The Bureau of Justice Statistics tells us that: “46% of people incarcerated in state prisons in 2015 were convicted of nonviolent drug, property or public order crime.” So then, without even taking into fair consideration the fact that not every violent criminal act signifies that the perpetrator is an actual menace or a direct danger to society at large, we still have the salient fact that nearly 50% of those so incarcerated are not violent, which basically means that they are not a physical danger to the general public.
It would be one thing if incarceration was the only available means to deal effectively with those that commit crimes, but in actuality, there are a multitude of ways to constructively deal with those that have broken the law. For instance, not every crime committed demands punishment, but rather a fair number of criminal laws so being broken could be dealt with more constructively by appropriate education or rehabilitation. Further, there are crimes that could be resolved by strict monetary penalties in lieu of incarceration, and others by some degree of community service. Additionally, there should be more flexibility on the punishment so being imposed, in which then, some so convicted, for instance, would be permitted to work their normal schedule in the outside world and then at the end of the day, would spend their time in a halfway house. So too, more crimes should be addressed through the punishment of restitution to those that were victims of it. Additionally, in this hi-tech world, GPS ankle bracelets and things of this ilk, should be sufficient to track those that have broken the law, but aren’t deserving of the expense of incarceration.
It must be taken into fair account, that carceral institutions are not free in cost, but are actually quite expensive, in regards to the amount of money so being spent for each inmate to be housed in a secured facility; so that, from a cost effectiveness standpoint, if nothing else, some crimes are not worth the expense of going through the criminal process system, at all, but would be better dealt with by the issuing of an infraction, monetary penalty, or something equivalent to that. Additionally, it is a complete waste of human resources to have convicts, especially young adults, be incarcerated in which within that facility, the means to rehabilitate that prisoner such as through education, or via the training of a particular trade, doesn’t exist, which essentially means locking those people up and throwing away the key.
As the land of the free, America should be embarrassed that it locks up so many of its own, apparently under the general belief, that American jurisprudence gets more satisfaction from incarcerating hundreds of thousands of its own citizens, without taking into meaningful consideration that there has to be a better way to deal with the consequences of crime – in addition, America apparently doesn’t care enough to thoroughly investigate the incipient reasons for why crime is bred in the first place and then through that research, doing something constructive so as to ameliorate such.
America has law upon law upon law, and clearly does not hesitate a moment in incarcerating as many of its own that it possibly can, but that doesn’t make it right, and it certainly doesn’t make it just -- but rather this serves to be a demonstration that those that are at the seats of power, have no interest in reformation, fairness, or equality, but are pretty much of the cynical mind, to exploit them or to incarcerate them, or both.