Do you need move evidence that our world is absurd? Check this out from California. It seems that the runaway prison-industrial complex that is today's penal system in the Golden State is violating the US Constitution because it houses scores of thousands of people in indecent, inhumane circumstances. Soon the state may be forced to release up to 57,000 people. Governor Arnold is proposing various ways to make this possible huge release of inmates tolerable.
Quoting from the article below:
"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger already has asked lawmakers to take a number of steps to reduce the inmate population:
_Ending parole for former inmates not convicted of a violent or sex-related crime. That would lead to fewer parolees being sent back to prison because they violated rules.
_Raising the monetary limit for property crimes to be considered felonies. That would send more petty thieves to county jails instead of state prisons.
_Giving inmates more early release credits for completing educational or vocational programs."
Arnold wants to end parole (meaning stop state supervision of parolees--they'd just get out of prison without supervision). Huh? The purpose of parole is to re-integrate people into society under controlled circumstances, not just throw them into society unsupported and see what happens. People violate their parole when they lapse back into crime and get caught. Arnold wants to end supervision and let ex-inmates fend for themselves, so when they do lapse back into crime the state won't have to spend a penny until somebody catches them and prosecutes them (after preying on us for goodness knows how long!). How's that supposed to make things better?
Arnold wants to finagle the definition of felony so he can dump criminals into the county jails and make counties, not the state, pay for their room and board. Yet the counties are just as broke as the state is! How are a bunch of smaller bankrupt governments supposed to bail out a larger bankrupt government?
Arnold wants to give more convicts early release if they'll go to school while incarcerated in the big house. Hello? Let's game the system, OK, and forget anything about the penalty fitting the crime, and justice for victims, and all that other expensive stuff having to do with law and civil society. We can't afford civil society these days, so you'll just have to do without!
Had enough proof of the aburdity?
If Arnold were really serious--and he most certainly has not been serious about being governor from the first day he landed in Sacramento--he would attack the root cause of the inmate population explosion--namely, the state's preposterous drug laws that send men and women by the thousands and thousands and thousands into prisons and jails. America's stupid, vile, indecent drug laws are the reason why this supposedly free society puts more of its citizens into prison than any nation on earth, including totalitarian regimes like Communist China. Why? Because the prison-industrial complex earns a very great deal of money, and these rapacious parasites bribe state legislators to create ever-more draconian laws and penalties, the only consequence of which is to keep increasing the convict population so that the prison-industrial complex gets more and more tax dollars ad infinitum. It's a system of pure evil that must be destroyed. If Arnold were serious, he'd attack this wickedness at its root. Instead, this perennial clown concocts absurd gimmicks that will solve nothing while countless thousands of lives are ruined and the state bleeds money.
California is getting exactly what it deserves.
Read it here
No comments:
Post a Comment