Why are so many people going to jail for common drug offenses? Do people really need to be in jail for drugs? Really? Or do they need drug treatment? Now that would be thinking outside the box.

Look, back in the day, I thought it would be an excellent idea to just round up all the offenders and send them to a fence-less work camp in Malheur County, Southeastern Oregon. If they escape, oh well, no water to drink for a hundred miles.

Back in the real world, we’ve got to do something about a burgeoning prison industrial complex. Cuz locking people up forever for simple drug offenses isn’t going to work.

The big increase in prison population is because of drugs. Maybe this problem should also be looked at outside the box. Or do you also have a problem with that.

As I wrote earlier, I have some big problems with this referendum, and I would usually be supportive on this kind of measure. On one hand, the state feels it necessary to offshore work to other countries to save costs, while on the other it desires to outsource inmate labor. What I can foresee is a situation where there are no jobs left domestically other than prison industry jobs, either as guards or inmates.

Crime is down, but we’re incarcerating people at a prodigious clip, making us number one in the world in the numbers and percentage of people incarcerated. I could be wrong on this, but the prison industrial complex ranks second only to the military industrial complex in the amount of public resources devoted. Many states are spending more on the prison industrial complex than they do on higher education.

That’s the truly criminal thing.

We all realize that people can and do make mistakes. So a person makes one of those big mistakes and gets (example) 5 years in prison. If that person does not have a HS diploma, he has to have it before he is released, plus his 5 years locked up. If they have a HS diploma, then they would have to learn a skilled trade, plus the full time. If they have a college diploma, they can help instruct the under educated.

The second prison would be for the ones who didn’t learn from their first mistake. From sun up to sun down they would be making road pack from big rocks. NO TV, etc. Just work them until they have served their full time.

The third prison would be a concrete wall and a firing squad. They didn’t learn after two mistakes, society doesn’t need or want them.

I know the bleeding hearts will find all kinds of excuses about this, but if it isn’t tried, how do you know this wouldn’t work.