What proportion of its residents do the nations of Europe have incarcerated at any given time?
Sounds like a success to me. We spend too much money keeping too many people imprisoned.
Heck, a cousin of a cousin spends a couple weeks a couple times a year most years in the county lockup, invariably because he got caught smoking a joint with some juveniles or possessing a little too much pot or some similarly slightly aggravated minor offense related to pot use.
Sure, the guy is a loser, but he's got some people looking out for him, which means that when he's not in jail, he's more or less gainfully employed and has been working intermittently on getting some trade-related education and credentials. But getting locked up periodically for basically being stupid and liking pot does not one any good. It hurts his kid--lives with the babymama, spends a lot of time with cousin, who tries to teach the kid some important stuff. Justin going to jail interrupts the child support and reduces the measure of stability that the smarter relatives have worked to build in his life. It interrupts Justin's work and school and ability to try to improve his life. It costs the county a whole lot of money.
And it does no one any good at all. What is the freaking point of that?
Our jails and prisons house a whole lot of hardened criminals, but they are also full of a whole lot of people who are just dumb enough to keep thinking they won't get caught. Sure, plenty of them are not great people, but tossing them in prison doesn't do anything to change that. Maybe stupid should hurt--but do taxpayers really need to fund the hurt?