouth district, and Chief-Justice of the Court of Sessions for that county, was seized by a crowd on the evening of August 3, [1812] and kicked through the town”

Obviously, today’s times are much different and I seriously doubt that the founding fathers would have even considered this type of amendment if there had been a well-funded, substantial Army.

But I need weapons to protect my family. Well apparently they do not in other countries.   Also, consider that of the murders in the U.S.A. where guns are involved 30.2 % of these are committed by friends, acquaintances and/or family. This represents many more than the total murders in most other 1st world countries!

 

Incarcerations – Solutions

Broken in the USA, Crime and punishment

22c) Incarcerations – Solutions

The solutions are actually very easy, but the implementation will first require some political courage:

  1. Eliminate and/or significantly reduce incarceration terms for drug users.
  2. Reduce incarceration terms for drug related thefts.
  3. Reduce incarceration terms for lower level distributors.
  4. Allocate 25 – 40% of the incarceration term savings to after release programs. (note: most, if not all of this will be recouped in the form of reducing the recidivism rate.

Drug related releases will have the following requirements to avoid incarceration reentry:

  1. Must agree to attend no less than 2 AA and or NA meetings per week.
  2. Must enter a transition housing facility for a minimum of 60 days and up to 120 if needed.
  3. Must find at least part time employment within 90 days.
  4. Must participate in all programs required by the transition housing entity. To include, but limited to counseling & mentoring.
  5. Must not abuse drugs
  6. Must not commit any felony

Release funding for the previously discussed release inmates will include:

  1. The cost of transition housing entry fee.
  2. Up to 120 days of daily transition housing accommodation allowance (to be determined at state level most likely in the $25 – $35 per night range)

Additional funding should be allowed to insure adequate availability of transition housing to qualified service providers. Suggest grants in the range of $2,000 – $3,000 per bed and short term low interest rate loans, 3-5 years.

Incarcerations – what is it costing

Broken in the USA, Crime and punishment

22b) Incarcerations – what is it costing

“02/29/2012

By Christian Henrichson and Ruth Delaney

Staff from Vera’s Center on Sentencing and Corrections and Cost-Benefit Analysis Unit developed a methodology to calculate the taxpayer cost of prisons, including costs outside states’ corrections budgets. Among the 40 states that participated in a survey, the cost of prisons was $39 billion in fiscal year 2010, $5.4 billion more than what their corrections budgets reflected. States’ costs outside their corrections departments ranged from less than 1 percent of total prison costs in Arizona to as much as 34 percent in Connecticut. The full report provides the taxpayer cost of incarcerating a sentenced adult offender to state prison in 40 states, presents the methodology, and concludes with recommendations about steps policy makers can take to safely rein in these costs. Fact sheets provide details about each of the states that participated in Vera’s survey.”

Extrapolating the above for all 50 states would the overall cost 5 years ago at just under $50,000,000,000!  How do you feel about that tax payer invoice?

Exactly why do we have so many inmates?

““Too many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long, and for no truly good law-enforcement reason.” The person who said that was neither a defense lawyer, nor a prisoners’-rights advocate, nor a European looking down his nose across the Atlantic. It was instead America’s top law-enforcement official, Eric Holder, the attorney general. On Monday Mr Holder announced several changes to federal prison policy, the most important of which was that federal prosecutors will no longer charge low-level, non-violent drug offenders with crimes that trigger “draconian” mandatory-minimum sentences. But how did America’s prison population become so unmanageably huge?                                                                                      Probably the biggest driver of this growth has been ever-harsher drug penalties. In response to the crack epidemic of the 1980s, Congress and state legislatures began passing laws that meted out mandatory-minimum sentences for drug-related crimes. These were intended to help nab major traffickers, but the sentences were triggered by the possession of tiny quantities of drugs: five grams of crack, for instance, resulted in a mandatory-minimum sentence of five years. Conspiracy laws made everyone involved in a drug-running operation legally liable for all of the operation’s activities: a child hired for a few dollars a day to act as a lookout at the door of a crack house was on the hook for all the drugs sold in that house and all the crimes associated with their sale. These sorts of laws kept America’s prison population growing even as its crime rate declined.”

” Federal: “Between 2001 and 2013, more than half of prisoners serving sentences of more than a year in federal facilities were convicted of drug offenses. On September 30, 2013 (the end of the most recent fiscal year for which federal offense data were available), 98,200 inmates (51% of the federal prison population) were imprisoned for possession, trafficking, or other drug crimes.”

The rates are even higher for sentences under a year. To make matters worse the rate of recidivism is much higher for drug offenders. It’s the proverbial “revolving door”. We kick these inmates to the curb when they are released with a cheap pre-paid cell phone and $100 and expect them to reenter society as a productive tax payer. Obviously this is not working!

stay tuned next week on more on this