Michael Ramirez for December 16, 2018

We’re # 1

The U.S. incarcerates 693 people for every 100,000 residents, more than any other country in the world.

Our rate of incarceration is more than five times higher than most of the countries in the world, while our level of crime is comparable to that of other stable, internally secure, industrialized nations. America has an incarceration rate that far exceeds every other country.

Except for us, nearly all of the countries with relatively high incarceration rates have had recent large-scale internal conflicts. The United States, with the Civil war a century and a half behind us, has enjoyed a long history of political stability, yet we top the list for most citizens in jail.

For four decades, the U.S. has been engaged in a globally unprecedented experiment to make every part of its criminal justice system more expansive and more punitive. As a result, incarceration has become the nation’s default response to crime, with, for example, 70 percent of convictions resulting in confinement — far more than other developed nations with comparable crime rates.

U.S. incarceration numbers have been slowly declining for about twenty years, as have our crime rates. Cause and effect between the two has not been established with the least certainty.

Who would have thought Ramirez could get this one so wrong. It’s not about failing to arrest wrong doers but rather eliminating minimum sentences for certain crimes and allowing judges to be judges again by making the punishment fit the crime and finding ways to help people become good citizens. The judge in my case as a juvenal delinquent in the 60’s was creative in this respect. Every weekend for nine weeks I reported to jail after school, football practice, or a game. He visited me on Sunday to take me to church and taught me to play chess. He then got me a job in Mrs. Beecher’s donut shop where I reported at 4 am every morning to fry and glaze, serve coffee and help cleanup before school. This is where I learned about respect and how to care about others like Mrs. Beecher who was widowed and made me feel needed and respected. I thank these people who saw my potential and gave me a second chance to not become a career criminal. I’m retired from the Army and now from teaching and hold four college degrees. Not too bad an outcome for a kid who was angry about being Apache in a white world and for being part Irish in a red world. My judge, sheriff, Mrs. Beecher and most others who helped me were color-blind white people. Go figure.

Beautiful story! You should turn it into a book. (I’ll take an autographed first edition, please.)

In highly partisan times, with emotions having more influence than intellect, and the laws changing when Congress leadership does, is the “Rule of Law” meaningful to the public any longer? Can we trust our dysfunctional political system to work for “We the People”?

Odd cartoon, misses the point and steers the short sighted in the wrong direction.

much better that the US become the third world country that the liberals want us to be.

https://www.gocomics.com/tomtoles/2018/12/16How about starting with Trump?

Mikey, Mikey, Mikey. Did you miss that your cohort wants to give Dotard a pass on several felony violations? What’s good for the goose isn’t so swell for your gander, huh?

I thought that was Trump’s argument for breaking the law and not getting busted.

Police, District Attorneys, governors, the president, they ALL make decisions EVERY DAY. Who do I arrest? What crimes are significant enough for me to spend resources on? We have limited man power, funding and time. Am I stupid enough to arrest every single violator of the law?

Do cops ticker EVERY speeder? No. They can’t. They don’t have the resources.

There are 100’s, probably 1000’s of laws on the books that no one has been arrested for in DECADES. Should we go back and track them down? Do you want to pay for it?

Do police arrest folks for sexual behavior? Hell, we’re not even talking about LGBTQ issues here. There is plenty of things a consenting husband and wife can get up to that would get them arrested in some states. Probably things you may have done. Is that my business? No. Should you be arrested? No.

Expecting the authorities to lock up every single law breaker is just plain stupid. And acting all offended and prissy, like it’s some kind of liberal affectation when something is said about it is just as stupid.

And, as long as I am at it, we have a TON of bad laws. When a law makes a good person a criminal, it’s a bad law.

Ramirez, you ought to be looking at the bad laws, not the people criminalized because of them.

The best way to deal with rampant criminality is to impeach Tiny. Then indict him and try him and his family. If found guilty, put them in prison.

Oh, and by the way. If anyone wants to humiliate the psychopath refer to him as “Tiny.” It’s the only statement you can make to this miscreant that he cannot process. If we all do it, he WILL come unhinged, and once his true colors are shown, he will lose more public support. That will embolden the regressives to fight him.

Tiny. Tiny. Tiny. Tiny.

Crimes need to be filtered by ethnicity and work clothes .. suit and ties vs hoodies and coveralls. And it’s high time to stop considering party affiliation.. treat Democrats the same as Republicans.

Jailing Americans for profit, it’s happening here…. those Pennsylvania judges that got millions of dollars to send kids to prison are the tip of the iceberg….

Privatizing the jails and enforcing immigration laws that guarantee no vacancy, are a goldmine.

Follow the money…..

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-w-whitehead/prison-privatization_b_1414467.html

Very much the rich white guy’s approach to prison reform, but only for rich white guys.

Here’s a crazy idea. What if we stopped imprisoning blacks and latinos for stuff that white people don’t get locked up for. You know, like smoking pot, or walking in the wrong neighborhood. Oh wait. Blacks don’t get locked up for walking in the wrong neighborhood. They get shot.

Prison reform includes elimination of mandatory minimum sentences, stopping the practice of adding to sentences because of minor infractions, improving security for inmates (it is sickening how many people make jokes about prison rape), providing opportunities for inmates to be educated or train for a profession and then changing the rules so that they can get jobs when they are released. Minimum security prisoners in CA were working on the fires but can’t apply to the fire department when released.

The private prison industrial complex demands more prisoners. No reform.

I’d call it “legal reform” myself, though that’s not as catchy. Because a great deal of what “prison reformers” want is to make being black much less likely to lead to jail time. Primarily by making marijuana as legal as it is commonplace. And then, in fairness, releasing a huge fraction of the people who are imprisoned for what’s no longer a crime.

Of course one of the techniques to help this reform along is to reform how prisons are run. As it is now, they’re profitable enough so that their owners can afford to bribe, ahem, I mean “effectively lobby” for even stricter laws.

Ramirez has sloppily confused arrests with prison incarceration. They are not the same. Mike, who argues that law breakers should not be arrested? Many more argue that incarceration laws should be subject to reform. And they are right.

If they arrest you you must be guilty and therefor a criminal.Many a police state thinks the same way. Edwin Meese, III also thinks this way. And make it profitable and promote incarceration to feed the money habit and you have an evil growing among us. One that needs to be stopped NOW.

Is that Rudy Guilani defending the Trump Administration again?

Spoken with true privilege Ramirez. For profit prisons should be illegal. ESPECIALLY after there have been cases where judges and law enforcement intentionally try to fill up those prisons for said profit.

That’s exactly the kind of prison reform Individual 1 is hoping for so he won’t have to pay for his crimes.

Seems to me it should be captioned “The Democrat immigration policy.”