I think the United States of America should be ashamed of it's self for having more people in prison then any other country in the world. Now this is a story that has picked up some speed in the last six months or so. I have known it for a long time just because I heard the statistics on a talk radio show about four or five years ago. Now I would give them credit but to tell you the truth I don't remember who it was that enlightened me on this subject.
If you read my article Oz, I told you about how this all came to be. I'm going to touch on the highlights as fast as I can so we can get to the meat of this article. In Oz I told you about the politicians giving corporations the contracts to build and maintain new prisons and to make the story really short, they got really tuff on drug sentencing to fill those new prisons during the war on drugs. I just went back to Oz to verify that was the article that I talked about the prisons in. I skimmed through it and if I do say so myself its one of my best rants yet.
Now I just want to make one thing clear, it doesn't matter if your for drugs or against drugs because I don't care and this isn't what this article is about. Now if your for drugs (I mean all drugs not just weed) you think they should let everyone out of prison that got prosecuted for any drug offence. Now if you hate drugs you think we should let them all rot in prison but lets be realistic and come to an agreement that the real answer is somewhere in the middle.
I have this friend and he grew up in a small town in Oklahoma, several years ago his best friend that he grew up with got caught with drugs and was arrested, prosecuted, and went to prison. I think he was around 23 at the time. Ok so the town he was at was seeing a rise in drug traffic so they decided to set the example early and they gave him 25 years. That's just plain stupid no matter which side of the coin your on. Now if you have lost a love one too drugs and a lot of us have you might think that it's not enough time but lets face it drugs will always be out there and filling our prisons isn't going to fix the problem. I think we have already proven that.
Lets just say you are sitting home one night and your teenager comes home acting suspicious. You confront them and press them for information but of course the deny, deny, de-lie, so eventually you give up and let them go to their room but this is your third kid and your not a rookie so when they go to school that next day you turn their room inside out and find a pretty good size bag at what looks like crack that you saw on cops one time.
So you go to the local prison and you tell them you need to check out a couple of murders, rapists, and child molesters. So you come home with your brew of bad guys and you wait. finally around 4pm your teen walks through the door and stops cold staring at the crazies in the living room. "Mom what is going on." Without hesitation you say "I found this in your room and you hold out the bag."
"Mom that isn't mine! I was holding it for a friend." they try to explain
"Doesn't matter this is a drug free house and you brought drugs into it so I'm grounding you for 25 years." you say as some men come walking down the stairs covered in dust.
"Mom what's going on?" your child says with tears in their eyes.
"Gentleman would you take care of this." and the dusty men grab these chains of the criminals and take them up stairs and then two others grab your kid and they scream and cry as they get dragged up the stairs. You hear the heavy metal door slam into place and the guys with the dust covered jumpers come back down stairs.
"Here you go mam." One of them says as he drops all the chains from the prisoners on the floor and walks out the door with the others. You set in your chair and start reading a article on how to maintain a home prison and if you listen real close you can here some screaming coming from up stairs.
Ok I just want to be the first to say that I think I crossed the line on that one but I just wanted to know if you wouldn't do this to someone then why is it ok for our bought and paid for government. I have seen murderers get a lot less time then 25 years. Well I think that we need to discuss this more. Write your congressman and just explain to them that your horrified that we have more prisoners then Russia, China, Cuba, Iraq, Germany, Saudi, Africa, and any other country in the world.
If you feel the need to start a petition. I would venture to say almost anyone would sign it when they were made aware of the numbers. Heres a article with some numbers that should shock you. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/americas/23iht-23prison.12253738.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
Well it's Sunday so I'm going to go enjoy the rest of my day not to say that I don't enjoy my time with you but the weather is nice and I need to get outdoors. Leave a comment if you have something to say. I'd love to hear from you.
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