Prison Overcrowding Crisis Unhealthy for All Californians
Our prisons have become the largest mental health system for the poor, the largest battered women's shelter, and the largest system of public housing. The social cost of decimating our already frayed safety net in order to expand prisons is beyond calculation. We sacrifice precious community resources to maintain a prison system that creates instability, ill health and disease, while failing to keep us safe. Full Story »
Posted by Dan Brekke
Everyone knows (are should) that prisons are not the answer to societies problems. You can't just keep building prisons for juvenile delinquents, mental patients, drug dealers and non-violent offenders. If they took all prisoners out except violent offenders, put the others in programs such as house arrest with ankle bracelets, the mentally impaired in programs that offer counseling and properly prescribed medicine and the many other programs that have worked not just in California, but across the world, think of the billions of dollars, not counting the thousands of lives that could be saved.