Originally Posted by willravel

How terribly original, but no. Mental illness that has virtually no hope of any kind of healing is very rare, and most of the people in our prisons have no mental illness to even speak of the begin with. As has been stated, things like drug related offenses are quite common, and theft which can directly be linked back to poverty is also quite common. Each of those two things has a very simple solution.

Of course, if you like paying for the government to take care of everything, that's fine with me and not in the least inconsistent with things you've said in the past.


I'd expect to see a drastic drop off in a little more than a generation based on the successes of preventative social programs. I can't remember if I've mentioned it on TFP, but my mother used to work for a county program that involved teaching empathy, emotion management, and problem solving to children. Since then without exception all of the children are thriving. None is involved in illegal activity, and they are all getting excellent grades. Similar programs have been fighting for funding for years, but unfortunately we're too busy paying into the prison industrial complex to actually try to prevent crime. Heaven forbid.