The sad fact is that I would pay $20-30K a year to have a guy who stomps on peoples heads when he gets drunk locked up. Unfortunately, there may not be enough beds because they have also locked up another guy who was caught with 2 ounces or marijuana or 'possesion of drug paraphanalia'.
Maybe I'm becoming more libertarian in my old age, but my belief is that society should getsto regulate some of what goes on in the streets and almost none of what happens behind closed doors.
I don't want to start Prohibition again because of violent drunks and I don't want to continue Marijuana prohibition because of stoned assholes.
DUI is DUI whether on 'drugs' or alcohol. 'Public drunkeness', if you really want to enforce it, should be the same.
Hold people to the same standard of behavior in public. drunk as sober and make them responsible for the consequences of their right to drink/do drugs.
Someone who stomps on people for kicks, drunk or sober, isn't someone I want walking around. If he can be rehablitated, fine, but do it from behind bars.
BTW, white collar criminals need to go to jail. In terms of social harm, the board of Enron did more damage than a horde of drug dealers at a church picnic.
As for prison rape, I think that allowing that kind of behavior is bad for society. A lot of people joke about it, and I begin to wonder if authorities and guards don't begin to feel as it is some form of accidental justice. I believe that by imagining and possibly supporting the concept of prison abuse, we as a society are feeding revenge fantasies which are poisoning us.
The word penitentiary comes from penitance. While the Puritans among our founding fathers may have been accidentally cruel, favoring long periods of solitary confinement for prisoners to reflect, I think they did understand that the decency of a society can be measured by its prisons.
I found this link of
History of Prisons .
Interesting that there is a mention that the charter of William Penn provides for damages for those wrongully imprisoned. Hearing about some of these men released from death row on DNA evidence, I wonder if any of them received compensation?