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

Title:  Marriage and Offending Among a Cohort of Disadvantaged African Americans Journal:  Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency   Volume:50  Issue:1  Dated: February 2013  Pages: 104 to 131  (Sage Publications) Authors:  Elaine Eggleston Doherty & Margaret E. Ensminger Abstract from:      NCJRS Library’s Weekly Accessions List (WAL) for the week ending April 26, 2014        Type:  Report (Study/Research) Origin:  United States of America Language:  English Annotation:  This research tests the generalizability of the marriage effect on desistance from crime for African-American men and women. Abstract:  Drawing on Sampson and Laub’s age-graded theory of informal social control, this research tests the generalizability of the marriage effect on desistance from crime. Specifically, do urban African-A...

In 2012, an interesting article appeared in the Smithsonian Magazine , revisiting the perception of Thomas Jefferson as a benign slave master.  Although Jefferson proposed an end of the slave trade, equality and eventual emancipation, and accomplished the end of the U.S. slave trade in 1808 as president, his lofty words slowed down or stopped after he calculated his 4% annual profit on slave births and his healthy profit making nails with a workforce of slave boys aged 10 to 16.  The boys were whipped if necessary to keep production up, as were some of his adult slaves for running away or other behaviors. Jefferson was mighty proud of his nail factory.  Slavery produced nails, starting before first light every day.  His biggest competitor in the nail business?  The state penitentiary . The comparisons between prison and slavery are many.  

Who is Biased Against Prison and Sentencing Reform? by John Dewar Gleissner More people than you think.   Private prison company bias is a no-brainer.   So is the opposition from labor unions for correctional officers.   Politicians naturally do not wish to appear soft on crime, because otherwise they lose their jobs.   Not many prisoners vote or are in the right place to vote.   Some communities need the jobs prisons provide.   The public is biased about crime generally, and believes crime rates are going up when they are actually going down.   Many want prison to be tough and scary.   Crime victims are not too worried about terrible prison conditions, and who can blame them?   Taxpayers are not inclined to spend money on prisons.   Prison walls and fences naturally block the flow of information, commerce and visitors.   Educated, law-abiding and intelligent people do not have much in common with prisoners, and are thus...

A number of icebergs are visible in the vast sea that is correctional America.  Have you heard about Riker's Island in New York ... Julia Tutwiler Prison in Alabama ... the Texas inmates who got too hot and died?  And of course you know about the California prison conditions described in Brown v. Plata .  Those publicized conditions are the tips of icebergs.  Underneath the water are huge populations of prisoners, not visible, unknown to the media, unreported, unheard and often bored or simmering very slowly.  Many beneath the waterline are untouched by physical violence.  They rest in their prison cells, cost a ton of taxpayer money, get older ... and are cut off from everything it means to be a human being .