Prison Populated

Recently, it’s been reported that the U.S. has the largest population of prisoners of any developed nation, which excludes Immigration Detention, Civil & County jails, or the Indian Police (which is kindda racist for the statistic people). The total number is 24 million people in prison now. The question to be asked is what is wrong with this country’s society if that many people are in prison?

One option is that people are taking the phrase “It’s a Free Country” a little too far. Turns out if you use that in court, it doesn’t hold up. The option is reforming sentencing laws, particularly about mandatory minimum sentences. According to the Smarter Sentencing Act sentences will be reduced and decrease the number of prisoners and save $44 million.

These reform laws are being accepted all the way down to the state level. For example Texas is reforming it’s criminal laws because there are too many prisoners in the system. TEXAS! A state that loves the death penalty so much that it’ll marry it if it got the chance says there’s a prison problem. Texas! A state that recently tried to execute a man with an expired dose of lethal injection, says there’s a prison population problem. I didn’t even know that poison expires and apparently neither did Texas. But that does explain all the Disney villains and evil queens that are in rush to get the poison to the Damzel.

There are still tons of people still in Immigration Detention, Private Prisons and more. Reforming sentencing laws is a good start, but another solution is not calling something criminal when it’s not, i.e. Marijuana or punching a racist in the mouth. Also focusing on reforming the prisoners so the prisons don’t have repeat customers. These are some good options to decrease the prisoner population but it’s a step in the right direction to get “It’s a Free Country” a valid defense.