www.jonathankenangordon.name/jongordon Thanks/Praise to God MASS INCARCERATION BY THE NUMBERS #: part 3 Here are some examples how some members of Government in the USA agree with mass incarceration, & how others say: "It's time to stop it NOW!!!" In 1994 President Clinton's Omnibus Crime bill Allocated $9.7 billion more to building prisons, & all together the prison industry reached $57 billion a year. While Clinton was in office the population of people in prison went up another 500,000. $57 billion a year on PRISON!!! That's a lot of money that could be used to HELP Americans. I can think of several better ways to spend $57 billion a year instead of on one thing--spread it out to: education, childcare, healthcare, small businesses, poverty, preventing crime... Just to name a few. What benefit & what good is accomplished by spending that much on prisons? In 2003 U.S. Supreme Court INjustice Anthony Kennedy said: "Our resources are being misspent, our punishments are too severe, our sentences are too long. I can accept neither the necessity nor the wisdom of federal mandatory minimum sentences. In too many cases, mandatory minimum sentences are unwise or unjust." Why do Government Officials have a problem with mandatory minimums? For one people get unjustly disproportionately too much time. Also the more people that get more time, the more the prison beds stay full, which leads to overcrowding , more spending on necessities for people in prison & Tax payers have to pay more money for longer periods of time. Not to mention Officials have to justify the validity of the laws. To unhappy Tax Payers. I personally could write a book in mandatory minimums, because everyone in prison in Washington State falls up under it. In 1984 our State became the first to put into effect: "Truth In Sentencing" under the "SRA" or "Sentencing Reform Act," which got rid if parole & created mandatory minimums. Under parole a person could receive 10 years, but because of good behavior do 4 years & go home. Somewhere along the way, people decided that parole was "Too Lenient" & people were just getting out of prison, committing more crimes & coming back. So under the SRA, the amount of crime you had to serve on that 10 years was increased, for every crime except: First degree Murder, First degree Rape & First degree assault, a person would have to do 65% of their sentence. For the above names crimes they had to do 90-95% of their time. Legislators assumed that being: "Tough On Crime" would deter people from being criminals...THEY WERE WRONG!!! Also under the SRA there was the point system, which means that: For every felony a person is convicted of he/she gets 1 point. So if he/she is convicted again, he/she gets more points & his/her time is increased based off a predetermined scale. Not only does a person get more time for every conviction, but Officials considered it "Justice" because time is based on a predetermined scale, not a judge's discretion. I'll leave this section with this quote my friends: In 2013 Senator Patrick Leahy from the Senate Judiciary Committee said: "Our reliance on mandatory minimums has been a great mistake. I am not convinced it has reduced crime, but in am convinced it has imprisoned people, particularly nonviolent offenders, for far longer than is just or beneficial." Thanks for your time!!! Jonathan Gordon 793350 H2B115L Stafford Creek Corrections Center Aberdeen,WA 98520 Remember to post comments to our articles Remember to sign up for our RSS feed to receive updates when they are posted Remember to add/link us to your social media networks!!!