I wish to welcome readers and followers from Russia, the United Kingdom, Sweden, France, Germany, Canada, Venezuela and China. We are all in the same boat with incarceration, though some have more passengers than others. In all of our countries, prisoners do not work productively as much as they should, want to and could if the laws were changed. And in each of our countries, effective alternatives to incarceration have a long history.
A "Get Out of Jail Free Card" Will Not Work Most of America's prison reform advocates only approach the issues from the standpoint of the prisoner-as-victim. Law enforcement policies under the prevailing liberal view are characterized as the main cause and perpetrator of mass incarceration. We rarely hear these folks tell us what punishment the guilty should have or how criminals should accept the consequences of their crimes. Many times they propose drug treatment, Drug Court, therapy, commitment to mental institutions, rehabilitation, "alternative sentences," and the extremely general solutions of fairness, equality, education and "community corrections." Most critics of mass incarceration focus on the process, not the substance of the problems. The process is flawed, they say, because of the failed War on Drugs, inadequate indigent defense, excessive prosecutorial power, mandatory sentences, exce...