Get Tough & Smart - How to Start Winning the War on Drug Addiction

Proposed Structure of Needed Reforms:               First, federal and state statutes prohibiting the manufacturing, purchase, sale and shipment of prison-made goods should be repealed.   Prison-made goods should be allowed to move in interstate commerce to the same extent as any other product, without special labeling requirements. The states, through federal preemptive legislation or otherwise, should eliminate their restrictions on prison industries and prison labor.               Second, complete freedom of contract should prevail between prison employers, prisoners, and federal and state correctional institutions.   Prisoners and private businesses would negotiate on a laissez-faire basis.   Federal and state governments should encourage contracts between private business and prisoners regarding negotiated wages, hours and conditions of e...

In early America, fines, public punishment (whipping, stocks, pillories and mutilation), the death penalty, banishment and shaming punished criminals. Those who could not pay fines, including slaves, servants and women, were more likely to receive corporal punishment.   Corporal punishment included cropping ears, nailing    ears to wood and ripping the ears away, branding and other forms of permanent disfigurement, but usually corporal punishment was imposed with a whip or cat-onine-tails. Movements promoting democracy, social equality, pacifism and idealism caused societies to abandon corporal punishment, but it was not abandoned due to ineffectiveness. Just and appropriate punishment has proven social value in connection with a reward structure, social interaction, religion, goals and families. William Penn came to America in 1682 with a charter from King Charles II allowing his pacifist colony to incarcerate under hard labor as an alternative...

In ancient societies and in the medieval period prisons were too expensive to maintain, so the authorities opted for capital or corporal punishments or some form of slavery.   Corporal punishment through the ages was more commonly imposed on soldiers, sailors, serfs, slaves, criminals and lower social classes. All slave-holding societies in history controlled slaves with corporal punishment, while elites usually exempted themselves from this punishment. The ancient Romans, for example, only flogged non-citizens, as the Apostle Paul reminded a Roman who was about to flog him. During the Tudor monarchies, English authorities executed large numbers of criminals by hanging. In 1603, England punished about 50 capital crimes. By 1815, the number of hanging offenses in England had risen to over 200.          Dungeons and prisons historically held prisoners temporarily, before or in lieu of trial, during interrogation, until ranso...

Slavery and criminal punishment have many things in common. Each keeps people in low social strata. Criminal punishment in various cultures resulted in forms of slavery. In different Western legal systems throughout history, the punishments used to control slaves eventually made their way into criminal laws applicable to everyone.  Penal servitude and slavery were in some cultures practically indistinguishable. Chattel slavery was usually milder than galley slavery, penal servitude and convict leasing, because the slaveholder had a direct investment in the life of the slave rather than merely the use of labor for some years.  A delusion of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, originating as a humanitarian movement, was the idea that people would get better with time if placed in cages or cells. This misconception brought about yet another form of slavery, which is now more prevalent in the United States than in any other country. We have not reached the final cha...