I don't have all the details worked out, possibly I never will but: Prisons should become more like schools; and you don't get out until you graduate. No more throwing everybody in and locking the door and turning our backs. The way it works in there now just reinforces how they've been living all along; don't co-operate with the authorities, rats die, if somebody disrespects you, kill him! Or at least f--k him up big time! Avoid any self-improvement, just hang out with your boys and talk trash. Get wasted if you can. No more I say! First of all, break them up into small units (smaller class sizes are better in school too, right?) Destroy the pack mentality. Make the groups racially diverse, try to keep it so everybody is a little different from everybody else. Structure their days. Education, work, recreation. Make them earn their privileges: recreation, TV, whatever you got. Ones that don't want to play by the rules/are disruptive get pulled out. They can sit in their cell all day, approved reading material allowed but no TV, rec, whatever. The sentence is a little bit open-ended, for instance, a petty thief is in until he earns 40 points. He can earn one point for just sitting there for six months. He can earn multiple points for getting his HS diploma or even a college degree. You don't get points for degrees that you already hold. Some non-violent offenders might be allowed out on a sort of work release program to build playgrounds or parks, stuff like that. That could earn points too. The idea is to get them positively involved in society. Some may never assimilate. They'll be back with more and more points to earn. You would also lose points for serious transgressions committed inside, like fighting, raping, stealing etc. I'll add to this as I think of more maybe, for now that's it. Make it so!

All right, this is going to be in two parts (at least) because I'm tired and I'm sick and it's late and I want to get back to watching "Billy Jack". So, prison reform. First off, an end to the "war on drugs" at least as it is presently being fought. One of the biggest and most obvious problems with the current situation regarding our prisons is that they are over-crowded. The principle reason for the over-crowding is the war on drugs. According to a book that I just spent ten minutes looking for ("Reefer Madness", by Eric something, I will post this information soon) there are more Americans in prison right now for drug crimes then there were Americans in prison in 1970 (hope I have that right). I'm sure some of you would say that they belong there, they broke the law. Well, first of all, we don't put all law-breakers in prison. For instance, traffic law violators rarely even are sentenced to jail time; never prison time. Fines are commonly used here and forfeiture of a privilege or two (like driving). Prisons, in my opinion, should be for violent criminals and some other capital criminals, for instance, people who steal millions of dollars from working people's retirement funds.

Also, in my opinion, there should be no laws prohibiting the possession and/or use of any drug. Unauthorized sale of we'll talk about. Smoking crack is not good for you but if that's all you do, you don't steal to get it or commit crimes while under the influence then knock yourself out. A drug habit/problem shall not be accepted as an excuse for committing some other crime. If you steal from little old ladies to pay for your crack then you should go to jail/prison.

Sorry, that's it for now. I'm falling asleep here.

I was finally ready to get down to some serious blogging, especially as I had a couple comments to respond to, and my ISP started having problems and I couldn't access my own blog! But I'm back now and I'm off to do the aforementioned responding. Tomorrow: a new post! Stay tuned!

Soon to come: some actual new posts. I've just been so tired lately. But, I only work two of the next twelve days so I guess that should help.

Well Tookie Wilson is dead. Everybody feel safer now? Here are some thoughts of mine on the death penalty: It's barbaric, immoral and unnecessary. It is nothing but retribution, is unfairly applied and is an embarrassment to a society which likes to pretend to be civilized. If we are naive enough to assume that it has never been used on an innocent person we can at least admit that it's only a matter of time before that happens. And then what? Oops! Sorry! I guess somebody had to pay the ultimate price so we can all feel safer. More to come...