July/August Article: Crime, Punishment and Just-U.S.
Crime, Punishment and Just-U.S . (part 1 of 2) How ironic! While preparing to celebrate Independence Day, America owns the world’s highest prison rate (2.12 million incarcerated with 21% of them unsentenced), has “permanently” striped 5 million citizens of their voting rights, created private/for profit prison opportunities, offers select companies’ contracts for inmate daily essentials (e.g. toothpaste, underwear, cloths, shoes), manipulates both the census count and its fund allocations (N.Y.C. inmates become cheap laborers and are counted as residents of the prisons town). But, with a 500% crime increase over 40 years, incarceration is not an effective means of achieving public safety. “The broad effects which can be obtained by punishment in man are the increase of fear, the sharpening of the sense for cunning, and the mastery of achieving unmet desire (Nietzsche); therefore, punishment can tame/break a man, but does not make him better (hearted)." So “Laws and instit