The United States incarcerates more people per capita than any other nation in the world.
In the next few weeks, the US Congress will likely pass gun control legislation. President Obama will sign it into law and both Democrats and Republicans will walk away feeling that they did something to stem the tide of gun violence. That something likely will be to increase the criminal penalties for transferring, buying and using a gun illegally.
It will not be the first time that Congress has skirted the real issue in favour of symbolic measures that "look tough" and make legislators look good by putting more people in prison for longer.
Since the late 1980s, the US federal and state governments have sold imprisonment as the solution to myriad problems that have their roots in much more complex social and economic conditions.
The criminalisation tendency is politically expedient. This "prisons-first" political culture has one big downside: it has created mass incarceration. Full story...
Related posts:
In the next few weeks, the US Congress will likely pass gun control legislation. President Obama will sign it into law and both Democrats and Republicans will walk away feeling that they did something to stem the tide of gun violence. That something likely will be to increase the criminal penalties for transferring, buying and using a gun illegally.
It will not be the first time that Congress has skirted the real issue in favour of symbolic measures that "look tough" and make legislators look good by putting more people in prison for longer.
Since the late 1980s, the US federal and state governments have sold imprisonment as the solution to myriad problems that have their roots in much more complex social and economic conditions.
The criminalisation tendency is politically expedient. This "prisons-first" political culture has one big downside: it has created mass incarceration. Full story...
Related posts:
- Private prisons: the more Americans they put behind bars, the more money...
- The prison industry in the United States: big business or a new form of slavery?
- Jailing immigrants is a booming business in the US...
- The War on Drugs and America's "thriving" prisons...
- There are now more Americans in jail than there were in Stalin's Gulag...
- Mother sentenced to TWELVE YEARS in prison for $31 marijuana offense...
- Bryan Stevenson: We need to talk about an injustice...
No comments:
Post a Comment