Raddatatta t1_iu01s8q wrote on October 27, 2022 at 3:39 PM

Reply to comment by Jawaka99 in how was this POS allowed to walk? by AdHistorical7107

Is that a bad thing? We lock up an insane number of people. Almost half of our prisoners are there for drug related offenses. Not to mention it costs $40k a year per person in addition to them not paying taxes and having a lifelong reduced earning potential.

I'm certainly not saying we should let dangerous and violent people go free. But our prisons should have a purpose of releasing people who don't come back to prison and they fail miserably at that. I'd much prefer we had far fewer prisons.

Jawaka99 t1_iu1fs6f wrote on October 27, 2022 at 9:01 PM

This isn't about drug related arrests though. That said if a person commits a more serious crime while high on drugs then they still need to be held responsible.

Raddatatta t1_iu1gjtl wrote on October 27, 2022 at 9:06 PM

If you're talking about people in prison it is about drugs. That's about 40% of the prisoners is drug related crimes. And yes obviously being high isn't an excuse for another crime. Not sure why you thought I was implying otherwise?

Jawaka99 t1_iu1v3eh wrote on October 27, 2022 at 10:51 PM

I'm just saying that I agree with you that people shouldn't be in jail just because of a drug charge. Though I'd suspect that many are cases of 3rd strikes where the third was a drug offense but in these cases its not just because of the drug offense, its just the drug offense that was the tipping point.

Raddatatta t1_iu1vmde wrote on October 27, 2022 at 10:56 PM

There are some. But there are also many where people commit other crimes because of drug related debt or money problems that are indirectly drug caused.

But I'd certainly be happy to see 40% of prisons close right there by getting those people out. And if we improved recidivism down from like 70% where it is for some crimes that would be great to see general crime going down too. I don't want fewer people in prison because they are getting away with doing bad things. But I'd certainly welcome a lot more prisons closing because of more reasonable laws with respect to drugs and making prisons actually try to get people to not commit more crimes and come back.