The Constant Weader at http://www.RealityChex.com

The Innocence Project – http://www.innocenceproject.org/ – has been working on the issues of, well, innocents being convicted and sentenced to death. It happens far too often for my liking and has recently been epitomized by the recent murder of Cameron Todd Willingham in Rick Perry’s Texas. There was evidence that Willingham was not guilty, but Perry refused to grant him reprieve to pursue justice. There is a recent New Yorker article about this travesty that is well worth googling and reading. It easily sums up a lot that is wrong with the death penalty.

This situation is also linked to issues like the 3 Strikes law in CA, where the state has a giant incarcerated population. Many really haven’t done terribly bad crimes. Should they punished? yes. But what’s happened is that people are incarcerated for long periods of time for relatively minor crimes, having to be exposed to hardened criminals. Too bad for them, you say? Don’t do the crime, if you don’t want to do the time? Well, yeah.

But. The issue again comes down to money. Republicans in CA came out in force on a lot of “tough on crime” ballot initiatives, but it’s Republicans who mightily resist paying taxes and constantly want them lowered. Riddle me this: how do you pay for all of these incarcerated prisoners and death row inmates without adequate taxation?

I believe that stats will bear out that it’s cheaper to incarcerate a priosoner for life than to have them on death row, even if that prisoner is ultimately murdered by the state. Republicans need to wrap their pea brains around all these unfunded mandates they come up with just to be punitive & show how “tough on crime” they are but don’t want to pay for.

There are a lot of alternative measures for dealing with criminals and others who break the law. A lot of prisoners are convicted for drug use (not drug dealing, which is a different matter). Our society and such people would be much better served with by having these offenders go through adequate drug treatment programs. Most conservatives, though, see this as being “soft” on crime (which it’s not), and whine about why should they pay for that? They don’t get that it ends up being more expensive in the long run to incarcerate drug addicts, who don’t get adequate treatment, don’t learn how to change their ways, and just end up back in the system costing taxpayers, rather than becoming productive taxpayers, themselves. Frustrating and stupid.

The so-called “pro-life” party might take a look at what it really means to be pro-life and stop murdering adults (including abortion doctors) for a change. Strong language? Yes. Unfair? I don’t think so.