Why does the USA have so many people in jail?

Brian I have to agree with you on this Brian. The same holds true for Canada. I think the fact of the matter is that it is a Big business and a such they look after themselves first and the justice second.I have never understood several things as pertains to our Justice system. One is upon sentencing for crimes if there are several counts of the same crime the criminal will often get a sentence for each one in particular{and the time and effort to present each individual account} and then the judge will rule that the criminal serve the sentences concurrently. For instance if a man has two or three counts are of the same duration they are rolled together and served as though it were a single count. So if he was counted 3 years for each offense he would not get 6 or 9 years but only 3 years.Another one had to do with an actual incident where a man stole a truck and used it cuase property damage upward of 10,000 dollars as well as to attempt to run a police officer down along the way. When he got to court the whole thing was thrown out.The reason?On the list of charges the person who's truck was stolen did not list him as the owner of the vehicle.This is because he had just purchased it the previous weekend and had not yet had all the paper work transferred. Since he is the one who reported his truck as stolen yet in the eyes of the law he was not the owner the case was thrown out.
WTF has the Frigging ownership of the STOLEN vehicle to do with the guilt or innocence of the defendant? Yet another bullshit loophole that is allowed to trip the system up.I would not even bother to charge a person who stole from me after the police caught him. I would simply find him on a later date and recover damages myself.

RingoThat is because we do not call them prisoners but vacationers.

EZscience But the damage they do in the meanime is not acceptable. We had an escape many years ago in the Fraser valley by a prisoner serving time in a minimum security facility after transfer for murder? from a maximum security prison.While on day pass in Chilliwack under guard this individual escaped custody and was gone for days. In the meantime he managed to enetr onto the area I lived where he subsequently broke in on an elerly lady whom he strapped to a chair and tortured.
When her son{a good friend came home my fiend was killed in the ensuing struggle and his mother managed to escape,run a quarter mile to the nearby shake mill and have police respond.
She died of wounds in hospital 4 days later.
The prisoner had been at large for 3 days and no attempt was made to warn the public for fear of the response.

EZscience Absolutely I agree.However my beef is not with the prisoners as they are who they are and will respond or not respond to treatment. My beef is with a justice system that wastes time and resources uneccessarily and has no real direction nor logic behind the seemingly endless paperwork and study after study to look at the problem rather than looking at the actual situation.I resided in Agassiz a few miles away from Kent Maximum and we had escapes at least once and sometimes twice a year. I even ended up detained by the RCMP in Mission BC after an escape had occured because I had fit the description of the prisoner.I would have been detained longer except I had friends on the force who vouched for me.I do have pointed biases and opinions concerning criminals. I am absolutely against the attempt to rehabilitate child molesterers and I also understand that the people themselves are likely incapable of controlling themselves. I am also of the opinion that they cannot spend their entire lives in jail.That said I feel that this is what should be done. They should brand these people with some indelible mark in several locations and allow them to live where they please upon release.This prevents the inevitable difficulty presented to the police and justice system of trying to find a place for these people to live since no one wants them in their area. With the mark they are then allowed to function in all other areas of their lives and live where they want but not to be allowed near children whatsoever without adults present.This allows people the opportunity to contribute to society in work and otherwise but provides a safe means of regulating their access to those children whom they cannot help wishing to prey upon.

Tusko There will be as long as we treat these people as pariah rather than people incapable of repressing their sexual feelings towards children.
The present option is to shuffle them around upon release until such time as they fall from view in the public eye and then they are free to live among,t others with no real check on their contact with children.If instead we educate people that they are capable of contributing to society in every other way and give them protection under the law,then we can protect both sides of the issue. These people are protected from people,like myself, who harbour ill will due to having been affected by their actions and,of far greater importance, protect the ones who suffer the devastation of being victimized bythese people.Since the victims suffer for their entire lives then I think some sort of lifelong punishment is also in order. This is my understanding as well{abusers were themselves abused} however this is really immaterial to the issue since we need to stop the cycle not focus on those caught in it else the victimization will continue on all sides.I understand also that the "scarlet letter" carries with it the difficulty of placing these people into harms way. This is why the education of society must involve showing people the reason for this imperfect but vital step is that being made aware of the presence of these people represents a necessary step to stop the cycle.We could then, in my view, show society a viable way of bringing an end to this.

holmes Leaving out adults who desire sex with children how is it that you find that sex with children is not a violence to the child if the child is not emotionally capable of dealing with the sex act. Sex with children is rape even if the adult imagines the act to be otherwise. Perhaps in some other crimes that is warranted. I singled out the child molesterer just as a matter of the way the conversation of this thread played out. I also feel that the crime is heinous and one I do not feel is adequately dealt with in society. Perhaps I should clarify. The branding of the person could be perhaps an indelible mark in conjunction with a cuff similar to those used here to place a person under house arrest. The removal or hiding of the mark would be both rendered moot since the cuff would also allow for a GPS tracking of the person. A requirement of weekly contact with authorities could also be implemented if necesary. Now whom are we speaking of here? Child molesterers? I do not have a problem with them being integrated into society and this was one of the purposes of the mark I tried to convey. The only stipulation is that they are not allowed unsupervised contact with children EVER. As it stands these people have to go through endless run around to secure a place to live after incarceration and often end up eventually residing in a new place where they are not known as child molesterers. This gives them ample opportunity to reoffend and cause more damage to more children. Really? How do you equate the branding of a criminal who commits unwanted sexual advances and/or rape on children without their informed and emotionally capable consent on the same level as bigotry of a group of people? Let us also establish here that the child molesterer/rapist is doubtless already second classed in the eyes of most of society. As it presently stands child molesters/rapists offend over and over again. They recieve little in the way of punishment co0mpared to the devestation and life-long anguish many victims of the crime suffer in regards to their sexuality and trust of others. With the consistent tracking of the molesterer/rapist after they are released we have a safety net in place for the perpetrator as much as for society. This is the point I was bringing forth in my first comments on this thread. These people are not spending an adequate amount of time behind bars in relation to their crime. In the case of the molesterer the rehabilitation is seemingly ineffective judging by those numbers who reoffend. Since, in Canada, it seems that the courts are not willing to impress a large enough sentence and likely will not do so I thought this would help to deal with the problem in a way that proactively prevents the crime from occuring in the first place.Thank you for the excellent arguements you raised holmes. I do believe you have engaged me sufficiently to have me produce the longest reply I have ever posted at this site. I think this will continue as I am sure you have much to say on the subject.