Criminal Justice System Broken

[FayeforCure]

I know for a fact that the JSO arrests people for driving on liscenses suspended for insurance lapse.

We understand that you have a viewpoint as a policeman.

But as a society, we are expecting the police to do more and more, in areas that we are foolish to try and regulate.

The criminal justice system is also a huge money maker. Outsourcing to private companies and various fees all add up to local income.

[FayeforCure]

I believe that the Netherlands is a good example of the perils of decriminalization. 

Really? Many other countries are following this well-tested example.

What perils are you talking about?

[NotNow]

I know for a fact that the JSO arrests people for driving on liscenses suspended for insurance lapse.

We understand that you have a viewpoint as a policeman.

But as a society, we are expecting the police to do more and more, in areas that we are foolish to try and regulate.

The criminal justice system is also a huge money maker. Outsourcing to private companies and various fees all add up to local income.

The criminal justice system, in total, does not generate a positive cash flow.  Not even close.  Fines and fees are really a very small income compared to costs of enforcement and corrections, but outsourcing and other savings programs have a very limited application and therefore small savings, in the big picture.

[NotNow]

From wikipedia-
Recent developments
In 2006, Gerd Leers, mayor of the border city of Maastricht, criticised the current policy as inconsistent, by recording a song with the Dutch punk rock band De Heideroosjes. By allowing possession and retail sales of cannabis, but not cultivation or wholesale, the government creates numerous problems of crime and public safety, he alleges, and therefore he would like to switch to either legalising and regulating production, or to the full repression that his party (CDA) officially advocates. The latter suggestion has widely been interpreted as rhetorical.[3] Leers's comments have garnered support from other local authorities and put the cultivation issue back on the agenda.

By 2009, 27 coffee shops selling cannabis in Rotterdam, all within 200 meters from schools, must close down. This is nearly half of the coffee shops that currently operate within its municipality. This is due to a new policy of city mayor Ivo Opstelten and the town council.[22] The higher levels of the active ingredient in cannabis in Netherlands create a growing opposition against the traditional Dutch view of cannabis as a relatively innocent soft drug,[23]. Supporters of coffee shops state that such claims are often exaggerated and ignore the fact that higher thc content means a user needs to use less of the plant to get desired effects....making it in fact safer.[24] Dutch research has however shown that an increase of THC content also increase the occurrence of impaired psychomotor skills, particularly among younger or inexperienced cannabis smokers, who do not adapt their smoking-style to the higher THC content.[25] Closing of coffeeshops is not unique for Rotterdam. Many other towns have done the same in the last 10 years.

The municipality of Utrecht imposed in 2008 a Zero Tolerance Policy to all events like the big dance party Trance Energy held in Jaarbeurs. However, such zero-tolerance policy at dance parties are now becoming common in the Netherlands and are even stricter in cities like Arnhem.

The two towns Roosendaal and Bergen op Zoom have in October 2008 announced that they start closing all coffee shops, each week visited by up to 25000 French and Belgian drug tourists, closures beginning in February 2009.[26]


Just google up Netherlands drug policy. 

[FayeforCure]

From wikipedia-
Recent developments
In 2006, Gerd Leers, mayor of the border city of Maastricht, criticised the current policy as inconsistent, by recording a song with the Dutch punk rock band De Heideroosjes. By allowing possession and retail sales of cannabis, but not cultivation or wholesale, the government creates numerous problems of crime and public safety, he alleges, and therefore he would like to switch to either legalising and regulating production, or to the full repression that his party (CDA) officially advocates. The latter suggestion has widely been interpreted as rhetorical.[3] Leers's comments have garnered support from other local authorities and put the cultivation issue back on the agenda.

By 2009, 27 coffee shops selling cannabis in Rotterdam, all within 200 meters from schools, must close down. This is nearly half of the coffee shops that currently operate within its municipality. This is due to a new policy of city mayor Ivo Opstelten and the town council.[22] The higher levels of the active ingredient in cannabis in Netherlands create a growing opposition against the traditional Dutch view of cannabis as a relatively innocent soft drug,[23]. Supporters of coffee shops state that such claims are often exaggerated and ignore the fact that higher thc content means a user needs to use less of the plant to get desired effects....making it in fact safer.[24] Dutch research has however shown that an increase of THC content also increase the occurrence of impaired psychomotor skills, particularly among younger or inexperienced cannabis smokers, who do not adapt their smoking-style to the higher THC content.[25] Closing of coffeeshops is not unique for Rotterdam. Many other towns have done the same in the last 10 years.

The municipality of Utrecht imposed in 2008 a Zero Tolerance Policy to all events like the big dance party Trance Energy held in Jaarbeurs. However, such zero-tolerance policy at dance parties are now becoming common in the Netherlands and are even stricter in cities like Arnhem.

The two towns Roosendaal and Bergen op Zoom have in October 2008 announced that they start closing all coffee shops, each week visited by up to 25000 French and Belgian drug tourists, closures beginning in February 2009.[26]


Just google up Netherlands drug policy. 

"therefore he would like to switch to either legalising and regulating production, or to the full repression that his party (CDA) officially advocates."

I used to be a citizen of the Netherlands and know the CDA to be a fringe party of the Christian Democrats, so it does not surprise me to see they want the sale and use of pot banned.

I had heard about them wanting the coffee shops to be further removed from schools. Funny thing is, when you are walking the sidewalks in Amsterdam you don't even have to enter a coffeeshop, since people smoke it openly in the streets of the historic town center. It would be hard to avoid getting frequent whiffs of it.

There were many US military guys there this past New Years Eve, when I visited.

[FayeforCure]

I know for a fact that the JSO arrests people for driving on liscenses suspended for insurance lapse.

We understand that you have a viewpoint as a policeman.

But as a society, we are expecting the police to do more and more, in areas that we are foolish to try and regulate.

The criminal justice system is also a huge money maker. Outsourcing to private companies and various fees all add up to local income.

The criminal justice system, in total, does not generate a positive cash flow.  Not even close.  Fines and fees are really a very small income compared to costs of enforcement and corrections, but outsourcing and other savings programs have a very limited application and therefore small savings, in the big picture.

Oh Really?

Well maybe you weren't aware of this:

The prison industry in the United States: big business or a new form of slavery?


by Vicky Pelaez

. 
Global Research, March 10, 2008
El Diario-La Prensa, New York 


Human rights organizations, as well as political and social ones, are condemning what they are calling a new form of inhumane exploitation in the United States, where they say a prison population of up to 2 million - mostly Black and Hispanic - are working for various industries for a pittance. For the tycoons who have invested in the prison industry, it has been like finding a pot of gold. They don't have to worry about strikes or paying unemployment insurance, vacations or comp time. All of their workers are full-time, and never arrive late or are absent because of family problems; moreover, if they don't like the pay of 25 cents an hour and refuse to work, they are locked up in isolation cells.

There are approximately 2 million inmates in state, federal and private prisons throughout the country. According to California Prison Focus, "no other society in human history has imprisoned so many of its own citizens." The figures show that the United States has locked up more people than any other country: a half million more than China, which has a population five times greater than the U.S. Statistics reveal that the United States holds 25% of the world's prison population, but only 5% of the world's people. From less than 300,000 inmates in 1972, the jail population grew to 2 million by the year 2000. In 1990 it was one million. Ten years ago there were only five private prisons in the country, with a population of 2,000 inmates; now, there are 100, with 62,000 inmates. It is expected that by the coming decade, the number will hit 360,000, according to reports.

What has happened over the last 10 years? Why are there so many prisoners?

"The private contracting of prisoners for work fosters incentives to lock people up. Prisons depend on this income. Corporate stockholders who make money off prisoners' work lobby for longer sentences, in order to expand their workforce. The system feeds itself," says a study by the Progressive Labor Party, which accuses the prison industry of being "an imitation of Nazi Germany with respect to forced slave labor and concentration camps."

The prison industry complex is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States and its investors are on Wall Street. "This multimillion-dollar industry has its own trade exhibitions, conventions, websites, and mail-order/Internet catalogs. It also has direct advertising campaigns, architecture companies, construction companies, investment houses on Wall Street, plumbing supply companies, food supply companies, armed security, and padded cells in a large variety of colors."

According to the Left Business Observer, the federal prison industry produces 100% of all military helmets, ammunition belts, bullet-proof vests, ID tags, shirts, pants, tents, bags, and canteens. Along with war supplies, prison workers supply 98% of the entire market for equipment assembly services; 93% of paints and paintbrushes; 92% of stove assembly; 46% of body armor; 36% of home appliances; 30% of headphones/microphones/speakers; and 21% of office furniture. Airplane parts, medical supplies, and much more: prisoners are even raising seeing-eye dogs for blind people.

CRIME GOES DOWN, JAIL POPULATION GOES UP

According to reports by human rights organizations, these are the factors that increase the profit potential for those who invest in the prison industry complex:

. Jailing persons convicted of non-violent crimes, and long prison sentences for possession of microscopic quantities of illegal drugs. Federal law stipulates five years' imprisonment without possibility of parole for possession of 5 grams of crack or 3.5 ounces of heroin, and 10 years for possession of less than 2 ounces of rock-cocaine or crack. A sentence of 5 years for cocaine powder requires possession of 500 grams - 100 times more than the quantity of rock cocaine for the same sentence. Most of those who use cocaine powder are white, middle-class or rich people, while mostly Blacks and Latinos use rock cocaine. In Texas, a person may be sentenced for up to two years' imprisonment for possessing 4 ounces of marijuana. Here in New York, the 1973 Nelson Rockefeller anti-drug law provides for a mandatory prison sentence of 15 years to life for possession of 4 ounces of any illegal drug.

. The passage in 13 states of the "three strikes" laws (life in prison after being convicted of three felonies), made it necessary to build 20 new federal prisons. One of the most disturbing cases resulting from this measure was that of a prisoner who for stealing a car and two bicycles received three 25-year sentences.

. Longer sentences.

. The passage of laws that require minimum sentencing, without regard for circumstances.

. A large expansion of work by prisoners creating profits that motivate the incarceration of more people for longer periods of time.

. More punishment of prisoners, so as to lengthen their sentences.

HISTORY OF PRISON LABOR IN THE UNITED STATES

Prison labor has its roots in slavery. After the 1861-1865 Civil War, a system of "hiring out prisoners" was introduced in order to continue the slavery tradition. Freed slaves were charged with not carrying out their sharecropping commitments (cultivating someone else's land in exchange for part of the harvest) or petty thievery - which were almost never proven - and were then "hired out" for cotton picking, working in mines and building railroads. From 1870 until 1910 in the state of Georgia, 88% of hired-out convicts were Black. In Alabama, 93% of "hired-out" miners were Black. In Mississippi, a huge prison farm similar to the old slave plantations replaced the system of hiring out convicts. The notorious Parchman plantation existed until 1972.

During the post-Civil War period, Jim Crow racial segregation laws were imposed on every state, with legal segregation in schools, housing, marriages and many other aspects of daily life. "Today, a new set of markedly racist laws is imposing slave labor and sweatshops on the criminal justice system, now known as the prison industry complex," comments the Left Business Observer.

Who is investing? At least 37 states have legalized the contracting of prison labor by private corporations that mount their operations inside state prisons. The list of such companies contains the cream of U.S. corporate society: IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T, Wireless, Texas Instrument, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel, Northern Telecom, TWA, Nordstrom's, Revlon, Macy's, Pierre Cardin, Target Stores, and many more. All of these businesses are excited about the economic boom generation by prison labor. Just between 1980 and 1994, profits went up from $392 million to $1.31 billion. Inmates in state penitentiaries generally receive the minimum wage for their work, but not all; in Colorado, they get about $2 per hour, well under the minimum. And in privately-run prisons, they receive as little as 17 cents per hour for a maximum of six hours a day, the equivalent of $20 per month. The highest-paying private prison is CCA in Tennessee, where prisoners receive 50 cents per hour for what they call "highly skilled positions." At those rates, it is no surprise that inmates find the pay in federal prisons to be very generous. There, they can earn $1.25 an hour and work eight hours a day, and sometimes overtime. They can send home $200-$300 per month.

Thanks to prison labor, the United States is once again an attractive location for investment in work that was designed for Third World labor markets. A company that operated a maquiladora (assembly plant in Mexico near the border) closed down its operations there and relocated to San Quentin State Prison in California. In Texas, a factory fired its 150 workers and contracted the services of prisoner-workers from the private Lockhart Texas prison, where circuit boards are assembled for companies like IBM and Compaq.

[Former] Oregon State Representative Kevin Mannix recently urged Nike to cut its production in Indonesia and bring it to his state, telling the shoe manufacturer that "there won't be any transportation costs; we're offering you competitive prison labor (here)."

PRIVATE PRISONS

The prison privatization boom began in the 1980s, under the governments of Ronald Reagan and Bush Sr., but reached its height in 1990 under William Clinton, when Wall Street stocks were selling like hotcakes. Clinton's program for cutting the federal workforce resulted in the Justice Departments contracting of private prison corporations for the incarceration of undocumented workers and high-security inmates.

Private prisons are the biggest business in the prison industry complex. About 18 corporations guard 10,000 prisoners in 27 states. The two largest are Correctional Corporation of America (CCA) and Wackenhut, which together control 75%. Private prisons receive a guaranteed amount of money for each prisoner, independent of what it costs to maintain each one. According to Russell Boraas, a private prison administrator in Virginia, "the secret to low operating costs is having a minimal number of guards for the maximum number of prisoners." The CCA has an ultra-modern prison in Lawrenceville, Virginia, where five guards on dayshift and two at night watch over 750 prisoners. In these prisons, inmates may get their sentences reduced for "good behavior," but for any infraction, they get 30 days added - which means more profits for CCA. According to a study of New Mexico prisons, it was found that CCA inmates lost "good behavior time" at a rate eight times higher than those in state prisons.

IMPORTING AND EXPORTING INMATES

Profits are so good that now there is a new business: importing inmates with long sentences, meaning the worst criminals. When a federal judge ruled that overcrowding in Texas prisons was cruel and unusual punishment, the CCA signed contracts with sheriffs in poor counties to build and run new jails and share the profits. According to a December 1998 Atlantic Monthly magazine article, this program was backed by investors from Merrill-Lynch, Shearson-Lehman, American Express and Allstate, and the operation was scattered all over rural Texas. That state's governor, Ann Richards, followed the example of Mario Cuomo in New York and built so many state prisons that the market became flooded, cutting into private prison profits.

After a law signed by Clinton in 1996 - ending court supervision and decisions - caused overcrowding and violent, unsafe conditions in federal prisons, private prison corporations in Texas began to contact other states whose prisons were overcrowded, offering "rent-a-cell" services in the CCA prisons located in small towns in Texas. The commission for a rent-a-cell salesman is $2.50 to $5.50 per day per bed. The county gets $1.50 for each prisoner.

STATISTICS

Ninety-seven percent of 125,000 federal inmates have been convicted of non-violent crimes. It is believed that more than half of the 623,000 inmates in municipal or county jails are innocent of the crimes they are accused of. Of these, the majority are awaiting trial. Two-thirds of the one million state prisoners have committed non-violent offenses. Sixteen percent of the country's 2 million prisoners suffer from mental illness.


Global Research Articles by Vicky Pelaez

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8289

[Joe]

^ I hope you don't buy into that "Workers Daily" type nonsense Faye. That article isn't even remotely credible. Half of the statements come off as outright deranged. It's like listening to a Ralph Nader or Howard Zinn diatribe where they can't go more than 10 words without disdainfully sneering the words "corporation" or "profit" as if that's all the argument they need to make.

Anyway, as NotNow already said ... the criminal justice system is one of the biggest EXPENSES by local governments. You can look up any budget from any county or municipality in the country if you'd like proof.

[NotNow]

From wikipedia-
Recent developments
In 2006, Gerd Leers, mayor of the border city of Maastricht, criticised the current policy as inconsistent, by recording a song with the Dutch punk rock band De Heideroosjes. By allowing possession and retail sales of cannabis, but not cultivation or wholesale, the government creates numerous problems of crime and public safety, he alleges, and therefore he would like to switch to either legalising and regulating production, or to the full repression that his party (CDA) officially advocates. The latter suggestion has widely been interpreted as rhetorical.[3] Leers's comments have garnered support from other local authorities and put the cultivation issue back on the agenda.

By 2009, 27 coffee shops selling cannabis in Rotterdam, all within 200 meters from schools, must close down. This is nearly half of the coffee shops that currently operate within its municipality. This is due to a new policy of city mayor Ivo Opstelten and the town council.[22] The higher levels of the active ingredient in cannabis in Netherlands create a growing opposition against the traditional Dutch view of cannabis as a relatively innocent soft drug,[23]. Supporters of coffee shops state that such claims are often exaggerated and ignore the fact that higher thc content means a user needs to use less of the plant to get desired effects....making it in fact safer.[24] Dutch research has however shown that an increase of THC content also increase the occurrence of impaired psychomotor skills, particularly among younger or inexperienced cannabis smokers, who do not adapt their smoking-style to the higher THC content.[25] Closing of coffeeshops is not unique for Rotterdam. Many other towns have done the same in the last 10 years.

The municipality of Utrecht imposed in 2008 a Zero Tolerance Policy to all events like the big dance party Trance Energy held in Jaarbeurs. However, such zero-tolerance policy at dance parties are now becoming common in the Netherlands and are even stricter in cities like Arnhem.

The two towns Roosendaal and Bergen op Zoom have in October 2008 announced that they start closing all coffee shops, each week visited by up to 25000 French and Belgian drug tourists, closures beginning in February 2009.[26]


Just google up Netherlands drug policy. 

"therefore he would like to switch to either legalising and regulating production, or to the full repression that his party (CDA) officially advocates."

I used to be a citizen of the Netherlands and know the CDA to be a fringe party of the Christian Democrats, so it does not surprise me to see they want the sale and use of pot banned.

I had heard about them wanting the coffee shops to be further removed from schools. Funny thing is, when you are walking the sidewalks in Amsterdam you don't even have to enter a coffeeshop, since people smoke it openly in the streets of the historic town center. It would be hard to avoid getting frequent whiffs of it.

There were many US military guys there this past New Years Eve, when I visited.

Every source that I have found states that the Netherlands is retreating from its policy of decriminalization.  Are you saying that is not true?  Do you have any evidence to back up your opinion other than personal observation?  Are there fewer coffee shops now than ten years ago?  Why and when did you leave the Netherlands when it seems to have had what you care deeply about?

[NotNow]

The article that you cited is so full of inaccuracies and untruths that I don't have time to list them out.  This appears to be an opinion piece and doesn't state where they are getting their "facts".  Statements like:

"It is believed that more than half of the 623,000 inmates in municipal or county jails are innocent of the crimes they are accused of. Of these, the majority are awaiting trial. Two-thirds of the one million state prisoners have committed non-violent offenses. Sixteen percent of the country's 2 million prisoners suffer from mental illness."

are just a joke.  WHO believes that half of those prisoners are innocent?  And of course two thirds of STATE prisoners have committed non violent offenses, that is where the burglars, forgers, and fraud convicted felons go.  As for mental illness, see this excerpt from the National Institute of Mental Health:

Statistics
Mental disorders are common in the United States and internationally. An estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older â€" about one in four adults â€" suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year. When applied to the 2004 U.S. Census residential population estimate for ages 18 and older, this figure translates to 57.7 million people. Even though mental disorders are widespread in the population, the main burden of illness is concentrated in a much smaller proportion â€" about 6 percent, or 1 in 17 â€" who suffer from a serious mental illness. In addition, mental disorders are the leading cause of disability in the U.S. and Canada for ages 15-44. Many people suffer from more than one mental disorder at a given time. Nearly half (45 percent) of those with any mental disorder meet criteria for 2 or more disorders, with severity strongly related to comorbidity.

Why should the prison population be different from the rest of us?  And drive to the airport and ask Safariland if all of the helmets and body armor for the military are made in prisons.  You will have to move around a lot of workers making body armor for the military to get through the building.  And of course, private prisons are not something that I am familiar with, but they only account for about 100,000 of this nations 2.3 million incarcerated persons. 

And Faye, there is a LOT more to the criminal justice system than the small numbers of private facilities currently operating.  The costs of Officers and equipment, their administration, courtrooms and judges easily overwhelms any profit from these private prisons or anything else.

[FayeforCure]

And with one out of every thirty american in jail, giving us the highest incarceration rate in the free world, surpassing even the chinese communists, everything must be working out swell.

Yup, why question the status quo? Could it be that improvements might be warranted?

But it is like the 12 step program. First you have to acknowledge the problem, before you can begin to make improvements. The best way to keep from having to make the effort to improve, is to deny the problem outright.

[BridgeTroll]

I agree Faye... ANY discussion of this topic should begin and end with the people who knew the rules and broke the law anyway.  They decided the law was stupid or they would never get caught or fill in the blank...  Once we acknowledge that these folks are lawbreakers and scofflaws then we can move forward.

Excusing the behavior is a non starter.

[Dog Walker]

"Since then weve come so far from the general laid back country of personal liberty and freedom as to make you wonder what we were defending in WW2."

Stephen!  Where in the world did you get the idea that this country, pre-WWII was a country of "personal liberty and freedom".  Break out your history books!  Legal and social controls were MUCH more rigid than now.  Corruption in the courts and law enforcement agencies was FAR more common than now.  Abuse of anyone who was slightly different from the norm was far more common throughout society.

Basic assumptions of what grownups could do were far more restrictive than now, even for white males.  As a beginning teacher in the 60's I even had to go way out of my neighborhood to have a beer for fear of being seen by a parent and loosing my job.  I've lived through the changes that started in the 60's and would never choose to go back to that earlier society.

[samiam]

From my point of view what seem to be the biggest change is the mind set of the population. Most people cared what others thought of them, they wanted to comform to what was socially acceptable in public. IMHO that is not the case now.