One of the most accurate definitions for insanity I've ever heard is "to do the same thing over and over again, expecting different results every time." I look around at today's world and I see so much insanity. We still believe that fighting wars brings peace. We still believe we can abuse the planet on which we live and not expect any real consequences. We still believe that morality can be legislated. And we still believe that the harder we punish a criminal, the more likely it will be that he'll never dare break the law again.

Personally, I don't believe prisons should be used for punishment. I think they should be used as a means to offer rehabilitation: counseling, job training, an education, coping skills, etc. So many in prison came to prison from an underprivileged background. They lack skills, they are often mentally ill, they're often uneducated and poor. And for most, spending a couple years in prison only makes the chance to make a positive change those facts even more unlikely.

Many are also in prison for what I consider morality crimes, especially drug use. The laws that were broken are, IMHO, unconstitutional and should be repealed. The "war on drugs" that Reagan pushed so strongly for has not resulted in any considerable drop in drug use. It hasn't resulted in any drop in crime-- and in fact, it's actually created more crime. Just as gangs like those led by Capone sprung up in the '20s with Prohibition, so too did the surge in gang warfare jump with the new push to stop the influx of drugs into the US. The legislators and people of the decades ago had the common sense to realize you can't stop people from drinking alcohol if they wanted to drink it. Likewise, you're not going to stop people who want to use drugs from using them. All you end up with is a prison system filled with people who, for the most part, are doing time for what is essentially a victimless crime.

I'm sure there's a lot of people who are going to say, "But doing drugs is NOT a victimless crime! Look at drive-by shootings, look at people who get mugged by addicts, etc." But what they fail to realize is that, if drugs were legalized, gangs wouldn't have turf wars anymore and gang-land style shootings would go the way of Capone and his cronies. If drugs were legalized, the price could be controlled and people wouldn't need to mug someone or break into stores since they wouldn't be paying $100 for their next fix. We have already legalized the two deadliest and most addictive drugs on the market: alcohol and nicotine. More people in the US die from alcohol in one year than die from overdoses AND murders related to drug trafficking in ten years. Almost all the problems we have with crimes related to drugs are tied to the fact that drugs are illegal. When was the last time you heard of a gangland killing due to alcohol or cigarettes? But I digress.

Here's my shortened take on the legal system.

We all have the right to live our life as we see fit. After all, that's what "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" boils down to. BUT, every right has an inherent responsibility: the "other side of the coin" if you will. Taking such a right for oneself means that one has to also assume the responsibility of making sure that their actions do not violate that same right for others. For example, I might have the urge to kill, but if I fulfill my responsibility to not interfere with another's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, I won't kill another human being. (Not that I'm advocating killing an animal or anything like that.) I won't steal from someone because I'd be interfering with their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Now, if I DO violate another's rights, then I have essentially said "I have the right to interfere in another's life and by taking that right for myself, I give it to others as well." Which gives the state the right to come in and interfere in mu life by putting me in jail.

In the US, the vast majority of inmates are from the lower socio-economic levels and/or are minorities. And the more severe the punishment, the more likely this is to hold true. Blacks who commit crimes against whites receive harsher sentences than whites who commit crimes against blacks. There are no rich white men or women on death row, in part because they can afford the expensive attorneys who specialize in finding loopholes in laws to get their clients off. But also because it is more likely that, in marginal cases where the death penalty might be invoked, prosecutors are more likely to select that option if the accused is black. While many don't like to admit this kind of discrimination still exists in the US, it is a sad fact.

Most inmates who are not mentally ill (and I believe all rapists and murderers are, on some level, mentally ill) resort to crime because they see no other way to improve their life. Most have no skills (work or social), no future to be excited about, no money, little education and no reason to believe it will be any different in another 20 years. They have, essentially, lost hope and with no hope, they simply quit caring.

The law-abiding citizens of the US hear about these crimes and scream for "justice". But what they fail to realize is that justice failed when it let those kids— who are now adults accused of crimes— continue to live in poverty. When it allowed the schools to pass the kids without teaching them how to read. When it returned a child to an abusive home because the budget for social services and child welfare agencies was cut so that we could waste billions on "Star Wars" technology. (The entire budget of the Pentagon on any given year makes up about one third of our nation's expenses. In Bush's proposed budget for FY'06, the proposed Pentagon budget is $419.3 billion dollars (and that's not including any funding for DOE, who handles the nuclear weapons activites OR the cost of the invasions in both Iraq and Afghanistan.) That's more money than the total military budgets of the next top fifteen nations in the world.)

Justice failed when it let all those kids slip through the cracks into a life of despair and hopelessness. Only a small percentage of criminals who are put in jail as an adult did not have criminal records or problems with the law/school when they were children. All those opportunities to intervene and to provide assistance and help— all lost to a political agenda. Jailing these kids is not justice— it is, however, continuing the injustice they've experienced since they were children. (I'm well aware that not all criminals follow this pattern, but the vast majority do.)

Yet year after year, we continue to "crack down on crime", imposing harsher and harsher sentences. And yet year after year, we need to build more and more jails to house more and more prisoners. The US has the highest percentage of its adult population (not to mention its juevenile population) in prison of any industrialized nation in the world! That's NOT a statistic we should be proud of. And it's also not a statistic that's going to change if we keep up this jailhouse insanity.

So here's what I envision as positive changes in how we run our prison system.

First, and most importantly, we stop treating convicts like animals and warehousing them in cages. The vast majority of convicts are not convicted of violent crimes— those who are should be separated from the rest of the prison population and have greater restrictions on their movements. But putting them in cages like so many animals only turns them into animals. We apply the Golden Rule: we treat them as human beings as we'd want to be treated. Psychologists tell us that children live up to— or down to— our expectations of them. Yet we take ignore this with respect to prisoners despite the fact that the evidence to date shows that when you treat them like animals, they behave like animals, thereby supporting the very idea the prison system ignores.

Sentencing should be open ended. The convicted should be remanded to custody until they show they're capable of reform and rehabilitation. They would be given an education, mental health counseling, training in job skills, social skills and coping/communication skills. People convicted of possession of drugs for personal use should never spend time in jail— a fine for violation of the law is more than enough consider the laws shouldn't even be on the books to begin with.

Before their release back into society, inmates will be released to a "penal colony" where they will have to live in a social environment, free from restraints while among other convicts, but still confined. The prison staff leaves the running of the "penal colony" completely in the hands of the inmates living within. Once they have demonstrated that they're no longer a threat (including the completion any counseling), they should be released under parole for a period of time. Once released, they would be required to get and maintain a job and to recompense the family (or the state) a portion of their salary every month if it's deemed appropriate. (For example, if you killed a mother of three kids, you should help pay child support for those three kids or for their counseling.)

If they were to reoffend, then they would be given a minimum sentence before they could start applying for the release process. If they were to reoffend a third time, they'd be removed from society for the rest of their lives, although that doesn't necessarily mean locked in a 6x8 jail cell like a caged animal.

We've been jailing people as punishment since time out of mind. And it's done NOTHING to stop crime. It truly is insane to keep trying the same thing over and over— in fact, not only to keep trying the same thing, but to make the punishment we hand out even harsher. It's time we tried something new.

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