Why does the USA have so many people in jail?

Do you really think more border security is going to solve this ?
Do you think longer, higher fences are a solution?
The government would go (even more) broke executing this futile experiment.
Where there is a labor demand, it will be met. So the minimum wage has been set too high ? That’s how this mess got started ?
Good grief. Let me tell you something, TC. If you paid American laborers $10 an hour to pick citrus you still wouldn’t have anyone show up. Nobody. You don’t an appreciation of the situation at all. All you have is conservative, defensive, protectionist sentiments. What a total crock of BS. You think that your punative, skinflint welfare system is a reason people want to emigrate to this country? Or your over-rated, price-gouging medical system ? Your tax dollars don’t pay a PITTANCE toward health care, welfare, or your pathetic excuse for a public education system comared to any other respectable developed country. You can’t get ANY kind of decent medical care in this country without health insurance coverage or big bucks (because they actually charge you *more* if you don’t have HI). I submit that the burden placed on our ”horrifically for-profit med system’ by illegal aliens is virtually nil given that vanishingly few are likely to have medical insurance. They would probably do as I did as an uninsured post-doc - travel to Mexico to get the same service at 1/3 the price ! The potential for fraud is not justification for abandoning a policy in principle.
It only points the way for fraud recognition and prevention. You have such a one-sided view. Firstly, there really is no “free health care” in this country, and to the extent that any type of medical service that might even be partially free, it is NOT a reason why people emigrate here, nor is it a justifiable reason for us to resent their presence here. The reason they come here is to work, not to feed off our laughably depauperate social support systems or for ”free prison cells’. You are completely ignoring the contributions these people make to our society. Not at all. I believe immigration should be selective. But the presence of these people mostly in EMPLOYED situations in the US underlines the fact that we actually need them economically. Sure, lets screen them and authorize them selectively, but right now we are scaring them all into the woodwork. Our current system is not working and apparently forcing too many would-be immigrants ”underground’. Remember, they are only here because some American is willing to hire them. Why don’t you rally your ire against all the hotel chains hiring undocumented cleaning ladies? These people are useful and if we really want to track them, know who they are, and understand why they think they deserve a right to be here, don’t we owe them a chance to prove themselves? I mean, isn’t it better for our own community that we not ostracise them any further? This doesn’t mean we have to open or borders without limits. The proposed House bill would make it a felony to assist an illegal alien. Aren’t you just the insightful Machiavelli of modern Eastern Hemisphere political strategy ?That is so pathetically nave.
Don't you see it would be mutually beneficial for Mexico and the US to defuse the problem? The strength of Mexico’s future lies in retaining laborers within its borders. They need to avoid the ”brain drain’ Canada has faced for the past 2 decades. Then look first to your market.
The same applies to the illegal alien situation.
Without work for them, they would not come.
If Americans were willing to do this work, illegals would not be a problem.
In most cases, they are not.The North American Free Trade Agreement has been good for North America because it has been the first step toward eliminating some of the continental inequities that create migration incentives for working people. If you really want to stem the onslaught of immigration from Mexico, the best approach is to help Mexico advance economically so they have a stronger local economy to employ their own people. Trust me, they aren’t coming here for the fast food and free medical. As their economy advances, so will their salaries and standards of living. The same thing happened in Japan and Taiwan. These places are no longer producers of 'cheap goods'. But their citizens are not so motivated to emigrate.

Well then take your beef to the American businesses hiring them.
Ask them if they are willing to hire only documented Americans.
They will tell you that, in many cases, Americans cannot be found that are willing to do many of the jobs done by immigrants, legal or otherwise, even if you increased the amount paid. The market DOES dictate what people are willing to pay. Your inference that immigrant laborers are depressing the value of work is simply wrong. The only reason there is any demand at all for unskilled immigrant labor in this country is because these are only crappy jobs the greed-driven American business community has been unable to outsource !Perhaps your memory of history is flagging, but immigrant labor didn’t start with Kennedy or Clinton - immigrants have been doing most of the crappy work in this country for over 100 years. Didn’t you get to read Grapes of Wrath in high school? The only difference is, now we want them to keep doing it without offering them any path to legitimacy or legal residency. I have lived in Florida and I also know the Brownsville area in Texas pretty well. I have also travelled extensively in Mexico and Latin America and speak fluent Spanish. Your unilateral projections of blame and resentment toward latin immigrants for problems you perceive in your own society appear xenophobic and unjustified. I don’t say we should open our doors to all would-be immigrants by any means, and I am in favor of a legal process for entry and deportation for violators, but I am not in favor of further criminalizing those who are already here and working, we are only going to put more people in jail where they won’t be able to make ANY contribution. Thinking like that is part of the problem we have so many people in jail - the point of this thread. We always seem hard at work creating new classes of criminals. This is getting OT, but yes, I believe all farm subsidies should be phased out. They distort the value of inputs and outputs in agriculture and do not encourage sound environmental management of agricultural resources, not to mention depressing the value of exports from developing countries that so desperately need to get a fair price for their cash crops. You are dreaming. Your medicine-for-profit system is not a draw for anyone, believe me. And you can’t get any kind of decent medical treatment without money, except for life-saving emergency room service for acute trauma patients. Not beyond immediate life saving interventions. Because the medical service industry is so profit-motivated, you can be sure THEY are the ones trying to deny services to anyone they can who doesn’t have insurance. They seem to do a good job of it from my experience, so you needn’t worry about some poor fruitpicker who happens to need a steel spike pulled out of him. I’m sure they’ll patch him up as cheaply as possible and send him home before he costs them any real money. Wake up call! The immigrants aren’t the reason your health care costs are sky high - it’s the parasitic health insurance industry that has consistently undermined any political will for a governtment run system that would be more equitable for everyone. Do you know that more than 1/3 of health care costs now are for ”administration’ alone? Health insurance companies now spend more money trying to shift responsibilty for claims to others than they actually pay out for providing health care. I see. So you have a predetermined image of immigrant ”invaders’ as ”unemployed criminals’. No chance some of them might be honest, hard-working people who just want a chance for a decent job and a place to call home?And yes, you are ignoring that this country’s economy and system of higher education has been a huge ”brain drain’ on foreign countries for years. They send all their best and brightest to university in the US and half of them never come home. A big part of the sustained strength of our economic and technological development has been contributed by these people. But in your tunnel vision you see only unemployed criminals. First, we’ve established it is not amnesty, just a pathway for them to work toward legality.
Secondly, it doesn’t do anything to change existing criteria for legal entry, so there is no justification to assume it would increase rates of illegal entry. Your tax dollars? Do you know how many of these people are paying into YOUR Social Security system without ever having a chance to collect on it? And if they are salaried, they get taxed on their income through withholding, the same as everyone else on salary - they just have no recourse to benefits and no chance to claim refunds.I am not saying throw money at the problem.
I am saying stop being so damn protectionist. You can’t wall out the world.
If we had spent even half the development funding in Mexico (where they like us) that we wasted in Iraq (where they don’t like us), the Mexican economy would already be stronger, with more employment, higher salaries, and with a bigger demand for American goods. We would have helped build a healthier neighbor economy. This is the only way to create long term wage equity across the border and raise their standards of living. It is economic inequality between neighboring nations that drives this type of immigration problem. You want to stop the wave of immigrants permanently, help their own country give them a reason to stay home. Otherwise, turn your ire on the big business interests that are profitting for illegal labor (the hotel industry comes to mind) but don’t blame the poor people looking for work and imply they are all useless criminals.

Well said. Now we're both likely to be branded with the scarlet letter....'L' for 'Liberal'.

If someone here illegally is convicted of a crime, then yes, I am in favor of prompt deportation, although I understand there are also substantial costs associated with this approach. Also, there would seem to be some sort of international protocol, formal or informal, that all criminals do their time where they commit their crime and before they are deported. I was never sure why more countries didn't imediately deport non-native criminals to their countries of origin, but they don't seem to.I think our goal should be to treat working illegals with some humanity and offer them a path to legality through their honest hard work - the same path all immigrants have taken to become Americans in the past. We shouldn't assume they are all criminals. If you treat honest people like criminals for long enough you will be successful in turning them into criminals.

...which is essentially a war on our own people, but mostly minorities.I think Ariana has this one nailed.

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Let's face it, it's not exactly left-wing to come out against a $40-billion-dollar-a-year War on Drugs that has unfairly targeted people of color, siphoned resources from the war on terror, and pitted the government against its own people.

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While blacks make up 13 percent of drug users, they account for 35 percent of those arrested for drug possession, 55 percent of those convicted, and 74 percent of all drug offenders sentenced to prison. And the average prison term for black drug offenders is 69% longer than for whites.

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Just one more reason we have become a prison nation.

Yeah, and the last time I went looking for a joint a couple years ago in Florida, all I could find was people trying to sell me crack!
From all accounts, drugs have gotten cheaper over the past 25 years than they were in the 70's - especially the harder stuff like cocaine. All we have to show for the war on drugs is more poor people in jail. Heh, heh. That's why its illegal. No big business could profit from it the way they do from all their toxic synthetic pharmaceuticals. They they have been given a licence by the gov. to flog this stuff in irritating TV comercials to increase drug consumption - at public expense in some cases - but the gov. get's a big cut. You can't tax drugs people can grow for themselves. It's all about profit for the rich and powerful in this country.This message has been edited by EZscience, 04-12-2006 09:59 AM

Heh. I guess I should have said all 'existing' subsidies because it is corporate agriculture that gets all of them.
There are currently no incentives for organic ag beyond the certification 'organic'. This entails conforming to a list of practices specified by the EPA and FDA and undergoing periodic inspections for compliance, something a lot of farmers in California are willing to do in order to get that certification. The only incentive right now is the higher price that *discerning* consumers like ourselves are willing to pay.But let's keep an open mind. There are also alternatives to direct financial subsidies that could serve as incentives for more organic production and might be better. We could start levying an Environmental Impact tax on large scale farms based on a fair assessment of their practices. It could be based on their consumption of irrigation water, agrochemicals, degree of tillage, and other cultural practices that have negative externalities for the rest of society. This would provide a lot of incentive for more environmentally friendly ag in large farms where we need it. Farmers could save production costs by tilling the land less (using less fuel and conserving both water and soil) irrigating less and selecting crops with lower water demand in dry areas (conserving aquifers) and being more selective in choosing and applying fertilizers and pesticides.These very real costs of agriculture are not paid by current producers. And most people think heavy industry is the leading polluter. It isn't - agriculture is number one when it comes to contaminating fresh water (and consuming it) and soil erosion and leaching of chemicals into the environment.I favor disincentives for the wrong practices rather than trying to directly support organic ag, because they would imediately influence the behavior of the largest farms that are the biggest offenders. These guys will never care about organic production, but they do care about their bottom line.But we have gone far enough OT here - agro-politics could be a whole other thread.

Think how much police infrastructure and 'empire building' money for the war on drugs has paid for? The law enforcement community is a huge, many-headed monster that is feeding off drug war money the same as the prison system. They don't want to see their trough dry up either. Cops are always the ones still in favor of drug wars when everyone else has seen through the futility.This message has been edited by EZscience, 04-14-2006 06:13 AM

Right you are.
Caused by nutrient runoff from excess fertilization and farmers who refuse to invest in no-till equipment.

...and some are just better ignored when you are completely out of ammunition. Didn't read your post !?Let's look at what you said here: You imply the problem is linked to these administrations when in fact it is a function of increasing economic disparity between our countries.
All I said is immigrants have always done the crappy work in the US and the work they still do is only menial stuff which business is unable to outsource. I will let others decide their own opinion of my 'rant' you selected, but I kind of like yours here: and this particular piece of insightful reasoning: Right. It couldn't possibly relate to a bloated health insurance bureacracy that specializes more in responsibility-shirking than in paying out peoples claims. This message has been edited by AdminPD, 04-14-2006 11:43 AM

If you check here it is plain to see that ALL forms of crime (save one) have either stabilized or declined nationwide in the USA over the past 10 years.In that same time our population has increased substantially, including the illegal immigrant componenet that some have tryed to categorize as 'unemployed criminals'.So why is the prison population increasing ?????Look at the one kind of arrest and conviction rate that has gone up - drug offenses.The failed war on drugs and the criminalization of addiction is THE MAJOR reason we are becoming a nation of convicts.

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