Learn Liberty: Professor Daniel J. D'Amico- 'US Prison Population: The Largest in the World'

Source:Learn Liberty- Professor John D'Amico talking about American prisons.

"The United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world—more even than China or Russia. Prof. Daniel J. D'Amico explains that as of 2010 more than 1.6 million people were serving jail sentences in America. Professor D'Amico suggests that "prisons are not what we think about when we think of America, and they shouldn't have to be."  According to D'Amico, a free country should not have 1.6 million people in prison, and a fiscally responsible country cannot afford to. As Prof. D'Amico points out, it is time for Americans to recognize that the U.S. criminal justice system is desperately in need of reform." 

From Learn Liberty

Even though the United States boasts about being a liberal democracy and to a large extent it is and as a Liberal Democrat I'm proud of that, we have about 2 million people who don't live in liberty. Americans who are incarcerated and a lot of people are in prison or under some type of public supervision because they deserve to be, but a lot of those same people who are incarcerated are partly as a result of society. 

We have a lot of Americans who come from bad homes, weren't raised correctly, stuck going to bad schools and as a result of these things end up dropping out of school and falling into wrong crowds. But the lack of quality education, that I believe at least is one contributor to our high poverty rate, is just on factor that leads to our high prison population. 

America still has too many of what Professor Milton Friedman called bad laws, where we end up sending people to prison who really aren't a threat to anyone, except for perhaps themselves, like with the so-called War On Drugs, which is a major contributor our Prison Industrial Complex. Ot we send people to prison who could do their time in county jail or in halfway houses, supervised community service, instead of looking at 10 plus years in a state prison where they'll learn nothing except how to survive their prison sentence and become a more successful criminal.

America only needs more prisons because we keep sending people to prison who don't need to be there. We need prisons for hardcore criminals, especially violent felons, people who represent a real threat to either our physical safety or our economy. But it's a waste of tax dollars to send people to prison who are guilty of nothing other than perhaps hurting themselves.