The truth about the Government

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In the states

There's a problem with race

Because of ignorant past burned fires

From evolution

We've been killing each other

I figure man should have it down to a science

No chance

Not for a minute

Not for a second

I won't be defensive

I'm straight out in my opinion

You'd better listen to a man who knows what he is saying

I've seen your side

You run and hide for the mere fact that you feel inferior

Be superior

And know your interior

Race, pride, prejudice

Black man, white man

No stand

Live in the past

We make it last

A hated mass

No solution

Mind pollution

For revolution

So low behold my eyes

This land of fools will rise

No good

For no one

You blame oppression and play the role of criminals

To rape and burn show progress is minimal

White hoods and militants you know it's such a pity

Living, breathing

Violence in your city

If one man

Had one home

In one world

He'd live alone without variety

Full of anxiety

No one to point at, question

Or even talk to -- in his private grave

No matter what color

He wouldn't be saved from hell

He dwells

A closed mind playing the part of prison cells

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Halls of Justice Painted Green

Money Talking

Power Wolves Beset Your Door

Hear Them Stalking

Soon You'll Please Their Appetite

They Devour

Hammer of Justice Crushes You

Overpower

The Ultimate in Vanity

Exploiting Their Supremacy

I Can't Believe the Things You Say

I Can't Believe

I Can't Believe the Price You Pay

Nothing Can Save You

Apathy Their Stepping Stone

So Unfeeling

Hidden Deep Animosity

So Deceiving

Through Your Eyes Their Light Burns

Hoping to Find

Inquisition Sinking You

With Prying Minds

The Ultimate in Vanity

Exploiting Their Supremacy

I Can't Believe the Things You Say

I Can't Believe

I Can't Believe the Price You Pay

Nothing Can Save You

Lady Justice Has Been Raped

Truth Assassin

Rolls of Red Tape Seal Your Lips

Now You're Done in

Their Money Tips Her Scales Again

Make Your Deal

Just What Is Truth?i Cannot Tell

Cannot Feel

The Ultimate in Vanity

Exploiting Their Supremacy

I Can't Believe the Things You Say

I Can't Believe

I Can't Believe the Price We Pay

Nothing Can Save You

Justice Is Lost

Justice Is Raped

Justice Is Gone

Pulling Your Strings

Justice Is Done

Seeking No Truth

Winning Is All

Find it So Grim

So True

So Real

Seeking No Truth

Winning Is All

Find it So Grim

So True

So Real

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America is an exceptional country. Compared with citizens of other nations, Americans tend to be more religious and more entrepreneurial. We send more people to university, have more millionaires, and enjoy more living space. We are the world leaders in obesity and Nobel Prizes.

And we send people to prison at a rate that is almost unheard of. Right now, almost two million Americans are either in prison (after conviction) or jail (waiting for trial). Of every 100,000 Americans, 481 are in prison. By comparison, the incarceration rate for Britain is 125 per 100,000, for Canada 129, and for Japan 40. Only Russia, at 685, is quicker to lock 'em up.

America was not always so exceptional in this regard. For the 50 years prior to 1975, the U.S. incarceration rate averaged about 110, right around rich-world norms. But then, in the 1970s, the great prison buildup began. This was a bipartisan movement. Democrats like Jerry Brown of California and Ann Richards of Texas, for example, presided over prison population booms, as did Republican governors like John Ashcroft of Missouri and Michael Castle of Delaware. Bill Clinton worried in public about rising prison populations but signed legislation, much of it Republican sponsored, that kept the figures rising. No surprise, then, that spending on incarceration has ballooned from less than $7 billion in 1980 to about $45 billion today.

Just because the U.S. is different doesn't mean it is wrong. But prison is a serious matter in a way that, say, America's inexplicable affection for tractor pulls is not. Accordingly, a number of people--social scientists, prison professionals, even a few politicians--have begun to examine how and why the U.S. sends people to prison. What they are finding, in broad terms, is that there is a substantial minority of prisoners for whom incarceration is inappropriate--and much too expensive.

Who deserves to be imprisoned is, of course, partly a question of moral values. Prison keeps criminals off the streets; it punishes transgressors and deters people from committing crimes. But it is also a question of economic values. Everyone agrees that caging, say, John Wayne Gacy is worth whatever it costs, but that locking up a granny caught shoplifting makes no sense. The question to consider, then, is not "Does prison work?" but "When does prison work?" Economics can help draw the line.

On one level, it makes sense that America imprisons more people than its peers. The U.S. has historically been more violent than Europe, Japan, or Canada--in particular, our homicide rate is well above world norms--and the public wants violent people punished while freeing society from their presence. "We are a culture that believes change is possible, that human beings can be saved," says Francis Cullen of the University of Cincinnati, who specializes in public attitudes toward crime and rehabilitation. "The dividing line is violence. That's where people start becoming unwilling to take risks."

Fundamentally, America's prison population grew because people got sick of feeling scared and elected politicians who promised to deliver freedom from that fear. Moreover, it could be argued that America had some catching up to do: From the early 1960s to the early 1970s, the violent-crime rate rose sharply while the incarceration rate actually fell. Those trends probably helped spawn the "tough on crime" mentality that has reigned since. In the 1980s lawmakers delivered mandatory minimums--statutory requirements for harsh sentences for certain offenses, mostly gun- and drug-related. In the 1990s came "three-strikes" laws, designed to target repeat felons; truth-in-sentencing legislation; and the abolition of parole in many states.

All those policies filled prisons, but not necessarily with the hardened thugs people thought they were putting away. Though there are now 400,000 more violent offenders behind bars than there were in 1980, the proportion of violent offenders in the prison population has actually fallen. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the percentage of violent offenders in state prisons has dropped from almost 60% in 1980 to 48% at the end of 1999; 21% were in prison in 1999 for property crimes, 21% for drug crimes, and the rest for public-order offenses, such as immigration, vice, or weapons violations. In the federal system, home to about 145,000 offenders, 58% are in for drug offenses (compared with 25% in 1980) and only 12% for violent crimes--down from 17% in 1990. Of the six crimes that account for the great majority of prisoners (murder, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, drugs, and sexual assault), drug offenders made up 45% of the growth from 1980 to 1996, figures Allan Beck of the BJS. Every year from 1990 through 1997, more people were sentenced to prison for drug offenses than for violent crimes.

The Land of the Free?

Here is my plan for battling violent crimes. Throw the damn switch!! You want to free up some space in our prisons, Throw the damn switch! If you are sentances to death, then death is what you recieve. As soon as you leave the sentancing room. Forget all the appeals. You had your chance, you had your trial by a jury of your peers. That is all the constitution guarantees! No where does the constitution state that it is in our (America's) best interests to continue diliberations of your guilt or innocence for years at a clip while the real victims just keep getting raped, not by you, but by the system this time! Throw the damn switch! If you rape someone and are found guilty of it, automatic castration! I'll bet that you will never have the urge to rape again! Got caught stealing? Kiss you hands goodbye! Try stealing with no hands! People in prison today do not know what hard time is. Ask Charles Manson, who spent the better part of 11 years in isolation, what hard time is. Don't waste our money or resources on these people ( i use this term loosely ). They have every opportunity to have air conditioning, cable t.v., soft matresses and pillows on the outside. When you choose to go on the inside because you can't conduct yourself civally, then you give up all those rights and luxruy's! The victim's of any crimes have no where to turn in this country to seek justice! and that is the greatest injustice of them all!

Wake up America! Free up some room. Throw the damn switch!