The Post of the Day is from VRWC
Grafic by Dan
Note from Dan: “VRWC” is shorthand for Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, a poster who has been on this blog for while. On a lot of issues we don’t always (or usually?) agree, but we’ve gotten to know each other and I have a lot of respect for him, and for his career. Below, he displays an interesting and open-minded view of an issue that’s been hot on this board today.
“There are able bodied people who won’t work and there are able bodied people who would work if they could. My guess (only a guess) is that the number one reason able bodied people don’t work is because they have a drug or other criminal charge in their background. It is difficult, almost impossible for people who have done time to get a job.
Many/most companies would hire people with records and give them a second chance. They used to do that. Now, if a company hires someone with a record, it is an added liability to that company if that person does something wrong. As a country we need to decide if people are forgiven and can restart their lives after they do their time or if we going to have to support them forever because we aren’t going to give them a chance.
Obviously, some/many of them would screw up their chance and commit more crimes, but some/many would get a job and support themselves and not be a problem. If this country is going to put a lot of people in jail and eventually release them, we need to give the ones who are released a chance to have a life after jail. It’s not much of a life if a person gets released from jail but is told he/she can’t work around the public or anyplace with a future, where they could prove themselves and advance their career.”
June 7, 2012 - 4:26 PM
Wow, are you certain that came from Vast Right Wing…? It sure doesn’t sound like him. Bravo, whomever wrote it.
I have to completely agree, VRWC. I’ve known a few people who have gotten into trouble in their earlier days and accumulated police records, some worse than others, but who were able to find an opportunity and make the most of it, and after several years of hard work, make a pretty darn good life for themselves.
Another example that I learned of while attending the graduation for VCOM on Saturday, was of one of the members of the Board of Directors for the school. He practiced medicine and surgery to begin his career. He has been on numerous professional boards, and served as President of one. He is one of the most well-respected D.O.’s. And he has a felony conviction from during the Civil Rights movement, but was able to overcome that tag to build a very successful and distinguished career.
But you are correct, it seems that such stories are becoming harder and harder to become reality today, and it is a shame…because when people willing to work hard if only given an opportunity to prove themselves are denied simply because of a past conviction, they are really left with no alternatives besides turning to family and friends for support, the state/government for assistance, or worse additional crimes and quite often drugs. Some might be able to become an entrepreneur, but they have to find a way to access start-up capital though.
It is a viscious cycle. Charge and/or incarcerate scores of people over sometimes pretty trivial crimes, particularly some drunk in public charges or possession of a small quantity of marijuana. Brand them with a criminal tag, or worse, lock them up where many have to fall into a harder lifestyle in order to survive their terms. Then, while locked up, many are not around to help raise their own kids, who often turn to undesirable role models who lead them awry as well. Once released, they’re unable to find work to support themselves or their families, and the cycle continues until it decimates communities, families, etc. And what for? Is society any better for it? Not one bit.
Now this post deserves Post of the Day.
It is a sad fact that there are low life folks who will not only ride the safety nets train, but brag on it and dare you to say anything about it, swarm in groups that scare people, mob businesses and steal, use and sell drugs, rob people and cause mayhem in a neighborhood with loud music, fights, drug dealing and even gunshots. According to the TV box just now, there are even parents who will take their children to “cock fights” where roosters fight to the death.
That is a reality in this life and I do not think anyone, liberal or not, supports, condones or wants it. If you all want to pay for the extra people to monitor and find the fraud and remove them from the dole, I am all in. sign me up and find a lobbyist to write that legislation.
What I think you will find, is that like the “drug tests” for benefits idea, that the cost, side affects and end results will only be worse and that is why we have continued it for so long and lived with the issue. There are good, hard working, decent and worthwhile families stuck up in the middle of that mess and that is the worst problem of all. They have no way out.
We need to stop herding people into this kind of lifestyle. Until we do that, we cannot hope to end the problems that arise from it. It seems to be a sad fact that drugs, alcohol, mayhem and crime come easier to some people than working for an education or pride in working and contributing. I have no idea how you legislate that, I wish I did.
I have no idea how you legislate that, I wish I did.
You don’t. You UN-legislate it. You could start by getting government to stop airbrushing all references to church or religion. These drugged-out people need God in a big way. Then you could stop the government from becoming enablers and taking away all incentives for good honest work and self-respect for these people.
Thanks Suzie, Charles Darwin said, “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”
An interesting, thoughtful post VRWC.
“If this country is going to put a lot of people in jail and eventually release them, we need to give the ones who are released a chance to have a life after jail.”
Well said, VRWC. I would argue that we need to improve on the putting-a-lot-of-people-in-jail angle. “Improve” as in not put so many people in jail.
#8 gdad, you’ll get no argument from me. I think we have too many people in jail too. The drug laws that put 18-19 year olds in jail for 20-35 years w/o parole are among the worst. That puts a burden on everyone, the tax payer, the kid who goes to jail, the police officer who has to arrest a person who has little to lose because he is looking at so much time, the corrections officer who has to supervise a person who is not getting out for 20-35 years and has little to lose…It’s expensive for us, it’s dangerous for the police, and it doesn’t give a young person a chance to change or improve his/her life.
That’s why we have had to build so many “super max” prisons to house people. When the incentive to behave is removed (no parole), the only thing prison officials can do is lock down the prison population. When people are locked up 22-23 hours a day, what happens when they are eventually released?
VRWC, how do you feel about for-profit prisons, given the somewhat spotty record of corruption within their public/private system?
#10 Scott, I don’t know much about prisons, public or private. I did go to a 3-5 day (can’t remember how long) training session at a correctional facility training academy and talked to a lot of corrections officers. It was interesting, they were up front about who controls the prison (not them), what happens there, and about their lack of trust in a lot of their co-workers.
I don’t want to put a lot of what was said on a public blog, but from the stories they told, it would be hard to believe that a private prison would be any worse than a public one.
I do have some knowledge of the for-profit prisons, and it’s not pretty. The prisoners, or their family, must buy a lot of the things like clothes, shoes, extra food to meet a 200 calorie per day intake, etc…and usually at extremely high markups. Also, phone calls are exhorbitantly priced, and the prison management does everything they can to keep costs down and profits up, including keeping the lights out almost all of the day if they can help it.
I agree with the problem of no parole removing the behavior incentives…and it does not seem to deter new crime at all, but it does keep people locked away, I suppose possibly preventing them from committing crimes outside the prison walls, but it really screws things up in all the ways you mention.
I’m not sure if the problems I mentioned also occur within the public-run prisons, but I’d guess they do. I do know that many Virginia prisons use the inmates for their cheap labor. In Pulaski County, for example, many inmates are put on work release to help out at the animal shelter, with roadside cleanups, weedeating of median crossovers, and trash pickup…to name a few activities I’ve seen folks doing. Additionally, Virginia Correctional Enterprises (VCE) uses inmate labor to manufacture furniture. It is often of pretty good quality, VDOT uses VCE to outfit offices. Most of the VCE products go to state agencies who pay rather high prices for the products, which supplement the correctional budgets and spread the true cost of the prison system throughout the entire state budget, hiding much of it in capital costs for the other agencies.
I guess when I asked the question, I wasn’t really considering the efficiency in which a private vs public prison is run. I was considering the notion that a for-profit prison creates an income center, which in turn creates a governmental influence lobby that works on legislators who then in turn create laws which result in more prisoners.
Worse yet, For-Profit Prison/detention centers skip the lobby and just go directly to bribing judges:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/11/mark-ciavarella-jr_n_924324.html
There are some things that I just dont agree should be in private hands, Society-Changing services and industries such as health care, prisons, policing, military should all be exclusively maintained by an organization that has little use for profit.
VRWC – we certainly agree here.
Check out:
http://tinyurl.com/6pk3mdl
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Busted business? The pros and cons of private prisons
February 21, 2012
[Video]
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http://tinyurl.com/6sgvpjh
Judges Plead Guilty in Scheme to Jail Youths for Profit
By IAN URBINA and SEAN D. HAMILL
Published: February 12, 2009
SNIP
The answers became a bit clearer on Thursday as the judge, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., and a colleague, Michael T. Conahan, appeared in federal court in Scranton, Pa., to plead guilty to wire fraud and income tax fraud for taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers run by PA Child Care and a sister company, Western PA Child Care.
While prosecutors say that Judge Conahan, 56, secured contracts for the two centers to house juvenile offenders, Judge Ciavarella, 58, was the one who carried out the sentencing to keep the centers filled.
SNIP
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http://tinyurl.com/799sktq
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BANKING ON BONDAGE
Private Prisons and Mass Incarceration
SNIP
Evidence that private prisons save public money is mixed at best. While some research supports such a view,100 numerous other studies and reports have indicated that private prisons do not save money, cannot be demonstrated to save money in meaningful amounts, or may even cost more than governmentally operated prisons. For example:
SNIP
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OTOH
http://www.alabamapolicy.org/PDFs/Prison.pdf
Private prison systems exist mostly (if not solely) in Republican-dominated states. What happens is, the private prison industry contributes heavily to a GOP candidate for governor. Then they get the governor to pass a law providing for private prisons via a contract that guarantees the operator will make money. In many cases, the state turns over the already built prison to the operator.
The private operator increases its profits by shortchanging the people who work in the prisons, by raising the cruelty factor upon inmates. After a few years when the state no longer has a correctional system, the private operators jack up the prices they charge the state, because by then the state doesn’t have the means to take the prisons back over.
For the most part it’s a bad deal all the way around. Public safety is a matter of public, not private, concern.
When you devalue people and criminalize behavior that essentially hurts one, you clog prisons, cost money and waste life. Prisons should be for true criminals who harm society (often repeatedly). Sadly, it is cheaper than mental health treatment and facilities. Don’t kid yourselves that it is not simply a warehouse for those that offend some folks.
Sandi:
17.”When you devalue people and criminalize behavior that essentially hurts one, you clog prisons, cost money and waste life. Prisons should be for true criminals who harm society (often repeatedly).”
So you want to decriminalize things like drugs that hurt one person, but criminalize responsible gun carry that hurts no one?
John Wilburn, you have proved, over and over and over again that you are simply a dim bulb with one issue. I have repeatedly said that while you angry, childish, immature jerks are not helping your cause, I have never, not once, not one freakin’ time, asked to “criminalize responsible gun carry “. Find it and post it standard watt.
Sandi, I once made a list of places that carry is prohibited and asked how you justify the bans. I included places that some want to be prohibited that aren’t. You couldn’t justify anything and wanted bans EVERYWHERE and said bans should be “anywhere people want them” public places included. What is dim is your stupid idea that “gun free zones” actually protect people.
@gdad: “Well said, VRWC. I would argue that we need to improve on the putting-a-lot-of-people-in-jail angle. “Improve” as in not put so many people in jail.”
Funny, your leftie friend, Sandi, has been pretty adamant lately about tossing people in for life sentences for non-violent crimes.
I guess you two should get together and find a common page to be on.
@Sandi Saunders: “Prisons should be for true criminals who harm society (often repeatedly)”
Like the guy with the unregistered firearm who hasn’t hurt anyone even one time? The one who deserves life without parole in this prison that “should be for true criminals who harm society (often repeatedly).” That guy?
#21 “I guess you two should get together and find a common page to be on”
Oh, Jack, so you’re insisting that Sandi and I MUST agree on everything? Why?
#22 “Like the guy with the unregistered firearm who hasn’t hurt anyone even one time? The one who deserves life without parole…”
Wow, making up more crap, Jack?
@gdad,
Sandi said recently that if someone is found with an unregistered handgun (provided registration were enacted and made required) that they should be put away for life without parole.
That would be the incentive to register the handguns and would thus cut down on the number of criminals who have them and straw purchases, if I remember correctly.