Reply #38: Somehow, I'm not surprised.

[ElboRuum]

Knowing how many laws are on the books to incarcerate people for non-violent crimes as though they were violent, and how a cottage industry has sprung up in the wake of an American population looking to protect itself from every negative influence and action as though premeditated insularism is a right in the Constitution, up there with speech and assembly, this doesn't shock me at all. In fact, it's precisely predictable.

Now, the really interesting question is the following:

Are the plethora of laws such as three-strikes, etc. designed to make this so a result of the lobbying of the prison industry or is the prison industry merely a side effect of a population that values safety and order so much more strongly than freedom to sue for laws of this type?