Yes, they do. Sometimes it's cause cops make up a crime. Sometimes it's because they had a little bit of weed on them at a traffic stop. Sometimes it's because they commit a real crime that actually harms someone.
Many times it's because one of the things above happened, they got out, wanted to go straight, and no one would hire them for anything because they had a criminal record. They tried to live straight, get some job training, but were low on money, could barely feed themselves with foodstamps and ended up stealing and back in prison. Or maybe it as something stupid like being caught begging with an open container not in a little brown bag.
America has 1% of its population in the system (either incarcerate or on parole at some point in their lives). That's insane.
Yea they end up there for a reason, but it's not the reason you think.
The people who should be in jail (most congressmen and women, most senators, all the CEOs that ran banks during the 2008 financial collapse) aren't because they have power and money, which buys them a different level of justice than you or I.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics [0], 52% of convicted felons in state prisons are there for a violent crime; 18% for property crimes; 18% for drug crimes; and 9% for public order crimes [1]. Violent crimes obviously harm someone. I would guess that property crimes and some of the public order crimes do as well---remember that we're talking about felony convictions, which means crimes that resulted in a sentence of one year or more. For the sake of discussion we'll suppose that drug crimes never harmed anyone. So a reasonable estimate would be that around 3/4 of prisoners in state prisons are there because they committed a real crime that actually harms someone.
Now obviously it's bad that 1/4 of prisoners are there for trivial reasons. In particular, we need to end the drug war. But you seem to think that the prisons are full of people who were caught with a speck of weed or who stole a loaf of bread to feed themselves, and that really isn't true. Minor crimes usually result in a fine, community service, or at most a few months in jail (which is not the same thing as prison). For the most part, people in prison are there because they did something genuinely bad. The original article mentioned one specific prisoner by name, an Adam Johnston; I found what I think is his record [3], and he's serving twenty years for murder.
[1] "Public order crimes" means "weapons, drunk driving, court offenses, commercialized vice, morals and decency offenses, liquor law violations, and other public-order offenses".
Violent offenders tend to serve longer sentences than others (expected to be ~3 times longer on average than most other categories, according to the BJS article you reference), which is part of the reason they make up such a large part of the prison population at any given time.
In terms of number of people sent to prison, they're less prominent: again from the BJS article, admissions to state prisons in 2009 with sentences >= 1 year broke down like this: 27% violent; 30% property; 29% drug; 14% public order; 1% other.
In this context we're talking about P(person did something bad|person is currently in state prison), so the relevant statistics are the ones I cited. Your statistics would be relevant if we were talking about P(person did something bad|person has ever been to state prison).
People have gone to the prison in the past solely because of the color of their skin or because of their religion. People today go to prison just for possessing a plant or criticizing their head of state. Let's not pretend that being in prison is anything other than a moral judgement rather than an indication of someone's character. It just makes it easier to dehumanize prisoners ("they deserve it") and harder for them to reintegrate ("they must have been a bad person to get into prison"). It's the same attitude where when someone does something drastic, people who knew them will say to the news "I never expected them to do such a thing" or "they were such a sweet person". It denies that we all have the potential to be criminals depending on societies POV and our own situation.
These, along with victim blaming, are examples of behaviour consistent with the Just World Hypothesis [0]. It's really frustrating how many people seem to fall into this cognitive trap but it's understandable. I can see how people who are more aware of the fact that the world is a cruel, unjust, and arbitrary place could fall into a deep depression. I have been there myself.
only most of those "bad things" are things like non-violent drug offences and other such things. I'm not saying they are all good folks, but most of them are just folks that messed up a little bit, and have to pay for it for years.
Once we get people in the system, it is likely they will be in and out of it their entire lives. And what is even worse, it doesn't have to be this way (We refuse to take more compassionate measures like countries with a lower recidivism rate, for example). We choose this. Maybe it is partially our own fault that some folks wind up "bad".
1. only state prisons are considered
2. only people in prison for a year or more are considered
there's nothing in the comment showing that shorter term inmates are a smaller population, nor that they aren't mostly non violent offenders, nor that federal prisons aren't mostly non violent offenders.
In total, the comment just shows that there are violent and nonviolent felons in prison
I'm the author of the linked comment. I originally focused on state prisons because the article was about events in a state prison, so P(person did something bad|person is currently in state prison) was the relevant statistic. But let's repeat the analysis counting federal prisons and local jails as well.
In general, people with sentences longer than a year go to prison, and sentences shorter than a year go to jail. Roughly 57% of incarcerated people in the US are in state prisons, 9% in federal prisons, and 33% in jails [0]. In my earlier comment I noted that 52% of state prisoners are in for violent crimes, 18% for property crimes, and 18% for drug crimes. For jails, based on this source [1] I estimate 18% of the jail population is in for violent or weapons offenses; 3% for weapons; 30% for property crimes; and 31% for drug crimes. This source [2] suggests around 18% of federal prisoners are in for violent crimes; 17% for weapons/explosives/arson offenses; 11% for property crimes; 46% for drug crimes; and 8% for immigration reasons.
In my original comment, for state prisons, I counted violent crimes, property crimes, and 1/2 of other non-drug crimes to estimate that 76% of the prison population did something genuinely bad. For jails the number will be lower, both because there are fewer violent offenders and because the non-violent offenses tend to be less severe; if we count violent crimes, 1/2 of property crimes, and 1/2 of other non-drug crimes, we get 44%. For federal prisons, if we count violent crimes, property crimes, and weapons/explosives/arson offenses we get 46%. We can weight those three numbers by the sizes of the different groups to arrive at an overall figure of 61% for all incarcerated people in the US. (Of course, these numbers depend heavily on what you consider a "bad" crime.)
So of the entire incarcerated population of the US, about 1/2 to 2/3 are incarcerated for something genuinely bad. While you're correct to point out that this is lower than the 3/4 figure for state prisons, Broken_Hippo is still wrong to claim that "most" prisoners are in for things like non-violent drug offenses.
Sorry but there's no such thing. Justice is relative. In many countries you can be considered justified in murder while simply kissing a person of the same sex or protesting can make you be locked up. In fact, If you want to argue that killing someone is empirically terrible, people avoid jail for it all the time if they're on the winning side of a war, in self-defense (in many countries even for defending their honor), or if they're of a high enough status (rich people and cops/politicians). Assuming that only bad people go to jail is naive and assuming jails are only full of bad people is generalizing.
We need a program allowing prisoners to serve their sentence as home arrest at foster homes of volunteers to isolate them from their pathological upbringing and socialize them with law-abiding citizenry. To eliminate possibility of unjust moral judgments and discrimination, obviously the inmates would get to choose their hosts and not the other way around.
I'm sure you would be happy to participate. Problem solved.
Ah the good ol' tired "why don't you take refugees into your own home" argument. Why would I need to host them when I don't need to host a jail? The same thing with orphans and refugees. The government provides space for them paid for with my taxes. I don't invite every homeless person I see into my home permanently, doesn't mean I don't care about them or believe the government should combat the issue or open more shelters. Trying to put the onus on me saying "why don't you do it if you care so much" is just lazy deflection from the actual issue and a sad attempt of absolving anyone else of responsibility.
Anyway, you invented a whole solution which had nothing at all to do with what I said; I never advocated against jails or anything to the effect, please improve your reading comprehension and construct better strawmen to sidetrack me with.
I don't think I have ever been more obviously sarcastic than here. Of course I knew very well that, despite painting prisoners as victims of moral judgments and suggesting that moral judgments are something wrong altogether, you wouldn't want this crowd anywhere near your house.
With my comment, I only wanted to point out this exact hypocrisy. So thank you for confirming that my cynicism is justified. I feel better about myself now :)
Sorry for overreacting, your comment was so outlandish I was really taken aback. (detecting tone on the internet can be quite difficult, especially if you don't know anything about the commentator) The thing about moral judgments I was saying is that the people in jail are there because they did something their society considers morally wrong. For some people these things are not considered bad. My solution would be to not jail them for these things at all. Inviting them into my house is neither here nor there, but I would gladly try to befriend them and as in any relationship eventually they'd be invited into my home as well. My issue isn't with moral judgements, I feel littering is morally wrong and I would gladly see people be fined for it, it's that people don't see that jailing people is a result of these moral judgements rather than some inherent evil.
I wasn't, and your quote of me should make that clear. And like I said, it still happens all over the world. Discrimination is also well and alive in America.
>people who knew them will say to the news "I never expected them to do such a thing" or "they were such a sweet person"
The shittiest of people have friends/family who will vouch to journalists "he loved his family"(awesome achievement), "he was always up for a laugh" (or such euphemisms)... they've grown up talking self-serving bullshit and opposing the system in any situation.
Though how I wish it wasn't so.