Looking back at the memories with my grandparents now, the words that come to mind are “home cooking and warm embrace”. Can’t picture grandma and grandpa doing hard time for murder. Just can’t seem to process people in their 60’s and 70’s as being hard cold criminals. They should be on some porch somewhere enjoying the sunrise with a cup of hot coffee. How we easily forget that before we become old and wise we must first be young and stupid. However, for the men and women who are currently serving life in prison for a crime they committed over 20 years ago the lesson is much easier to remember. Now that they have perhaps spent more than half of their lives behind bars, it’s our turn, as a society, to ask, when is it long enough? Inmates all across this country make up a large
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Along with economic strain we must take safety, and mass opinion into consideration also. Taking into count all three, economy, safety, and mass opinion it is difficult to understand why we as a whole would still choose to keep them behind bars.
“Elderly prisoners are the least dangerous group of people behind bars but the most expensive to incarcerate” (Vanita Gupta). The number of older prisoners has more than doubled in the past twenty years, because of our constant need to “feel safe” within our community. Laws have been made up to cushion the thought that we are safer in our streets. So that when are children walk to school from home we can relax, and breathe easy but the reality is that we have only dug a deeper hole for ourselves. Going out to vote for the candidate come November with the best “War on Crime”, or “War on Drugs” campaign makes us feel like we’ve done our part to protect our children. All these great ideas to keep drugs, and gangs off the streets are all well in good, but they are the reason why we are paying so much to keep all these criminals in jail to begin with. Harsher
Along with economic strain we must take safety, and mass opinion into consideration also. Taking into count all three, economy, safety, and mass opinion it is difficult to understand why we as a whole would still choose to keep them behind bars.
“Elderly prisoners are the least dangerous group of people behind bars but the most expensive to incarcerate” (Vanita Gupta). The number of older prisoners has more than doubled in the past twenty years, because of our constant need to “feel safe” within our community. Laws have been made up to cushion the thought that we are safer in our streets. So that when are children walk to school from home we can relax, and breathe easy but the reality is that we have only dug a deeper hole for ourselves. Going out to vote for the candidate come November with the best “War on Crime”, or “War on Drugs” campaign makes us feel like we’ve done our part to protect our children. All these great ideas to keep drugs, and gangs off the streets are all well in good, but they are the reason why we are paying so much to keep all these criminals in jail to begin with. Harsher