Jail
To lock up a person and then to release them in a condition
in which they are unlikely to succeed is only asking for trouble. There should
be no release without correction and no imprisonment without absolute cause.
Imprisonment/custody places an extraordinary burden on the prisoner, their
family, work and society in general. Imprisonment/custody should only be
resorted to in extreme circumstances as a last resort.
Stringent checks and balances need to be setup to prevent
people from being arrested and imprisoned. All measures must first be taken to
prove beyond any reasonable doubt that a person is guilty before they are
arrested. Al measures must be taken to properly classify a prisoner and avoid
negative impacts on society before the prisoner is imprisoned. Prisons / jails
are a last resort.
Simply locking up someone to ‘serve time’ benefits no one.
It does not right the wrong. It creates a burden on the innocent in society,
employers and family and tends to de-motivates the criminal.
It is impossible, impractical and wrong for a government to
provide 100% policing of a society. Those who have lived under Police States
are the first to attest to the heinous nature of over policing. The most
effective means of getting people to obey the law is to have reasonable law that
is ‘written on the hearts and minds’ of the people. Any law that is not fair is
impractical. Enforcement of laws by will and not by violence is a thousand
times more effective than the brut force or threat of armed police.
For almost all criminal acts, the people are generally
present close to 100% of the time as witnesses in one way or another. On the
other hand, the police are rarely present when criminal acts are committed.
Consequentially, the people and not the police are in the right position to
police crime.
The Founding Fathers of the U.S. attempted to structure a
People’s Police force where from within the local community a Sheriff and
District Attorney would be elected by the people from within their community.
The Sheriff, who was generally part time, would dynamically assign deputies from
the community on an as-needed basis in accordance with a specific crime.
Generally within self policed communities, crimes are taken care of by the
community before they crime gets out of control. The people of the community
and not the police were expected to keep vigilance on their community. As such
the People Police system the Founding Fathers implemented was much less likely
to create an imbalanced system such as the one we now have in the U.S. at the
turn of the century, a quarter of a century after founding.
The police and prison system in the U.S. at the turn of the
century is according to basic statistics utterly out of control. The U.S. has
more people in jail per capita than almost any other nation, including nations
the U.S. considers it has the ‘right to invade’ because of human rights
violations. One has to pause and consider the magnitude of the human rights
violations going on in the U.S. where the innocent are thrown in jail and even
executed, children are kidnapped by the state and the assets of the aged are
stolen by greedy government. Recently over one hundred prisoners were released
from death row after DNA tests proved that they were innocent. The U.S.
Judicial system is proven incompetent. Judges have usurped Jury functions and
judge the admissibility of evidence while jury pools are carefully honed from
subservient voter registration lists. Judges across the U.S. can now repeatedly
be heard instructing juries that the jury does not have the right to judge the
law despite the constitutions blatantly obvious dictation that the jury judge
both the facts and the law.
No one argues the fact that the dollar drives issues in the
U.S. The phrase “you have as much liberty and justice in the U.S. as you can
afford”, is unfortunately the accepted statuesque – “and that’s the way the
cookie crumbles”.
“Turn prisons into profit centers and the prisons will be
filled and new ones will be built.” – SOC
“When a government entity has the ability to reward itself,
that government entity will grow out of control.” -
SOC
Jails in the U.S. are very profitable businesses. Many
prominent political families own private jails across the U.S. Typically,
anywhere from ten to five hundred prisoners will be housed in a jail’s pod. For
example, the Santa Cruz County Jail typically holds around 50 prisoners in a pod
designed to hold 28 prisoners. 26 prisoners are housed in 8ft by 8ft two person
cells, 7 cells on a lower level and 7 on a 2nd story. An additional
24 prisoners are housed in 800 square ft of common area; one of the lower story
cells is used as a shared toilet. The entire pod shares two showers. Bunks are
made out of poured concrete or steel shelves, toiled and basins are one piece
steel units. 7 tables and plastic chares are the only other furniture
provided. Constructions standards and quality are of the cheapest one can
provide in poured concrete. One guard is assigned to watch a wing of four or so
pods – 200 prisoners. The County earns anywhere form $70 to $350 per day per
prisoner from State and Federal funds. Counties charge neighboring Counties
$1,500 per day for housing prisoners that are arrested in their County and
awaiting transfer to the neighboring County. A single wing of the Santa Cruz
County Jail generates anywhere from five to twenty five million dollars per year
in ‘revenue’. No wonder jails in the U.S. are kept full!
While jails in the U.S. are enormously profitable for their
owners, the cost on society is devastating.
By falsely imprisoning the author, InfoTelesys, the company
the author founded and one of the world’s most promising next generation
Internet companies has been wiped out along with it the exciting next generation
education system InfoTelesys was building.
The focus on crime should be the restitution of the victim
and ensuring that the criminal never commits the crime again.
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