100:1::nonprisoners:prisoners
I’ve been busy this weekend what with playing Final Fantasy XII my exciting life, but I wanted to note this at RBA: the fact that one in 100 American adults is in prison.
That is insane. Our modes of criminal punishment do not make sense — we have taken discretion away from judges with mandatory minimums and sentencing guidelines; punishments, when they are warranted, do not fit the crime; and the “war on drugs” has of course progressed beyond insane.
I’ll have more to say about it soon. I’m not getting squishy here; rather, I seek a more effective means to harshly punish the worst sort of criminals while allowing those who might have just made a poor life decision causing minor harm to hopefully reclaim their lives.
UPDATE: Hey, you miserable sacks of Stumbleupon crap, why don’t you click around a bit?
Oh, wait: I don’t have ads anymore. Carry on.
03.04.2008 @ 00:35
ITYM “99:1″. If it were 100:1, then 1/101 Americans would be in jail. Either that, or it should be “nonprisoners:Americans.” But if you did the latter, you would be expressing a fraction, not odds, and the colon would be the wrong symbol.
Otherwise, right on.
04.03.2008 @ 14:55
Nearly all of those in prison are men. Why do we make harmful things done primarily by men into crimes, while harmful things done primarily by women are not crimes?
Oh, you think women don’t do bad things? 10% of the children born to married women are the result of adultery. An unknown percentage of single women lie about the father of their child. This means that men who trust the woman and acknowledge paternity are trapped into 18 years of supporting a child that is not their own.
Many divorced mothers prevent the father from seeing his child, yet any laxity in paying child support is strictly enforced.
04.03.2008 @ 19:44
It’s not until you look at the numbers that it’s really driven home: Male prisoners in Kansas, as of the date and time of this comment, outnumber female prisoners by nearly 12:1. Once you exclude the minimum-security people, the ratio rises dramatically. And the incarceration rate is about one-quarter below the national average.
Kansas doesn’t appear to publish prisoner statistics by race. I’m sure they would also be instructive.