Male inmates can go to (unfenced) "camps" with 10 years remaining on their sentences,and females can go to camps with 15 years remaining on their sentences. 20 years ago, the average inmate served less than 10 years on a "life' sentence, before being paroled. It costs HALF as much to keep inmates in a camp as inside of a fenced prison. When somebody "escapes" from a Fed camp, the local populace/news are NOT informed. The Feds dont want people to know that half of their prisoners can just walk away, any time that they want to do so. the Newspeople are told only if somebody escapes from a FENCED prison. Over 1/3rd of state prisoners are ranked as being low security, also. About 10% of our nations 2 million prisoners are in halfway houses, walking amongst us every day. Another 1 million are in country jails, awaiting trial or sentencing or being shipped to prisons. average cost of a year's imprisonment is 30k per inmate. do the math. 90 billion $, when the great majority of them could just be put on "house arrest", with the same effect. nearly 3/4 of all crimes are victimless. the gun laws, gambling, prostitution laws, etc, make no more sense than the dope laws. Portugal has legalized ALL dope, years ago,and doesnt have 10% as much trouble as we have with dopers.
Much of the reason for this has to do with grossly excessive prison sentences for minor crimes. Between mandatory minimums and multiple different laws criminalizing the same criminal act, someone can spend many years in prison for one little slip up. Another problem is countless rules and regulations that trap unwary victims like a spider web. People who were not really sure whether they were doing anything illegal. But the biggest reason is the war on drugs, and the associated excessively harsh penalties.
We just need to eliminate drug, prostitution, gambling crimes, and replace prisons with fines, house arrest, flogging, and exile.
exile after the flogging, you got it right, for non US citizens. IF "all' they did was come here illegally. which is often not the case. they bring along some dope to pay for their trip.
