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

If you were given complete power to reform the US prison system, including sentencing, what would you do? First , I would institute judicial corporal punishment in lieu of incarceration for many prisoners. This solution is straight out of the Bible,  Deuteronomy  25:1–3 and was favored by all the presidents carved into Mt. Rushmore. It is inexpensive, repeatable, proven to work and starts rehabilitation without removing the offender from the community. This might cut the prison population in half.  Prison Overcrowding Cure: Judicial Corporal Punishment of Adults Second , to keep kids in school or on the job, eliminate immediate incarceration of offenders, warn the public and shame offenders, I would fit offenders with a metallic collar, with or without electronic enhancement, color-coded per the crime and made heavier or lighter according to the ongoing behavior of the offender. For example, green for crimes of property, yellow for sex offenders, red for violent o...

What does it mean when people say , 'Prisons are for profit in America'? That refers to the private prison industry, which makes money from the warehousing function prisons provide. It does not refer to prison industries, most of which are government-run, lose money, do not provide jobs for all prisoners, and do not allow much private enterprise to operate freely. Prisoners are not entitled to all the employment protection and minimum wages of the free world in the USA, so we ought to return to laissez-faire employment in prisons, allowing private enterprises to pay prisoners a negotiated wage for 60-hour work weeks. Prisoners could make a nest egg, learn how to work a tough job, there would be more money for victims, child support and the state, and everybody could win. Please read How to Create American Manufacturing Jobs and then write a letter to your Congressman! [If prisons made products now exclusively made overseas, organized labor would benefit, too!]

Deuteronomy 25:1-3 "When people have a dispute, they are to take it to court and the judges will decide the case, acquitting the innocent and condemning the guilty.  If the guilty person deserves to be beaten, the judge shall make them lie down and have them flogged in his presence with the number of lashes the crime deserves, but the judge must not impose more than forty lashes.  If the guilty party is flogged more than that, your fellow Israelite will be degraded in your eyes." By ignoring the Bible, and in its place putting our own ideas about incarceration, we have created New Age slavery.

It is true that American slavery comes in for more scrutiny and condemnation than slavery in other regions and epochs. This is because our American media and liberal politicians and academics use the abolitionist-inspired history of American slavery almost exclusively to condemn the South, slavery, the effects of slavery, sometimes the whole USA,  etc ., in an effort to serve political ends today. The most extreme elements demand monetary reparations for slavery; others seek preferential college admissions, quotas, affirmative action, political correctness, election of Democrats, black contractors for urban projects,  etc. In truth, the United States was the best place in the world to be a slave, especially after 1808, when the slave trade was outlawed as soon as it could be under the terms of the U.S. Constitution. Booker T. Washington wrote that, “The ten million Negroes inhabiting this country, who themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of American slaver...

Why is slavery in the Arab world not discussed much in the media? The slave ship below was photographed in 1896. The group of young boys may have been destined for castration to serve as eunuchs. The media and academia have selective moral outrage. Moral outrage against U.S. slavery serves political ends. Moral outrage against Islamic culture doesn’t serve political ends. The slaves photographed above were headed to a Muslim country well after the American Civil War. In fact, slavery in the United States was a good bit more humane than slavery in the Arab world. “ Terrible Aspects of Slavery in the Arab World . The Arabs’ treatment of black Africans can aptly be termed an African Holocaust. Arabs killed more Africans in transit, especially when crossing the Sahara Desert, than Europeans and Americans, and over more centuries, both before and after the years of the Atlantic slave trade. Arab Muslims began extracting millions of black African slaves centuries before Christian nat...

There is a curious relationship between incarceration and prison, which is the subject of Prison & Slavery - A Surprising Comparison : Prologue Prisoners are the least popular segment of society and prison the most disreputable place. As a result, few think or talk about prisons or prisoners. Most of us never see the inside of a prison or talk with anyone who readily admits to having lived there. Offenders deserve punishment, so why should we care? The United States now has over 7,300,000 people in its correctional population, an economically and socially debilitating number of convicts and offenders. With only 5% of the world’s population, the U.S. has 25% of its prisoners. If the correctional population were a state, it would be America’s thirteenth largest state by population. Grossly inefficient state slavery, which is what incarceration amounts to, is worse than people think, and is bad for the public, taxpayers, crime victims, prisoners, the economy and the families of...

Roland G. Fryer, Jr. is the Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University and faculty director of the Education Innovation Laboratory (EdLabs). Fryer's research combines economic theory, empirical evidence, and randomized experiments to help design more effective government policies. His work on education, inequality, and race has been widely cited in media outlets and Congressional testimony. Professor Fryer was awarded a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship and the John Bates Clark Medal -- given by the American Economic Association to the best American Economist under age 40. Among other honors, he is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a recipient of the Calvó-Armengol Prize and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. At age 30, he became the youngest African-American to receive tenure at Harvard. His current research focuses on education reform, social interactions, and police use of force. In July of 2016, he r...