Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/10/24/alabama-thought-it-was-a-good.html
…
2 Likes
Alabama ranks 46th in the nation for health care, 47th for education, 44th for employment, and 48th for opportunity.
Thank god for Mississippi.
18 Likes
This is the true definition of “Reefer Madness”.
20 Likes
Crossing Alabama off my to do list, again.
9 Likes
those tax dollars are being used to slap residents with criminal records that severely limit their access to education and diminish their job prospects.
Feature, not a bug. They left out disenfranchisement.
9 Likes
My experience living as long as I have in this state is that the abysmal state of education, healthcare access, criminal “justice”, and economic prospects is a deliberate feature, not a bug. The traditional powers that be and the occasional newcomer elites have a vested interest in keeping it that way, and they continue to be effective and successful in maintaining it.
I cannot bring myself to say that I am from Alabama, rather that I live here. I get out often enough (for good behavior?) for sanity’s sake.
9 Likes
Seems topical
20 Likes
locking up a man who had $10 worth of pot for 15 months, at a taxpayer cost of $21,000.
Why would a state enact such a policy that actually harms the state itself?
47th for education
OH, RIGHT.
18 Likes
Or better yet, LEGALIZE IT and see the coffers overfill with money that can be used for social programs and education.
8 Likes
Heeheehee, I see what you did there.
2 Likes
The South is very big on punishment. Even after over a century of harsh prisons and ever increasing sentencing terms, they still have crime like any place else.
A sane state would make weed an infraction and write the person a ticket. They’d have to pay $250 or appear in court. Roughly on par with open container laws in many states. (using California’s open container laws in this example)
I’m OK with some states not legalizing marijuana. But we seriously need to reconcile how we handle investigation and sentencing of something that is provably less harmful to the community than speeding in traffic.
[corrected typos/grammar]
11 Likes
Indeed. Imprisoning someone for a crime of prohibition is regressive and inexcusable.
7 Likes
9 Likes
Beat me to it.,
1 Like
Just look at who ended up with that 21,000 and you’ll understand why.
14 Likes
Just look at the color of the skin of the man put in jail for this and you’ll understand why.
It’s apparently worth $21,000 to Montgomery County, Alabama to keep a 56 year old black man off the street for 15 months.
13 Likes
As implied further above, good value per individual disenfranchisement.
2 Likes
If the legacy of Senator Jeff Sessions.
2 Likes
Using marijuana is disrespectful to authority. Authoritarians hate that.
I’m shocked it costs 21K to keep a human in prison for 15 months. That’s third world prices.
Back of the envelope it’s €85k in Ireland. About $96/7k dollars. I don’t think our prisons could reasonably be described as… humane, but rape and solitary are not features though they do happen. Depriving someone of liberty is bad enough. Feeding them shit, allowing no room for growth, and inhumane constant torture is unconscionable.
3 Likes
