Redstate

They have too many Mexican citizens to board.

do 85% of the sentence before you get your first parole hearing...

keeping those deadly potheads in jail while forcing out sex offenders in 3 years or less.

Unless I am mistaken, this article seems to only pertain to the LA County jails, which hold misdemeanor offenders.  While I don't like this policy any more than the rest of us, this does not appear to affect felons.

arguably the most dangerous of felons, serve from 1/3 to 1/2 of their sentence.

http://www.ojp.gov/bjs/pub/ascii/soo.txt

While the average sentence of convicted rapists released from

State prisons has remained stable at about 10 years, the average

time served has increased from about 3� years to about 5 years;

for those released after serving time for sexual assault, the

sentence has been a stable 6� years, and the average time served

grew about 6 months to just under 3 years.

Prison population has grown 37% just with drug offenses, causing overcrowding and early release of more dangerous offenders.

We on the right often chide the left for failing to understand that there are tradeoffs in everything we do.  The War on Drugs is no exception, and I wish more Republicans would realize that.

with anyone in arguing drugs are harmful to individuals and society as a whole.  But I think there are several serious problem with how we approach the problem.  The biggest problem, to me, is a sex offender getting out after three years because they have to make room for a the guy or gal convicted on a pot offense.  That is absolutely insane, at least to me.

If we refuse to shell out the big bucks needed to make room for them, we cannot sustain the penalties by releasing more dangerous inmates.

He stated he will erect more tents, all the way to Mexico if necessary.  Too friggin bad more sheriffs don't take the same approach.

Check into Joe's 'hotel', there's always a vacancy and you get pink underwear and green bologna.

http://www.mcso.org/

The War on Drugs is something where I take a more libertarian view in the sense that I see it as semi-silly. Why the government is regulating marijuana when study after study shows it to be no more harmful than cigarettes or alcohol is absolutely beyond me. I know people that smoke pot every day and get straight As at my university, which is considered to be one of the top in the country. Sex offenders should get automatic 25 years with no parole-they're more like to be repeat offenders than anyone. 2nd strike they should go to jail for life without the possibility of parole. Hope they drop the soap for the rest of their lives in prison.

alcohol not being very helpful to our society either.  But to make that legal and to have marijuana illegal is completely incoherent.

There is actually some evidence of serious medical effects due to marijuana usage.  And yes, I know that cigarettes cause cancer and alcohol causes fetal alcohol syndrome and kills brain cells, but I just didn't want you to be unaware of some of the serious side effects of pot usage, even though some kids can smoke it and still get straight As.

Legalization of marijuana was a good idea, but I can't say the effects of legalization or decriminalization elsewhere have been at all encouraging. That alone has been enough reason for me to change my views on the issue. This is one thing we don't have to try. Everyone else has been more than happy to try it first.

Even if it was legalized, I don't know who would produce it. It is more harmful than cigarettes with the long term mental effects and cancer (with the way people smoke it). Who wants to be the next Big Tobacco? They wouldn't get 100 years to turn a profit before they were dragged into court and put through the ringer. They wouldn't get 3 years.

They way oversentence to begin with and probably 90% or more of those women are in for prostitution and shouldn't have even been in jail in the first place.

The benefits of marijuana far outweigh any side effects. Latest studies even show it prevents certain types of cancer. But, for those taking nausea inducing drugs, marijuana is the best for overcoming those symptoms. The idea that we are arresting people for marijuana use is crazy. I joined the decriminalize side when my mother's bridge partner, age 82, going thru chemo, was arrested and held 3 days for possession of a quarter ounce. The misinformation out there would not be tolerated for anything else. But we have to keep those terrible 82 year old terminally ill great grandmothers off the street ... yeah right!

You need to reeducate yourself on this subject. let me suggest a few books. "The Emperor Wears No Clothes" by Jack Herer. "Smoke and Mirrors : The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure" by Dan Baum.

  Even if you were correct and there was little utility in legalizing pot, there would still be the argument against using the resources of the government to restrict the activities of adults in what amounts to a tyrant like push for someones version of morality. This increases the power of government and always has unintended consequences.

... specifically mentions that people convicted of assault are getting, on average, just 10% of their sentence. It also says this is a California-wide average.

The appropriate medium would be to stop aggressive enforcement of Marijuana laws so that we don't have so many average pot-heads doing their 1-3 years.

But, don't take the laws off the books.  Knowing it is illegal is enough to keep a healthy percentage of the populace from using it and we'd still be able to jail the guy with 23 pot pplants growing on his back porch.  Drug dealers still need to go to prison, regardless of what they're pushing.

Prevents cancer?!?  That one isn't going to hold up.  Nothing that involves smoke ingested into the lungs is going to be found to be a cancer preventative, whether that smoke be tobacco, wood, gunpowder, pot, or 2-4-D.

As for the benefit of chemo nausea prevention, I can't recall chemo being the reason that any of the college kids I knew smoked pot.  Your argument reminds me of the rape/incest argument for abortion.  Take an extreme case and use it to ram through a change that is not likely applicable for the vast majority of the affected population.

because I don't think anyone could really be dumb enought to believe that and it is probably a typo relating to the alleged anti-nausea benefits.

Pot has every problem that tobacco has and more. You have cancer risk, the long term mental effects, and the intoxication effects. Any kind of second hand smoke exposure issues would also be there with marijuana.

Even if this was a great idea (and I don't think it is... it is certain to increase usage), I don't know how we'd even talk about legalizing marijuana with the current vilification, bans, and lawsuits with respect to tobacco. It's impossible to reconcile.

mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses all together.  As long as it is a non-violent offense and didn't involve any sort of robbery, probation/fines/treatment is sufficient.  No need to force out truly dangerous people because you need room for a drug offender.

It's hard to tell how many drug violations are ciolent because the DOJ likes to categorize them as drug or violent offenses.

documented recently:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/25/AR200605250
1729.html

basically they found that long term use lead to no increase in cancer even amoung heavy users, and that THC may play a protective role in killing off older cells before they get a chance to become cancerous.  Not what you'd think but fascinating

property of Sheriff Joe.  They go the Dept of Corrections which is State.  Joe is Maricopa County Sheriff.  Last time I saw numbers the State was holding about 30,000 in prison.  Joe is holding about 10,000 in the County Jail.  Those folks are typically:

• Arrested and awaiting trial, couldn't make bail.
• Convicted and awaiting transfer to State Prison.
• Convicted and serving "jail" time, typically one year or less.

While I have to say that I'm not much in favor of punishing victimless crimes, this seems like a new low even from a local government.

There is still further to go, however. While living in Europe, I observed the common practice of quantity rebates in sentencing. The more crimes a person were convicted for, the steeper the percentage-discount for each crime would be at the time of sentencing. I guess it worked like a credit card with kickbacks - the more you buy the more you save. Only difference was that the percentage discounts were double-digit. So perhaps we can look forward to quantity rebates in L.A. as well.

No wonder the private security industry is growing.

Acts that harm others are definitely more deserving of jail-time than acts that only harm the actor himself.