Fair question. It’s been cited frequently over the past decade by organizations working specifically in early child development for disadvantaged communities and groups. I know this because I used to work for one of those organizations. I do not have current stats, but it shouldn’t be hard to dig them up.
Assuming a person actually has a court trial. Plea bargains are becoming more common, but some argue that it is less a matter of “guilty” vs “innocent” and more about avoiding harsh sentences: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/us/tough-sentences-help-prosecutors-push-for-plea-bargains.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
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Again, that’s a LAWYER problem. Prosecutors, and ESPECIALLY Prosecutors with access to a Grand Jury, combined with a maze of laws and regulations which it’s impossible NOT to be found of a technical violation of one or another, got us here,
It’s because Lawyers are making the laws, as opposed to other professions that actually have to deliver a product or service at day’s end. There are no effects to a prosecutor losing a given case. . .
Only the ones that spend their money.
Spoken like one of the many “prison shouldn’t be fun!” people who have no idea what being in prison is like (hint: nothing like Goodfellas) or how running a prison works.
Privileges are a tool for compliance. They’re something that can be taken away. The carrot of granting privileges to someone who hasn’t experienced them yet is not nearly as effective as the stick of rescinding existing privileges.
Sure, you could lock everyone into bare cells with nothing to read or watch or listen to or do for 23 hours a day, but those prisoners are going to go insane and be a lot more difficult (and thus expensive) to manage. Satellite TV and a weight room are cheaper than hiring and equipping a bunch of additional guards, underpaid as they are.
Which brings up a second point: Where on the hierarchy of needs do you draw the cutoff line? Food and shelter are a given, but what about psychological needs? If there remains in this country any pretense of rehabilitation, or if we can at least agree that we’d prefer released prisoners to be fit for society instead of irreversibly damaged basket cases with no viable options but to recidivize, the forced labor gulags you’re advocating are not the way to go.
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I think of it more as basics until you comply with standards. As you meet one level of compliance, another level of rewards opens up. Want more than beans’n’weenies and water ? Meet a standard. Want an hour of TV a day ? Meet a HIGHER standard. Reward good behavior. . .
I hear there’s this new organization that works with phone companies to monitor calls for free.
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You must have had a date the other night. Salgak is our new Overconfident Conservative trolley, who somehow thinks one simply strolls into bbs with tired yuppie talking points (The dems refuse to let the country debate! Why are they silencing the people!?). Other commenters have suggested a side bar for Salgak- type riffs, sort of like the kids’ table at Thanksgiving. Here’s a comment thread nearly totally derailed:
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Ah yes, because I’m conservative, I MUST be a Troll. It USED to be, because my initial responses were in one thread, that proved I was a paid troll.
How about actually debating, instead of calling names ??
Well, it isn’t free yet, but the way its value is dropping it may soon be.
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