California prisons are so fucking overcrowded...

if you cant do the time , dont do the crime

smaller cells


yes the solution is SMALLER cells. and NO NEW prisons.


no one will EVER wana goto prison then or ever go back.

Sharing a bunk?

smaller cells? they are already pretty damn small lol...i guess that would help though, sucks for the inmates...

Make it easier to get a Rap album deal.

The main reason California has such problems is the effectiveness of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. CCPOA is one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the state and in the past 20 years have forced the prison budget up from under $1billion per year to around $6billion.

They are active in many ways, pressing their own demands for more prisons and supporting get-tough-on-crime groups. They have contributed millions to getting sympathetic candidates in state office. Most controversially they have frequently been accused of abusing the parole system.

Parole officers belong to CCPOA. They can return a parolee to prison on their word and although there is an appeal process, fewer than 1% of prisoners are successful on appeal. Within 2 years of release, almost half of California's parolees are back in prison. They account for half the prison population. Offenders may spend up to 4 years in prison on top of a 1 year sentence, for so-called parole violations.

In addition, California has way too many non-violent offenders in prison, mainly because the state has spent the past 10 years trying to figure out who can be classified as violent and therefore locked up long-term without access to any appeal or review process.

Yea, I think they should take it easy on non-violent drug offenders and white collar crimes...

I saw a picture recently of prisoners sleeping in a gymnasium, in three tier bunkbeds, spaced probably less than five feet apart.

There are over 2 million people currently incarcerated in the U.S.

Only Rwanda has a larger percentage of their population locked up (mostly as a result of civil unrest). Among developed countries the U.S. has 725 people in jail per 100,000 people, while other countries have the following numbers per 100k of population - UK (124). Canada (102), Germany (98), Italy (92), France (80), etc.

The criminal justice system is really messed up in this country. It will continue to be so as long as the party with the majority in power keeps pushing for harsher sentencing and more prisons, instead of developing sensible solutions to the root causes of crime.

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Agreed!!

Quit sending people to jail for stupid trivia. There are more people serving time, pro rata, in the US than any other western nation.

because they lock up people for stupid shit like possesion of 1lb of weed and other shit like that. C'mon, when was the last time you saw a stoner rob a bank?

Here I was, minding my own biz and a couple of "people" from a law agency arrive to deliver some weed to one of their team who had the job of "trading" this out as a teaser to access bigger fish.

I ain't got one clue about drugs, but was chucked a bag of this shit and told how to extract branches and crap and leave the good stuff so it will get a better price blah.

Anyways.. start asking about imprisonment terms - what happens if the local law burst in right now? "Oh... we both go to jail and prob get up to eight years - just accept it and say nothing - everything will be fine" Nice! So, ya expect me to do your crap weed cleaning for the privilege of 8 years? "Na.. you may get 8 years, but you'll be moved and let out from another jail in three months - we need to keep up appearances" Fuck this

Seriously man .. truth is even law enforcement know damned well weed is no biggie - they are after far bigger fish. It's a joke people end up in jail for literally years over some weed.

Amen...nicely put!

Release those non-violent drug offenders that are glutting the prison population (they take up something like 60% of prisons!), problem solved.

Stay out of it...

behave yourself!

Very interesting post !

When was the last time you saw a stoner do anything other than munch out on food infront of a TV watching a comedy movie

execute them mothafuckers

The prison system is big business. They don't keep them full, they lose funding.
Someone was selling assrape.net here the other day, seems a fitting choice, not only do prisoners get raped by other prisoners AND the 'system'. But the taxpayers are also getting raped.

There is a simple solution to this - Send more people to prision.

We had a discussion about this at work the other day. The truth is in the US there is very little punishment. If I get caught breaking the speed limit I'm out a few hundred bucks - big deal. Now, if you told me that if I got caught breaking the speed limit that I would be beat with a cane in public, I'd think twice about it.

In simple terms I'm not overly concerned what happens in our prisons. This is supposed to be a punishment, not a fucking vacation.

Ratio of prison cell per prisoner here is 1:35 for a 30 sqm floor area of a regular prison cell inside a police station. It's beyond anyone's understanding how it becomes 1:250. You can imagine anything here.

Sounds about right I always thought some big company would likely be making a fortune from prisons being full. It never made any sense to me, why it cost so much money (per prisoner) for their upkeep. Makes much more sense once you really understand how the system works and how your tax is spend.

I suppose NOT breaking the law would be too much to ask, huh....?




.

Leagalize weed and take away min. mandatory sentencing on small crimes.

build tent citys in the desert like in Arizon for the real criminals and make the small criminals clean graphitti and paint parks etc... actually make them work off their sentence espcially the non violent ones. that leaves the cages for the real violent ones and the child molestors etc.....

common sence is it to much to ask of our government ?

prisons are big business...real big...

stay out of trouble

Its the same with everything that makes big money in this world bro, commence sense will never be applied because it makes less money if you involve common sense for a lot of issues like these.

I 110% agree with your points, that would be a great idea but it'll never happen because a few people are making way too much money from the current system

If you legalize weed then it becomes a free market and the top people who fund it and make the most from it can no longer do so. Prices would also drop dramatically because there would be much more competition and supply of the product.

Couldn't let that happen, then the major players in the drug trade who make billions would lose their grip on the industry

Got a rough figure ?

Legalize weed is good, but taking in consideration that in Holland prisons are also overcrowded, this is not the way.
And Keeping criminals in one place - like building big city-prisons is dangerouse.

Maybe it makes me a bad person, but I just honestly don't care. I don't give a shit if it's crowded, if it's hot, if the food is bad, if they're miserable. Shouldn't prison be horrible? Isn't that the whole point?

who cares...

If you think that is bad, go look and Bankwang Prision in Bangkok aka the Bangkok Hilton.

Here is one guy that's in there that i found
http://www.steveatbangkwang.bravehost.com/

Too many issues and problems on the world much more important than criminals doing time...

Let the killers outside!!

A good dose of national service....

I get your point, but I think you meant like a gram of weed or something... a pound of weed will fill a suitcase.

I wouldnt know.

Never been in one.

CA have the death penality? If so shorten the appeal process and warm up ole sparky.

You break the law, you die. And you family gets a billfor the bullet.

Just good ole China.

This is an interesting thread. There are a lot of problems with our prison system and I think some things could be done to help curb the amount of repeat offenders.

First there is the question of legalizing weed. This will only keep a very small number of people out of jail. In almost every case if you get caught with weed you get a ticket. the only time you ever get anything more than a fine and maybe probation is if you have a lot of of it on you and they think you are a dealer. There was a guy near me recently that had a bunch of it growing in a greenhouse. They took it all, wrote him a ticket and that was it. So legalizing weed will do next to nothing to curb this problem

You have to figure that there are basically two choices to stopping repeat offenders. Repeat offenders are the biggest problem. Almost all of the people in prison have been there before. You can either:

1. make is such a horrific experience that they never want to go back and make sentencing even tougher. Instead of three strikes and you get 20 years tell them flat out you get one chance and if you come back we execute you.
or
2. we do something to actually help rehabilitate those that can be. By this I mean people that sold drugs or stole things. People that commited violent crimes like rape probably can't be rehabilitated. What I mean is this: most prisoners get out of jail and they have nothing. They have no skills, no job offers, no money. They move to a halfway house and get a shitty job that pays next to nothing. Also, they are paroled right in the same place the offended so they are surrounded by the same influences. So they get peer pressure and mix that with a shitty job and a poor looking future and they decide to steal/rob/sell drugs because they don't think they have any other option. Maybe they should be allowed to learn a trade while in jail and then when released they are sent somewhere far away from where they committed the crimes. If they stole a bunch of cars in LA, you parole them in Kansas City. If they learn a trade they can get a decent paying job and start fresh and this might discourage some of them from re-offending.

I also think the prisoners should have to work. We should wall up the border, deport all the illegals and make the prisoners do the work that the illegal immigrants were doing. This way they don't just get to sit around and watch TV and work out or whatever all day, they have to put in a 40 hour week just like everyone else. They might think, "well, if I steal this car and get caught I'm going to go back to jail and have to work in the fields for 3 years. Maybe I won't do that."

Something clearly needs to be done because the current system is obviously not working. Maybe my ideas of not it, but all I ever hear from people is "be more strict on crime." and that doesn't seem to be working.

Not to sound like a tree hugging hippy liberal but this won't work.

First, putting someone to death actually costs more than it does to keep them in jail for life. The reason for this is that there are a lot of appeals and legal procedures that have to be gone through and since the prisoner has no money the states pick up the bill so they are actually paying both the prosecution and defense costs. If you shorten the appeals process it very much could cost a lot more in the end. All that needs to happen is to have one person put to death that was actually innocent (and with DNA evidence they have been finding innocent people on death row recently) and then the family of that person, or the ACLU or a group like it sues the state and it costs a boat load. If a jury is going to give a woman that spilled hot coffee on herself a million dollars how much are they going to give a wife who's husband was wrongly put to death? As soon as that case is over every death row inmate nationwide will file suite and we just created more work and cost then before.

Second, it has been proven that people who commit crimes that are punishable by death do not see the death sentence as a deterrent. Look at states like Texas. They kill more people than any other state in the nation and they still have no decline or shortage of people on death row.

The death penalty only really works if you use it like they do in some third world countries. you get arrested, you get convicted, you get shot all in the same day.