Republican politician and former Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said Wednesday that there is a big problem in America due to all the people that are either in jail or on parole or probation.
“When one in every 31 Americans is under correctional supervision, it’s clear that something is very wrong,” Gingrich said. “The United States stands above all for freedom, and yet we have by far the highest rate of incarceration in the world.”
Gingrich invoked statistics from 2009 that show that about 7.3 million Americans are either in prison (2.3 million) or on probation or parole (5.1 million).
Gingrich compared that 7.3 million figure to the largest U.S. cities, and said “Prison City is second only to New York, and larger than the next two — Los Angeles and Chicago — put together.”
Gingrich said the human cost and fiscal cost to America is “terrible” and said that too many non-violent offenders are in prison.
“We lock up too many non-violent people,” Gingrich said, “and the recidivism rate (the number of released prisoners who end up back in jail) is extremely high. As many as 60 percent are arrested again within three years. The corrections system is not correcting.”
Of course there is recidivism. Prisons are schools for improving crime skills. Prisons are cushy places compared to what they should be for meting out punishment and deterrents. They also don’t address the problems that put the people there. I do not believe criminals should be physically beaten or denied healthy diets, but I also do not believe they deserve the red carpet treatment they get. Their time should be spent working in productive jobs and getting rehab and counseling.
@Steal Panther-You should be behind bars with them.
He is a admitted felon. He admitted on here that he has been high on drugs and driven high every day for the last 25 years. That makes him or her a damn drugger criminal. He just hasn’t gotten caught yet but he will
Ya, but guess what? I DIDN’T INHALE!
@Peter L.-are you going to continue to defend the criminal after he admitted being a felon??
If you think we lock up people now, well you haven’t been paying attention to the Mason City boys. They wan’t all 20 million illegals behind bars and the Great wall of China built South and they don’t even care what it cost. If it costs everything, they say BUY, BUY, BUY!