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Originally Posted by ClarkNasty
I'm not as sold as many people might be after reading this.
Whist reading I was thinking "Man if only we could get someone in a position of power who understand the problem this well. Oh wait."
While it's certainly a step in the right direction to have a sitting president shine a ray of light, however small, on the egregiousness that is the US Prison State it's discouraging considering there still is an order of magnitude more inmates in Federal prison than there was when I was born. That's a 1000% increase against a population increase of ~40%.
Obama is (correctly) stating he's the first president to leave office with less people federally incarcerated than when he began and attributing it to his policy actions; but it's clear that the general trend has been a leveling off of the growth in the US prison population since 2008 both federal and state, where the Executive has very little if any affect. (Outside of the bully pulpit, which sadly O did not avail himself of imo)
IOW How about less spiking of the football about being the tallest midget and more actual reform.
Maybe we are hitting some sort of right wall the % of citizens that it's politically acceptable to jail, or, more likely imo, is budget constraints since 08 are leading to more plea deals less incarceration.
At any rate it's not obvious that his policy's had much effect. And even if we grant that they did, for someone who seemingly has a grasp on the magnitude of the problem it's super frustrating to see how little he did.
Last edited by thenewsavman; 01-06-2017 at 12:26 PM.