prisons not schools

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/22/zakaria-incarceration-nation/

D- welcome to the future, courtesy of Harper and the perennial appeal of the refuted "tough on crime" position.

Bipartisan forces have created the trend that we see. Conservatives and liberals love to sound tough on crime, and both sides agreed in the 1990s to a wide range of new federal infractions, many of them carrying mandatory sentences for time in state or federal prison. And as always in American politics, there is the money trail. Many state prisons are now run by private companies that have powerful lobbyists in state capitals. These firms can create jobs in places where steady work is rare; in many states, they have also helped create a conveyor belt of cash for prisons from treasuries to outlying counties.

Partly as a result, the money that states spend on prisons has risen at six times the rate of spending on higher education in the past 20 years. In 2011, California spent $9.6 billion on prisons vs. $5.7 billion on the UC system and state colleges. Since 1980, California has built one college campus and 21 prisons. A college student costs the state $8,667 per year; a prisoner costs it $45,006 a year.
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D - what politician of any stripe won't invent some new subset specialty crime, with a higher average sentences, based on whatever trend is the flavour of the day?

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This wide gap between the U.S. and the rest of the world is relatively recent. In 1980 the U.S.’s prison population was about 150 per 100,000 adults. It has more than quadrupled since then. So something has happened in the past 30 years to push millions of Americans into prison.

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D - this could be CANADA in 30 years...

In 2001, Canada had about 32,000 people in prison or about 0.13% of the total population. Globally, the United States was the country with the highest percentage of inmate population (about 0.7% of the total population).

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/06/17/pol-mandatory-minimums.html

D - vice crimes, and crime caused due to the illegal status of non-victimizing vice crime behavior, cost a LOT.
Enough to fund TWO FREE YEARS of post-secondary education, perhaps.

I think 6 pot plants mean 'grower' min-mand. sentences in Harper's new law.

In the U.S., our Congressional Budget Office initially estimated mandatory minimums would increase costs of federal prisons by $55.2 million over the first five years. In fact, over the first five years the added costs totalled $3.216 billion, 58 times our estimates
Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Canada+repeating+mistakes+drug+sentencing/6224266/story.html#ixzz1pzccrUP4

D - and that ignores the tax revenue from legalized vice crime behavior. Takes a negative and turns it into a plus.
Users don't OD or get tainted drugs cuz of the drug they want. It is just cuz the drug is ILLEGAL.