Halfway between Sacramento and San Francisco is Solano Correctional Facility, nestled against a series of rolling hills, on the outskirts of the small city of Vacaville. From the prison’s guard towers, the view is fairly beautiful: a Mediterranean-type vista of sun-browned grass and squat trees covering green hills, underneath the endlessly deep California sky. But from the windows of the dorms… return to article
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Reader Comments (8)Page 1 of 1 pages“The War on Drugs explains much of the explosion, sending huge numbers of men and women, a disproportionate number of them poor blacks and Latinos, into state and federal prisons. The sentences handed out to drug offenders often exceed those served by rapists and other violent offenders.”
Yes, and it’s going to get worse, as those convicts who don’t stay behind bars find entrance back into the straight economy hugely difficult, if it’s even possible. Back to selling drugs, then probably back inside. For those who don’t die from turf/profits wars in the meantime, that is.
Clear evidence of dehumanization. Their lives are clearly not regarded as being worth a damn.
Bring the contraband inside the law, all of it, grass, meth, H, all of it. Regulate it and tax it like the two deadliest drugs, tobacco and alcohol, then if someone chooses to run the risk, at least the shit will be chemically clean and black markets won’t be fed.
“Meanwhile, deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, under the banner of “reform,” has left hundreds of thousands of people without adequate access to medications, counseling and effective support networks. Many of them have subsequently spiraled into the criminal justice system. In California, about one in five inmates is seriously mentally ill.”
Unconscionable. We’ll pay enormous costs both financially and socially to prevent people from getting high, but won’t pay to assist those who really can’t get along without professional psych supports.
Atomized, disconnected, uncompassionate, deluded. There’s a price to pay for the sin of stupidity, and the bill on this one is getting higher and higher.
Posted by Kuya on Oct 23, 2007 at 8:13 AM Kuya,
Your writing is exactly the same as that of General Sir David Ramsbotham. He was one of the recent “Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Prisons” in the UK .H e was a soldier of the Queen, for forty years, and now he is pissing in the wind over prison reform. One very angry ex -soldier.
Posted by frog on Oct 24, 2007 at 10:52 PM “both reforms popular with the newly powerful “victims rights” movement in the ’90s. “
Why did you put victims rights in quotation? Are you implying that the victim of a crime should have no say as to the sentencing of a criminal.
And what is wrong in making a criminal server his full sentence. Or do you want to go back to what it used to be years ago where a cold blooded killer does less then 10 years or a violent rapist does less than five years.
One last point, what do you mean by not-violent offenders. Would the two career burglars who broke into the home in Conn. raped and strangled the mother, and set fire to the home killing the two daughters by smoke inhalation.
The first priority of the criminal justice system should be punishment, period. If a person commits three felonies they should spend a long time in prison even if they are all ‘non-violent.’ And for some crimes, there should be no parole, they should spend the full time in prison. And if that means that if they die in prison, so be it.
RLD
Posted by nyjets on Oct 25, 2007 at 11:30 PM Sorry, third paragraph should end with the following:
....count as non-violent offenders.
Posted by nyjets on Oct 25, 2007 at 11:31 PM Thanks for that reference, frog, I was not familiar with Ramsbotham, although it doesn’t surprise me that a prison inspector would reach such conclusions. It’s merely right before our eyes that the current paradigm feeding incarceration patterns is not working at all. As I’ve said in other threads, I believe we are creating a permanent criminal underclass, which will (perhaps not coincidentally) also correlate with non-Caucasian “racial” backgrounds.
It’s worth asking, in whose interest is this? Who benefits? The cons, their neighbors and families back home, the general citizenry, and the taxpayers certainly don’t.
A basic shift in thinking is called for. I can’t say I’m confident it will occur any time soon, but it needs to happen if the current socially divisive and culturally destructive trends are to have a hope of changing directions.
The first step is, in my opinion, to consider punishment as being appropriate primarily for those who hurt others directly, i.e. for indisputably violent behavior. Fraud and other forms of non-violent harm can come next. A vital part of this, to conclude, is to admit once and for all that people will exert their right to alter their consciousnesses, whether by healthy or unhealthy means, and that to punish this behavior is a waste of time, treasure, dignity, personal responsibility, and ultimately, lives.
Posted by Kuya on Oct 28, 2007 at 9:07 AM I will add sale of those mind-altering substances to kids who have not reached the age of consent as being acceptably punishable. I wouldn’t put a teenaged stoner or boozer in the slam, it would be smarter to educate and if necessary give treatment to him. The guy who sold to him, I would punish.
Posted by Kuya on Oct 28, 2007 at 9:13 AM nyjets—victims of crime, and/or their relatives, have a wide variety of responses as to what should be done with the perps. Taking your argument to the extreme, we could do away with the courts’ sentencing powers altogether .
Then a pure question of luck as to what sort of family sentences you ?
I did look it up, but am not 100l;ear on how bad an offence has to be to count as a “felony” in the US . Maybe it varies from one state to another, too ?One thing I do know is that white-collar criminals who steal millions, or even hundreds of millions of dollars , in US or France or UK or Germany, rarely serve very long at all in prison. IF ANYTHING AT ALL .
They have “protection” , the very best of lawyers .
In my previous post I highlighted General Lord Ramsbotham. I forget right now how many of the UK Prison population he estimated as being uselessly in prison.
It was at least 25%. People who represented no threat to Society , but were still “inside”.
Kuya, you, and I, would agree that there are some people who should be in prison. They should do less harm inside than outside, but that is even then not necessarily the case ..?
(( I know of one young frenchman, convicted of dealing marijuana, sentenced to 14 months, who encountered hardened criminals and harder drugs previously unknown to him, within his prison . A case common to the US and UK too ?. ))
A pure example of “our system” not working . What we have to do is to work out how many people are in prison who are not actually dangerous.
Some criminals are there who may well be just as dangerous when they eventually get out, even after a full term. . Others are there for simple “punishment”, and may or may not ever have been dangerous. The white-collar criminal may have learned his lesson , or not, too.
The complete range of possibilities is enormous .
As usual, the simple answers are for the simple-minded .
Posted by frog on Oct 28, 2007 at 6:01 PM Illegal drug trafficking is indeed the major cause due to which we find our federal prisons crowded today. Drug treatment programs can only help in the overall development of an addict but the problem of illegal trade can only be solved through proper understanding on the ill effects of drugs.
Posted by mariathomas on Jan 6, 2010 at 6:07 AM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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