Sunday, October 12, 2008

Imperial empire?

OK, it's bugging the heck out of me so I need to rant a bit.
I was listening to a talk about school lunches; how lousy they are and how much money we don't spend on them. She mentioned that we spend huge amounts of money every day for prisoners, but not for our kids.

I looked up how much money we actually do spend on prisoners and re-learned a bunch of nasty statistics.
: The US has 4.6% of the world's population but we have nearly 50% of the prisoners.
: What's worse...
Department of corrections data show that about a fourth of those initially imprisoned for nonviolent crimes are sentenced for a second time for committing a violent offense. Whatever else it reflects, this pattern highlights the possibility that prison serves to transmit violent habits and values rather than to reduce them."

Add to that the fact that our military budget is substantially larger than the rest of the world combined, and we have to ask...
WHO ARE WE, REALLY?

The war on drugs is one of the major causes of our high prison population. If we could stop our war mentality and focus more on a justice mentality, we would need far fewer drugs, and prisons, and international unrest.

1 comment:

lab munkay said...

We spend aproximentally the same amount to keep criminals behind bars as it cost to send a person to a ivy league collage.
The state gives me 3.23 per offender per day to feed them.
We hire two state paid dietions to plan nutritious meals for them.
The food tastes like crap because they have to cook it themselves, and are unskilled and lazy. (I employ 120 offender cooks to feed 1350 population)
Most often the majority of inmates have never eaten 3 square meals a dat and will not eat a fresh vegtable or brown rice. They want chicken nuggets and french fries.
Inmate have a feeling of intitlement. I have a hard time hiring non-offendar staff to work for my company because most who apply are related to someone behind bars.
I cannot answer who are we. Only who am I.