Jesus Saves… $75 Dollars a Day Plus Jail Time

mclaren says:

In fact, the solution appears simple: eliminate most of the so-called “crimes” on the books in America.

Evidence shows that the vast majority of people in American prisons are there because of so-called “blue laws.” Not violent felonies, but non-crimes like “possession of a controlled substance,” “inadequate paperwork for importing orchids,” “child pornography,” and so on.

Of course my statement is bizarre and ludicrous and cannot be taken seriously. And proof seems clear: for example, the Economist article “Too many laws, too many prisoners,” 22 July 2010.

THREE pickup trucks pulled up outside George Norris’s home in Spring, Texas. Six armed police in flak jackets jumped out. Thinking they must have come to the wrong place, Mr Norris opened his front door, and was startled to be shoved against a wall and frisked for weapons. He was forced into a chair for four hours while officers ransacked his house. They pulled out drawers, rifled through papers, dumped things on the floor and eventually loaded 37 boxes of Mr Norris’s possessions onto their pickups. They refused to tell him what he had done wrong. “It wasn’t fun, I can tell you that,” he recalls.

Mr Norris was 65 years old at the time, and a collector of orchids. He eventually discovered that he was suspected of smuggling the flowers into America, an offence under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. This came as a shock. He did indeed import flowers and sell them to other orchid-lovers. And it was true that his suppliers in Latin America were sometimes sloppy about their paperwork. In a shipment of many similar-looking plants, it was rare for each permit to match each orchid precisely.

In March 2004, five months after the raid, Mr Norris was indicted, handcuffed and thrown into a cell with a suspected murderer and two suspected drug-dealers. When told why he was there, “they thought it hilarious.” One asked: “What do you do with these things? Smoke ’em?”

Teenage kids are now being arrested and charged with felonies as sexual predators and child molesters for taking nude pictures of themselves and sending ’em to their teenage boyfriends or girlfriends on cellphones. (Yes, a girl is now charged with sexually molesting herself for sending her boyfriend a nude picture of herself.)

While it may be shocking, the practice of “sexting” – sending nude pictures via text message – is not unusual, especially for high schoolers around the country.

This week, three teenage girls who allegedly sent nude or semi-nude cell phone pictures of themselves, and three male classmates in a western Pennsylvania high school who received them, are charged with child pornography.

Source: “Sexting” shockingly common among teens, CBS News, 11 Feburary 2009.

Now we have 6-year-olds handcuffed for “talking in class.”

America has completely lost any vestige of common sense. Behavior which any reasonable person recognizes as completely ordinary and normal and typical has now been felonized with massive mandatory minimum sentences and insane lifetime registration requirements.Report