Crime #1: Prisons and Sentencing

In August, we discussed healthcare. This month, the discussion will focus on crime. This week, we will discuss prisons and sentencing. Over the next two weeks, I will discuss corruption and white collar crime, followed by guns and violent crime.

The statistic that The United States contains 5% of the world's population and 20% of the world's incarcerated population is cited regularly. In fact, despite our reputation as "The Land of the Free", the United States incarcerates more people per capita than Russia, China, or North Korea. Our prison population has gotten so high that we have begun using private prisons to cut costs and reduce overcrowding.

And it doesn't work, either. Per year, The United States has about four murders per hundred thousand people, while countries like the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain each only have one. Once prisoners are released, they have a 50% chance of being back in jail within 3 years. This isn't working.

Hillary Clinton has a lot to answer for on this topic. In the 90s, she described members of gangs as Super-predators. She then advocated for the 1994 crime bill, which was eventually signed by her husband, former president Bill Clinton. She is now attempting to reverse the damage that she did, but Tens of thousands of Americans have been sentenced to life in prison during that time, with no visible effect on crime.

She has since spoken out about reform of drug laws, but it is clear that this is only because it affects her personally. Clinton does want to move Marajuana off of the schedule 1 list, where it sits with heroine and LSD. Unfortunately, this will have only a small effect, given that only 3.6% of the prison population is there for possession-only.

Clinton also supports ending the use of private prisons.

Gary Johnson wants to legalize marijuana, and "end the war on drugs". He has not said that he wants to legalize any other drug, so it is unclear what he means to do to end the war on drugs.

Johnson also supports private prisons. He claims that the issues raised by private prisons, of lobbying for an increase in prison population, are equally prevalent in the unions of prison workers in public prisons.

Interestingly, Gary Johnson is the only presidential candidate in the race who has a position on hate crimes. Hate crimes are normal crimes committed for specific reasons, and if a crime is deemed a hate crime then the sentence is altered. Johnson compares these to thought crimes, saying that penalizing someone for what was going through their head when they committed the crime is wrong.

Jill Stein believes that the primary reform needs to be a reduction of racism. This includes an end to the drug war, doing away with mandatory minimum sentences, and making jail a place focused on rehabilitation rather than vengeance.

Stein wants to decriminalize illicit drugs, replacing our current law-enforcement approach with a "treatment model". She calls the war on drugs "completely baseless, foundless, immoral, racist, and it needs to be transformed into a public health agenda."

Jill Stein would like to reduce the school-to-prison pipeline. She wants to increase community interactions with schools, but opposes charter schools.

Next week, we will discuss corruption and white collar crime.