America the Incarcerated

The United States imprisons more people than any other country on earth, we spend close to $70 Billion a year housing, feeding and providing medical care for these prisoners, and employ a huge workforce to manage and maintain the facilities where these men and women are kept. By 2020 these costs will exceed $150 billion a year due to increases in costs associated with our prisons.

From 1990 to 2010 the prison population has exploded by over a million people due to drugs and drug related possession sentences. 50% of all inmates are their for non-violent crimes or victimless crimes, and due to State and Federal laws we foot this massive bill.

To put this in perspective in 2009 the U.S authorized $151 Billion in tarp funds to restore the U.S. economy and we spend half that amount every year on our prisons. The prisons themselves are overcrowded to the point to where sentencing becomes moot in many cases and they are released early just to make space for more criminals.

We have failed in every measurable way as a society to deal effectively with this problem and have added to it by passing legislation that is routinely abused by prosecutors to further personnel ambition and demonstrate some perceived tough on crime stance. They do this by prosecuting people under statues never meant to be used that way. A perfect example of this is a Penn. man charged with felony wiretapping for having a video cam on his helmet and recording a plainclothes cop with a drawn gun approach him on a road.

Lets do the numbers, 2020 $150 Billion, 2030 $325 Billion, 2040 $450 Billion, 2050 $1 Trillion. Yes by 2050 we the taxpayers will spend $1 Trillion a year on our prisons systems which is more that our current defense spending for the country.

We as a society must make decisions on how we want this issue managed, like alternative punishment for non-violent and victimless crimes, such as house arrest, community service terms that actually generate revenue. Work release programs in which pay is deducted to cover the cost for housing and food.

There are many ways to change the system which is clearly broken, why haven't we?