Prison Penalties and Mild Misdemeanors

Before I continue, I want you to know I have never done drugs nor do I condone the use of drugs, that being said over the past year I have witnessed injustices in the court system involving the punishment fitting the crime. Some are big, some are small, but all of them are a shame.

Jail is to punish someone for breaking minor laws, while prison is to protect the general public from those who do harm to others. That being said, I am not sure I agree with putting people in prison for the use of a drug, when there are no other victims involved. I guess when I read the quote from Marijuana Prison Statistics:

“According to the US Department of Justice, 30-40 percent of all current prison admissions involve crimes that have no direct or obvious victim other than the perpetrator,” the report shows. “The drug category constitutes the largest offense category, with 31 percent of all prison admissions resulting from such crimes.” Nearly a third of all prison admissions are from non violent drug offenses!

If a person is only harming themselves, then they need help, not punishment. I would say jail would be acceptable in many of these cases, required rehab a definite, but prison, no. I'm not talking about drug dealers, as they do have victims affect the lives of others. I also feel differently regarding those who cook meth inside their home where children live, since that does affect others, but for those who are doing things that are not affecting anyone but themselves, we as a society do not need to be protected from them. We need to help them. GIVE THEM REHAB, not prison time!

I guess I feel that our country is punishing the wrong people. This is probably more evident to me with certain cases I have seen, like this one where a man rapes a teenage girl four times threatening to kill her parents. His sentence was four years in a community corrections program, six years of parole, and gets to go back home to his three daughters, but don't worry he is on the sex registry list, cannot leave the state grounds, nor can he get served alcohol at a party. Being a for the most part non-drinker who rarely leaves the state, I don't find this much of a punishment at all. He deserves to go to prison.

Although more than that, in the past year I have gotten to know two mothers who have had men who have raped their children. Both men were father figures, both men were found guilty of rape, both men are free and their children are not yet out of grade school. Prison time did occur for one of them, briefly (three to four years), and the other got some jail time and parole. One of these men lives with children in his home. This doesn't seem right to me.

Now, I looked up the statistics, only 0.5 percent of people are in prison for marijuana possession only. Most drug related is for selling or trafficking. Although that seems low, that is still one out of two hundred prisoners. Since there are 2.5 million prisoners in our country that means 125,000 people are in prison and their only crime is marijuana posession. Marijuana is a plant, it grows naturally. Yes, they are breaking a law, and when we break laws their needs to be punishments, but prison? Prison is notorious for violence, rape, and other otrocities I don't want to think about. Should we really be putting someone in a place with murderers, rapists, just because they chose to smoke a naturally made product? It's against the law, so sure jail time, sure a fine, but I don't feel threatened by the man who chooses to smoke weed next door, so why on earth should he go to prison.

So yeah, this is my latest pet peeve. I had a more personal instance, being a foster parent where I felt the punishment did not fit the crime, but then this is not really the time and place to share about it. I guess, I am tired of hearing of people hurting children and getting petty fines or short-term jail stays, while people whose only crime is harming themselves get much steeper.

RANT OVER!