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  • Writer's pictureFred

Prison Reform in a Thousand Words or Less

Then, while [Jesus] was still speaking, Judas, one of the Twelve, arrived, accompanied by a crowd with swords and clubs, who had come from the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders. His betrayer had arranged a signal with them, saying, "the man I shall kiss is the one; arrest him and lead him away securely." He came and immediately went over to him and said, "Rabbi." And he kissed him. At this they laid hands on him and arrested him.

(Mark 14: 43-46)


Jesus then sat in a prison cell until judged by Pontius Pilate.


In 2,000 years, imprisonment really hasn't evolved all that much, has it?

  • Arrest Citizen.

  • Put him/her in a cage with assorted other prisoners.



"The U.S. doesn’t have one “criminal justice system;” instead, we have thousands of federal, state, local, and tribal systems. Together, these systems hold almost 2 million people in 1,566 state prisons, 98 federal prisons, 3,116 local jails, 1,323 juvenile correctional facilities, 181 immigration detention facilities, and 80 Indian country jails, as well as in military prisons, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.S. territories." - PrisonPolicy.org


With advances in technology, shouldn't this be the new model?

  • Arrest Citizen

  • House Arrest -or- Put him/her in a cage with assorted other prisoners with only limited exceptions.

You consolidate prisons and put the money saved towards monitoring and home confinement.


What would be the exceptions?

  1. Very Poor: If you have no home, no home incarceration.

  2. Very Rich: I am talking the 1%. Tying them to their mansions that are a city block long isn't the model for home confinement.

  3. Ted Kascinski-Types: Guys who would still bomb their neighbors even under surveillance. Other terrible criminals also would qualify, like pedophiles and cannibals.

At the beginning Covid, lots of people thought that being tied to their homes would be awesome, introverts openly rejoiced. After a month or so into the pandemic, everyone got bored and sued to open up their states. There were no Covid provisions in state, or federal, Constitutions, so I knew courts would eventually turn over pandemic restrictions. (Which they did.)


But the pandemic showed that even a simulated house arrest was still a loss of freedom. We have the technology to flip a million prisoners out of incarceration and back into their homes, this should have been the goal for non-violent offenders for a generation. Black Lives Matter is a scam organization, they focused on defunding the police when they should have been focusing on defunding the Prison Industrial Complex.



Some brave politician should champion a .25% incarceration rate. Why .25? In 2021, the imprisonment rate was over 1%. Why not close all the jails? Because some men you just can't reach.


Editor's note: I know that the term 'brave politician' is an oxymoron.



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