Most of a nation on probation?

[Tim May]

At 3:34 PM -0700 7/4/01, Sandy Sandfort wrote:
>Tim May wrote:
>
>>  The entire parole process is itself
>>  an open sore on our justice system.
>
>Yes and no.  I know I'd rather be on parole than in the slammer.  (Of
>course, given the choice I'd go for "none of the above.")  I have an
>acquaintance who just got out after being in for seven years.  Even though
>she is required to live in a half-way house, cannot go anywhere but work nor
>may visit anyone without express permission of her parole officer, she's
>very happy to at least be out in the world and not locked up.
>
>The problem is not that parole exists--be thankful that it does.  The
>problem is the criminalization of every area of life.

It's the very fact that so much probation exists that makes it 
economically feasible for so many behaviors to now be felonious.

If residents of a local community had to actually _pay_ for the 
building of enough prisons to house the thoughtcriminals, there would 
be far fewer things classified as felonies.

The parole machine _is_ what makes the criminalization of every area 
of life so attractive to the "it can't happen to me!" crowd.

--Tim May


-- 
Timothy C. May         tcmay at got.net        Corralitos, California
Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon
Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go
Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns