Because American voters--collectively, not individually--are bad people. Our criminal justice system, moreso than other parts of our government, is responsive to the will of the people. And the current state of it is a product of the profound moral failure on the part of the populace.

If you'd rather blame for-profit prisons, think about this. How far removed are we from lynchings, throwing black people into jail on zero evidence, etc? There were no for-profit prisons when states were systematically abusing the rights of the accused--particularly minorities, just 40-50 years ago.

That's a diabolically well-constructed argument. Anyone paying attention to social media knows that the kind of overt racism you refer to lies just below the surface, and bubbles up readily when given the opportunity.

Still, you are overstating the impact of "the will of the people." We live in a well-managed system where "representation" is mostly bought, then legitimized by voting among two bought choices.

We've been ready to end the War On Drugs for a decade - coincidentally the very thing responsible for a majority of our prison ills.

Who is "we?" The vast majority of the population thinks everything except marijuana should be illegal. Also, the drug war is not responsible for the majority of our prison ills. The most egregious stuff (three strikes laws) has nothing to do with the drug war.

Not true, by a wide margin.

http://www.people-press.org/2014/04/02/americas-new-drug-pol...

As for three strikes, drug possession was one of the top offenses for which it is applied.

http://www.lao.ca.gov/2005/3_strikes/3_strikes_102005.htm

"Possession of controlled substances alone made up 12 percent of the state’s [CA] total three strikes population at the time — drug crimes in general accounted for 23 percent."

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/three-strikes-law-drug-addict...

Americans don't want to give jail time for possession. But they still want to keep those drugs (besides pot) illegal by huge margins: http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/drug-legalization-poll_n_5162.... I haven't seen any polls asking about trafficking specifically, but I think it's fair to take those two data points to mean people want to target traffickers not users. But that is what the vast majority of the drug war is about. 99.8% of federal prisoners incarcerated for drug offenses were incarcerated for trafficking, not simple possession.

Your California stats are misleading. First, you said that drugs are responsible for the "majority" of our prison ills, but your chart shows that 77% of people sentenced for a second or third strike are for property or personal crimes, or gun possession.

Second, California is unusual in that the third strike can be anything (first two must be violent felonies). So people are in for drug possession, but also for other minor things like larceny. In most states, drug possession doesn't trigger the three strikes rule at all.

In any case, three strikes rules weren't created because of the drug war, even in California. It was a response to a guy who murdered a girl. And note that in several states, these rules passed by public referendum with huge margins less than 25 years ago.

> Second, California is unusual in that the third strike can be anything (first two must be violent felonies).

No, not since the passage of Proposition 36 in 2012: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-strikes_law (see "California")

Right. But the data he's sourced to is from 2005.

> As for three strikes, drug possession was one of the top offenses for which it is applied.

But fundamentally the three strikes rule is a bigger issue there than the drug possession charges themselves, the three strikes remove all judicial flexibility and agency.

Obligatory link to Matt Taibbi's excellent take on the subject (2013):

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/cruel-and-unusual-...

A lot of people feel uncomfortable standing up for criminals, so it's easy to prey on them. The problem is when we put them in a position where their only way out is to commit more crimes.

It is easy to abuse the weak, and there are few weaker than criminals. They have lost their freedom, and acquired an indelible stain on their reputation that will follow them through life, considerably reducing their economic value. They are weak socially, weak economically, and (to many) weak morally.

That's why this story is so important, and incredible: that one of the weakest of us fought a petty injustice, (that is in aggregate is a great injustice), and won. That's positive; but it should make us wonder what other petty injustices are being foisted on the weak. And what other policy changes are being made to weaken the targets.

One comes immediately to mind: financial services for the poor. Check cashing, payday loans, overdraft fees, etc.. Fortunately the CFPB has been fighting in their favor but the scales are still tilted in an extreme direction. It is a social injustice that the middle-upper classes enjoy mostly free banking while the poor have to pay a significant portion of their income to access liquid cash.

Disclaimer: I work for a startup that provides low-cost banking services to the poor. http://www.onefinancialholdings.com/bee/

Yes, payday loans are a good example. In fact I would argue that this extends to ordinary consumers, with late fees, overdraft fees, credit card interest, and so forth. Even traffic tickets can be a form of this.

By the way, I'm glad you're working on this problem. At the end of the day, money flow is information flow, and there is no reason for the poor to be victimized the way they are.

Checking out the startup you work for - seems like it offers the same services as Simple, but charges a monthly fee.

Is there something I'm missing that's different? Only thing I can tell is that Bee allows two free ATM withdrawals a month.

It's not a free account, but you've basically just named two of the very few fees; this makes it significantly cheaper than a Chase Total Checking account ($12/mo for those who do not meet balance requirements, not even counting massive overdraft fees).

Bee makes it (nearly) impossible to put the account into a negative balance, and has no concept of an overdraft fee.

Another big win is mobile check deposit. Customers can deposit checks with instant availability for a 1% fee or use standard clearing for free; this is substantially cheaper than check cashers.

Interesting - yeah the big differentiater seems to be that with Bee you can get instant access to your check for 1%.

Simple has ATMs you can use for free which are pretty common which covers that and also has no overdraft fees (or concept of overdraft really).

Simple has no monthly fee though which is a point in its favor - it also lets you do most of the same thing (lock cards, mail a check etc.).

One difference that immediately jumped out at me is with bee you can send a paper check. My landlord for instance will only take a paper check or money order and with simple it isn't possible to easily pay my rent without a fairly significant inconvenience. I'm sure many poor people are in similar situations.

Simple allows you to mail a paper check too.

> It is easy to abuse the weak, and there are few weaker than criminals. They have lost their freedom, and acquired an indelible stain on their reputation that will follow them through life, considerably reducing their economic value. They are weak socially, weak economically, and (to many) weak morally.

I agree, except you should replace "criminals" with prisoners or inmates. There is a difference, not all prison inmates are criminals and not all criminals are in prison.

> Why have we decided that the way to treat criminals is to systematically destroy their social support system for profit?

Because:

(1) There is a lobby with a lot to gain, and therefore an intense incentive to lobby for it.

(2) For most citizens, prisoners are at best "out of sight, out of mind", and at worst a subject of negative emotional attachment, so harms to them are either discounted or even seen as deserved.

(3) For the citizens directly harmed, they are already disenfranchised.

It's real-world capitalism thought through to the end. You can monetize any service to anyone, even more so when there is a lack of a proper free market in certain niches.

A government-granted monopoly in a prison is not a free market by any stretch of the imagination.

The real-world system named "capitalism" by its critics has never featured free markets in practice, it has always featured a system structured to favor holders of capital.

OTOH, the central feature of both real-world capitalism and the more utopian "free market" idealized form is government establishment and protection of property rights, which are precisely government-granted monopolies.

> OTOH, the central feature of both real-world capitalism and the more utopian "free market" idealized form is government establishment and protection of property rights, which are precisely government-granted monopolies.

That's just equivocating two meanings of the same word though. A title to real estate is a "monopoly" over a piece of land, but it isn't inherently a "monopoly" in the sense that you have no competitors. If you own an apartment building but someone else owns a similar one across the street from you, you have competition. You don't own every apartment building. And it's only in the second sense that a monopoly would be problematic.

Property is a monopoly on the economic sense (giving market/pricing power) whenever the thing over which property is held has no perfect substitute. This is often the case with real property, and also with much intellectual property. It's sometimes, though less often, the case with tangible personal property.

> Property is a monopoly on the economic sense (giving market/pricing power) whenever the thing over which property is held has no perfect substitute.

Which is hardly the common case for an individual piece of real estate. You don't even need perfect substitutes as long as the substitutes are close enough to prevent monopoly pricing.

> This is often the case with real property, and also with much intellectual property.

"Intellectual property" isn't normal property. It is a monopoly in the lack of competition sense. This is especially true for patents which much more rarely have good substitutes (since the same patent is written to cover them too), but is often the case with copyright as well, as with Microsoft. "Intellectual property" is basically worthless if there are many perfect substitutes because it's non-rivalrous. With real property increasing market share inherently requires increasing capital expenditures. A landlord willing to engage in aggressive price competition can't instantly saturate the market by providing 10,000 units to 10,000 tenants when they only own 10. If LibreOffice was a perfect substitute for MS Office then they could do exactly that.

This is why in markets like movies and music where there is good substitution possible, the markets tend toward cartels, because otherwise they would be extremely low margin commodity markets. Which is why those companies hate the internet -- it's interfering with their ability to hold the cartel together by reducing their control over distribution channels.

Don't confuse free markets with capitalism. One of those does imply the other, but not transitively.

Capitalism doesn't need free markets, and many capitalists prefer not having them.

Not reflexively.

Please be civil.

I realize that it is unpopular, but civility would not have made my point. I appreciate your input.

I can't respond to your other comment because it's flagged, so I'll respond here. I think most people don't mind pedants. The comment got a handful of upvotes, so clearly on the whole the addition was appreciated.

It's absolutely possible to be a jerk about correcting someone, but a simple dispassionate "I think you meant X instead of Y" can be helpful.

This platform actively discourages downvoting, so a couple people out of hundreds or thousands of viewers deciding to upvote you doesn't mean that the addition was appreciated.

I thought you meant exactly what you said, and I meant exactly what I said, passion and all. Regardless of the community sanctions, I still mean it.

I'm just confused about the angry implication that they keep doing this. Looking back 60 days I don't see a single other comment like that...

really-existing capitalism doesn't necessitate free markets

You're papering over "legalized monopoly" by using different words.