Where they put the inmates that have a history of violence toward other inmates or the guards? On one hand you want to treat everyone humanely, but on the other you have to keep the rest of the population safe too.

The inmates that proved to be too tough to handle in ordinary Maximum Security is what SuperMax was intended for. The ones that won't use a toilet because a bowl or bucket is better to throw it on a guard. The ones that take half a dozed specially outfitted guards to transfer them from one cell to another etc.

Don't know if everyone in there really needs to be or not. But the concept of SuperMax and it's exorbitant price tag didn't come about as a way to punish prisoners as much as a need to be able to handle/control those that couldn't be handled in a Maximum Security facility.

We are barbarians.

or some similar non-violent drug offense.


The fucking drug war is out of control.

Where'd you hear that?

Seriously, the prisons are full of non-violent drug offenders. That IS a fact.

The drug warriors have used absurd hyperbole for years- goose, gander, etc.

Or would it fuck up the job market any worse if they let them go? Probably both I'm guessing.

I should mention that a lot of people with mental illness self-medicates, as the hospital calls it. (I'm not so sure I've met anyone that wasn't.) If you're arrested, they don't necessarily give you your pills on time. Or maybe not even at all. Very dangerous to skip pills... Or drink it down with alcohol, which is usually peoples weak spot.

In other words, there's a lot of people who need treatment on more than one level. But they're in jail.

for other, hard drugs.

The 60 Billion we currently spend on the DEA could fund a lot of treatment on demand, the tax revenue from legal, regulated pot could do a serious job of refilling the public coffers of states like California... Not to mention, again, the costs of incarceration.

I'm of the opinion that prisons really ought to be for violent people and people who present a threat to others, first and foremost. There need to be other ways of "dealing", or not dealing, as the case may be, with people who have different problems like addiction.

It'd have to be case by case and doctors would have to be involved. Otherwise, I agree...

And I think one legitimate function of prison is to separate the violent from the rest of us.

But when we're talking about things like drug use, the left-libertarian in me says peoples' bodies need to belong to them, period. Drive under the influence, neglect your kids, rob someone, then those are crimes and prosecute as such. But the idea that the government has the right to tell a consenting adult how to use his or her own body, bloodstream, nervous system... I have a problem with it, I find it disturbing that more people don't at least find the concept antithetical to real notions of liberty, and worst of all I think the whole mess is directly derived from the notion, popularized by Western monotheism, that we don't belong to ourselves, but rather to "God".

That said, I also have trouble envisioning meth being sold at the 7-11.