OK, very few people on this forum who have ever been stupid enough to do things that would result in being incarcerated.
I have been several times. From the time I was 15 years old I was involved in illegal gambling and all the nasty stuff that goes with it. This was before the explosion of legalized gambling in almost every state in America.
First, it is very easy to get tough on crime when you use rapists and child molestors and murderers as your default inmate. But if you executed everyone of them, you would do very little to cut the ecomomic burden on society. Despite what you see on Law and Order, there just arent that many violent criminals. These crimes are abberations.
The vast majority of people going through the system are drug related. It is ridiculous. In my home state of Illinois, when a non violent offender is sentenced to prison he immediatelly has his sentence cut in half. The next week he is given an automatic 6 months off for good behavior. The basice rational is that it is easier to hold this good time being taken away if the inmate is given it right away.
So lets think about it. If a minor drug felon is given one year, he receives half credit, leaving him 6 months to do in prison. He then receives 6 months good time leaving him a grand total of 0 days to serve!!!!!!! But wait, he cant go home just yet. The prison he is assigned to, which receives, I believe 31 K per year per inmate, holds him for 61 days, which is exactly how long it takes the 31K to arrive from the state government.
What a waste. His cocaine habit has just cost the Government (you) 31 k, plus court costs, police manpower, et cetera. Then he gets some paper, and has to report to a PO that makes around 60K a year.
Oh I forgot, his habit supports 100's of low level runners that make a living selling 20 dollar bags of dope on the street all day. Who then kick up to midlevel gangbangers who make 100's of thousands of dollars a year. That guy protects turf, makes sure people stay in line and murders when needed. Then the money flows to the big importers and even bigger producers, some of who control and corrupt South American governments and some of whom support and fund terrorists. Oh, and some of the Heroin producers are enlisted by the United States government to fight and hold out against the Taliban in the Golden triangle. When the press talks about Afhgan warlords what do you think these guys do for a living?
It gets bigger, the lawyers, from the two bit charlie who walks you through an arraignment for 200 bucks, to the big firm lawyers in London, New York, Hong Kong, and the Channel Islands who set up S.A.'s and Bearer Share corporations that invest in Hedge Funds domiciled in Curacao and the BVI, and ultimately purchase more political power.
The Force of the Drug economy penetrates every strata of society. It all starts and exists only because of the guy who has to have that 20 dollar bag. The government will never legalize drugs because they know it would work to curb crime. They are not dumb, they just like the status qou. It pays for a lot of college educations, country club dues, coops, and everything else.
The sad thing is that noone cares and the people with the power to do something about it don't want it changed.
