Prison State
Is it the great wisdom of our government, averting future catastrophe, that has pushed the prison population’s growth beyond country and world record numbers? No. It is not wise to be ignoring rehabilitative, restitution-oriented, and educational, programs while building incredibly costly prisons in record numbers. Were these brick and mortar human cages really the greatest cause of the reduction in violent crime? No. Did our society need to prepare for the criminals of tomorrow? No. Researchers have exposed the falsehood in all of those rationalizations. And even outside of research, the signs are everywhere.
Today's’ trend-setting youth have not yet been subjected to the direct effects of our growing prison population, yet the violent crime in public schools has dropped faster than it has in the streets. Public School violence has dropped by half between 1992 and 2002, and the trend continues.⑥
So why are we spending so much money on so many prisons? Millions of Americans are trapped in concrete. Why are so many of those peace promoting x-seniors of the 2000's so much more likely now to go to prison and stay there longer, than those twice as violent seniors of the early 1990's? Our politicians have been closing down the schools the seniors were bringing peace to, basically in order to make sure that once they graduate we have room to house them in our prisons. We have had to close schools and brown out fire stations while roughly $10,000,000,000.00 (that's 10x100million a year for a state of under 37,000,000)⑩ of tax-payer money was taken to largely pay prison-guard salary. Far from saving us, these sentencing disparities and the concomitant prison growth are depleting finances and destroying the familial structures of many. Families forced to interact with this heartless system are depleted of their social capital.
. Well, with all the (mostly dark-skinned) people we now have locked up in our prisons, we have had to have reduced crime, at least in the short term. It had to have saved some innocent lives. Though, likely not as many innocent lives as if we had let all of them go but instead imprisoned all the potential drunk drivers! DUI deaths, per year, are significantly higher than the number of people murdered by someone they have had no relation to. Since it is Californians losing on average roughly $1078.95 every 3 years* to pay the CDC, you would think that that state would be the first to act. It loses so much, in fact, that it forces the state to cut funding in ways which then produce a condition in which fewer criminals are caught. More criminals are kept unmonitored just so they can pay the inflated costs for a harsher revenge of the fewer convicted. When it comes to avenging, or even better saving, those innocent lives, the system should be aiming to get us the best bang for your buck? Charging California almost double the national average to house what has been at times the largest inmate population in the country, equates to the single largest bill to taxpayers in that state. California's CDCR charges almost $50,000 per year ($49,171for males, and $51,405for females. ④ Even with the National average inflated by the roughly $50,000cost per inmate that the largest prison population in America requires, it still is only $28,000 per year.*** Follow the money, the system is a theft scheme at best, with prejudiced roots.
*Take California’s population (36,961,664) then remove the children (25.5%) and even without including the temporarily and chronically unemployed, those imprisoned, or on disability(no longer helping pay taxes) and per person the (9,970,008,758.00) annual prison cost is $359.65 which means, even if the costs no longer rose (not likely) you’ll give up $3,600 every 10 years.
**CCPOA is the Correction Officers Union. CCPOA is an acronym for “California Correctional Peace Officers Association.
***As a remedy we could immediately demand our legislators to hold a special election to outlaw the **CCPOA (along with the police and teachers unions: The terminator may have been on to something). So California stops being forced to pay the CDCR,
