Jim Webb goes after the prison-industrial complex

[eridani]

http://www.alternet.org/story/126897/

But people who have been fighting for reform for decades are seeing new openings for change. The fiscal crisis has state governors and legislators looking for more efficient and effective alternatives to spending $50 billion a year on incarceration. At the federal level, there is reason to believe that the Obama administration and a reinvigorated Department of Justice will take a hard look at the inequities of the criminal justice system and work for a smarter and more effective approach to public safety. Finally, there are Congressional leaders -- none more prominent than Senator Jim Webb -- who understand that the system isn't functioning as it should and there is an urgent need for reform.

Indeed advocates for reform couldn't ask for a better standard-bearer than Senator Webb. As a decorated former Marine and Reagan Administration official no one is going to slap him with the politically-dreaded "soft on crime" label that has stymied so many Democrats who have taken on this issue in the past. There is a "Nixon goes to China" quality to Webb's call for change -- a law and order man who described his reform effort as "an act not of weakness but of strength."

As a journalist Webb wrote on the need for reform after visiting Japanese prisons and seeing a fundamental fairness and effectiveness that he recognized as lacking in the U.S. criminal justice system. As a Senator he's held hearings which have highlighted racial disparities in sentencing, the staggering costs of incarceration and effective and cost-efficient alternatives, and a futile and racially biased drug policy.

Now Senator Webb is poised to establish a commission with a broad mandate to examine issues like drug treatment, effective parole policy, racial injustice, education for inmates, reentry programs -- the myriad of issues intertwined in wasteful, ineffective criminal justice policies. Look for him to lay out that mandate with specificity in the coming weeks, and make an aggressive push to bring this issue to the forefront in both Congress and the media, much as he was able to do with the GI Bill.

[tkmorris]

1. GO JIM WEBB!!!

The prison industry her in the United States may well be the largest scale of injustice within our borders. Our treatment of prisoners is cruel, inhuman, and in some cases criminal. I have no idea how we can put so many into prison (25% of the WORLD's prisoners are held in US prisons) and expect them to emerge as anything but career criminals considering how we treat them there. Just as our actions in Iraq and elsewhere create the very terrorists we claim to be trying to eliminate, our prisons create hard-core criminals instead of rehabilitating anyone.

This is a problem I never thought I would see addressed, since who defends those who commit crime? Not anyone lately, that's for sure, not when every political race pits two charmers each trying to paint themselves as tougher on crime than the other guy. Thank you Mr. Webb.

[Hekate]

2. God bless that man. We have the most effed up prison system anywhere...

... and that privatizing scheme was just fubar.

Hekate

[grannie4peace]

4. boy you can say that again-- let me tell you a little story

my son had to do 3 years for a hit& run dui in fla. i had not seen him for the first two years as i was recovering from cancer treatments. it was christmas day i went to the prison. i'm an old lady not inclined to wear underwear. they told me i could not see him, no matter how far i had traveled because of my lack of underwear. well, here it is christmas day in some small fla. town NO stores open. i found a goodwill that had bags of clothes in front. dug though them , found a bra & panties, went to my jeep & put them on. i marched back to that prison & told them i wanted to see my son! i told everyone where i got the underwear and it turned out i made many inmates christmas because they all heard the story. it was wonderful to see my son..!!!!!!

[DCKit]

6. Now I shall always think of you as "GrannieCommando". n/t

[grannie4peace]

8. i was hoping someone would read this.

the inmates loved someone outsmarting the guards!

[Hekate]

19. I'm with DCKit: you are Grannie Commando in every sense! I love your nerve...

... and your verve.

I hope you and your son are fully recovered from this bad patch in your lives. :hug:

Hekate

[KittyWampus]

7. there was a news story posted late last week about judges in PA that were sentencing teens

to a private juvenile detention center and getting kick backs.

[loudsue]

22. Amen to that, and good for Webb. I like him more & more all the time.

One of my best friends is in a "privatized" prison for a drug bust. There are a million ways they make sure they keep prisoners in jail, because they don't make any money if the prisoner gets out early for good behavior. And the taxpayers get to pay for it with our dollars, while some non-violent "criminals" have their lives ruined.

The whole system SUCKS.

Same with privatized military. We have no business having either one privatized.

[Hekate]

23. It's appalling beyond words to me that any part of essential government functions...

... would ever be "privatized".

It's about accountability, more than anything. If an employee does an injury to someone in their care, or commits graft or another wrongful action-- if that function belongs to the government it means it belongs to the people, and we can force accountability. We have the right to redress.

If it has gone over into the private sector, as with Blackwater or the prisons, there is no recourse.

Whoda thunk it? Well I did, for one, and I have no particular occult gifts.

Enough people KNEW -- but the Repubs were so busy enabling BushCheney to loot the US government that apparently no one else could get a word in edgewise. The crimes committed by that cabal are enough to make the angels weep. :cry:

I hope to God your friend comes out all right--and soon.

Hekate

[loudsue]

25. Thanks for the kind words, Hekate, and I'll pass them on to my friend.

:hi:

[cbc5g]

3. We're lucky to have him here in VA

[Faryn Balyncd]

5. Webb has vision.

[Uncle Joe]

9. Semper Fi, Senator Webb.

:patriot:

I would suggest as a retort to that ridiculous phrase of "being soft on crime" that you're strong on freedom."

Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, eridani.:thumbsup:

[eridani]

24. Way to switch frames! Everyone take not of this. n/t

[silverweb]

10. Good news.

:kick:

[Coexist]

11. kick

[NC_Nurse]

12. Excellent news! K&R

[ihavenobias]

13. A big K & R n/t

[mdmc]

14. nice find

[Ilsa]

15. I think he's a good guy. He's come to terms with his own

demons in his past and has moved on to a more enlightened path. I hope someone will listen to him.

[hedgehog]

16. Only Nixon could go to China - and Jim Webb, as the antithesis of a bleeding heart,

can tear open the scandal that is our prison system. Go Jim!

[autorank]

17. k*r Yep

He can start right on the Old Dominion where the prison food is so bad, prisoners need to starve themselves to
be able to eat enough of the filth to get the marginal nutrition available. It's a disgrace.

The beat downs, rapes, terrorizing atmosphere in prisons is a disgrace. First, that's not the sentence. If juries
knew what went on in prison, they rarely convict. Second, the violence against people and their souls guarantees
re-offense putting us all at risk and guaranteeing another round of torture and degradation.

Gitmo is out and torture is just for a special few now but every day in every prison, there's Gitmo on 'roids.

It is a disgrace.


(And 2 valentines for you!!)

[goclark]

18. Yea! Yea! Finally

Bring it on !

"bounce:

[crimsonblue]

20. Step 1: legalize pot

Step 2: make everybody smoke pot

Step 3: no more crime

[Tsiyu]

21. Giving this a night-time kick

for Webb - the REALIST.

I am sick of the Fantasy-Laden trying to justify an obscenely bloated, inhumane,all-for-profit-nothing-for-justice prison system, and a wasteful, life-destroying War on (Some) Drugs.

It's time to wake up from the dreams and be practical.

We can't afford either of the above.






:kick: