tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14231145.post246381718346439635..comments2023-12-30T23:02:57.931-08:00Comments on Deep Thought: Millions incarcerated. But do they all need to be?Eli Blakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00792743206074537073noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14231145.post-27590162073324438742008-05-03T09:52:00.000-07:002008-05-03T09:52:00.000-07:00Good points about veterans.We've ignored treatment...Good points about veterans.<BR/><BR/>We've ignored treatment for all kinds of mental problems, including PTSD and other problems which disproportionately affect veterans. Somehow we expect that people who return from an environment in which they are in daily danger of being killed on a daily basis, may have to kill other people, and see all kinds of horrible things that most of us can't even imagine are, once they return home, supposed to just start working at a job, be model citizens and never have a problem. Some in fact do, but most need some level of assistance. It is tragic that instead of looking for ways to help all veterans, our government has spent a great deal of time and effort just making sure that even those who do come back with readily recognizable disabilities don't qualify for payment.<BR/><BR/>Combining, as you point out, the knowledge of guerilla warfare that veterans bring with them with the criminal element that is present in prison creates a particularly potent and disturbing combination-- just think for a moment about Timothy McVeigh. It is true that he met up with members of the Michigan militia outside of prison, but there are certainly prison gangs which would prize such knowlege and put it to disquieting use. And McVeigh is an example of what the price to society can be if veterans with a knowledge of warfare come back without receiving the proper treatment and attention (though I of course recognize that he is a single isolated case and don't expect that even the most disturbed veterans if left untreated would consider using their knowledge in the way that he did. But then it only takes one.)Eli Blakehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00792743206074537073noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14231145.post-49491491746800341002008-05-03T07:56:00.000-07:002008-05-03T07:56:00.000-07:00It is a very alarming report! A population not ide...It is a very alarming report! A population not identified are our veterans. About 10-14% are veterans. More and more will become incarcerated as they return home with PTSD, TBI, MH as they may cope by alcohol, drugs, domestic abuse, etc. All of which will have an economic and societal impact. Part of this flood will be the returning more waiver recruits that will now have a know-how of guerilla warfare, explosives, etc. here are more diversion programs needed like the Buffalo Veterans Court to offset the usual trigger of locking people down. The LA county jail was referenced and they have a wing full of veterans. I speak from a past subjective, advocacy, and St. Dismas stance. We must get up off on apathies!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14231145.post-9408221715077367192008-03-17T15:45:00.000-07:002008-03-17T15:45:00.000-07:00Eli,Great post, but I have to disagree with you on...Eli,<BR/>Great post, but I have to disagree with you on one point, and to point out something that you missed.<BR/><BR/>First, work crews. I think that the work crews do save or make the state money. The cost of guarding and transporting the prisoners is still, in most states, lower than the cost of paying someone else to do the work. Between unions and increasing minimum wages, we are paying prisoners like 5 cents an hour to do the work that we pay other people $15 or more an hour to do. Two things, though. First, I think that for this to work out in the budget, that money needs to be transferred (at the rate it would be paid to the outside) back to the prisons from the Highway Department, or the Parks Division, or whoever. Second, even if it is profitable, it is not profitable enough to make a serious dent in the cost of our prison system.<BR/><BR/>The second point that I think you missed is more important. Prisons and our prison system are actually increasing dangerous crime on the streets in some places. This is becasue people who go in as criminals come out as gang members. The realities of prison life force them to join gangs. Which used to not be a problem. But as there becomes more activity by street gangs on the inside and prison gangs on the outside, this is a real problem. One example of each. In California, the Latin prison gangs have spread to the streets. Prisoners being released are affiliating not with street gangs, but with the same gangs they were in in prison.<BR/><BR/>In Chicago, many people locked up for drug and other minor offenses are incarcarated in Cook County jail, rather than a prison, because there isn't room for them in State Penitentiaries. The problem is that in a jail designed to hold people shor term, there aren't prison gangs. Instead, the same gangs that run the streets run the prison.<BR/><BR/>Rather than a place for punishment and rehabilitation, prisons have become a prime recruiting ground for criminal organizations.<BR/><BR/>Bottom line of all of this, I think we both agree, is that our Prison System is in dire need of some serious changes.Zachhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13651452928935595402noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14231145.post-88253669828409057842008-03-02T21:48:00.000-08:002008-03-02T21:48:00.000-08:00That is tragic that no one is discussing this prob...That is tragic that no one is discussing this problem. My father was a psychiatrist (and often had to go out at 3 A.M. to help someone) and I've known people personally who suffered from mental illness. Sending them to prison is in effect telling them that we (collectively, as a society) don't care what happens to them and we just want them away from where we have to deal with them. Tragically, society has gotten that way.<BR/><BR/>As far as the incarceration rate of black males, I do not believe that it is because black males are particularly more disposed to crime, it is because we have laws, many of which date back decades, which help create the situation. In one recently well-publicized example, the penalty for crack cocaine in virtually every jurisdiction is far more stiff than the penalty for powdered cocaine. Both are cocaine, and both can be lethal in case of an overdose, but given that crack is much more likely to be used by blacks relative to the powdered form while upper middle class whites tend to use the powder, the differential in penalty is a reflection, whether by design or by predictable consequence, of who the legislators who write the laws would prefer to see in or out of prison.<BR/><BR/>In any other country, if more than 10% of the young men of any major ethnic group were in prison, it would be considered political repression.Eli Blakehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00792743206074537073noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14231145.post-26140695995670531182008-03-02T10:34:00.000-08:002008-03-02T10:34:00.000-08:00The Pew Center on the States lied by omission in t...The Pew Center on the States lied by omission in this report. There is not one word in it about the million mentally ill people who have been incarcerated over and over since the psychiatrists encouraged the politicians to turn them out of the asylums to fend for themselves. According to U.S. Department of Justice in late 2006, an average of 55% of all prisoners in the U.S. are mentally ill. It is pathetic that the report has been published uncritically all over the world. After reading many articles parroting the study, from the Congo to Malaysia, to Prava to the UK, I am so glad to run across yours, which is the only one that points out that the run-up in the prison population in the U.S. is caused by the criminalization of the mentally ill in the U.S. Now we are right back where we were in 1890, before the mental asylums were established as a humanitarian alternative to keeping the mentally ill in jail. Today the Twin Towers Jail in Los Angeles is the largest mental institution in the world. A really creepy thing is that their mentally ill prisoners wear yellow clothing to set them apart, and have the letter "M" on their IDs. Shades of the Holocaust. Maybe even that is not good enough, maybe they should be branded on the forehead, as has been done in the past. Funny the Pew thing did not mention the true LA situation.<BR/> It's hard to tell for sure, but it seems as if this report was published to discredit Candidate Senator Obama, as it blames the prison population explosion on Black males, making it look like they are not only despicable, recidivist, lawbreakers, but that they are costing billion upon billions of dollars in tax money. Perhaps Pew is not as liberal as it claims? <BR/>Again, thank you for enlightening your readers on the true cause of the increase of the prison population in the U.S. Jean Di Pietro, NAMI DC, National Alliance on Mental Illness, District of ColumbiaAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com