Locking up all of our taxpayer funds
Wisconsin Attorney Stephen Hurley added his voice to those concerned with the large price tag that comes from politicians saying they are 'tough on crime' by increasing sentencing laws every time they turn around. It is becoming more and more evident that this type of policy making is tough on taxpayers and completely divorced from reality. In a Capital Times story today:
This all comes with a huge price tag this is threatening to push too much funding for other needed programs into corrections. And too often the legislature doesn't even know how much the new laws on crime are going to cost.Hurley told the Dane County Bar Association on Tuesday that crime has declined steadily both nationwide and in Wisconsin over the past 17 years.
But during that same period, prison populations have risen steadily and the United States now has the largest prison population of any nation in the world.
Hurley argued that a generation of lawmakers, prosecutors, and judges have endorsed tougher penalties without considering the financial consequences. "There's a peculiar rule in the Legislature that no bill may be brought up without a cost estimate except for criminal laws," he said. "We have been passing bills with no notion what the cost to the taxpayers will be."Republican candidates for Attorney General Paul Bucher and J. B. Van Hollen continue to push this same type of tough on taxpayers message without thinking about how they will pay for it all. They prefer to blindly lead the taxpayers down a road we can't afford.
posted by whatsleftwi @ 4:49 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Obviously, part of the reason that crime is going down is that we are locking up recidivists. I'd presume a lot of taxpayers would be willing to pay for that.
Where does the Law and Order rant cross the Revenue Choking rant to suck all available resources into the criminal justice system?
Let's see...if crime is down...yet Wisconsin's prison population has doubled in the last 10 years...what have we been locking them up for...jaywalking? More likely just for being Black or Hispanic. Racist politicians have done a good job of making us fear terrorists, minorities, gays, etc. and legislating them out of our lives. What a shame that we chose incarceration over education!
Yes, there are some people that belong jail and taxpayers are willing to pay for that. But that is not what is clogging up the jail sytem and running up a huge price tag. It is policitians like Mr. Bucher advocating jail for every crime out there so he can look tough.
Treatment programs for non-violent offenders make them much less likely to be a repeat offender and cost less.
Taxpayers are no longer willing to pay for politicians like Mr. Bucher advocating fiscally irresponsible policies of locking up non-violent offenders because it costs a lot of money and doesn't help reduce crime.
Mr. Bucher's irresponsible website about treatment programs proves just how wrong his policies are. His website lists a drunk driver that has been arrested 11 times. Clearly, having the taxpayers paying to have that guy jailed over and over again has produced nothing but a large bill and a dangerous man on the road.
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