What is the Cure violence program (Google this—he doesn’t explain it)?
The Cure violence program aims to stop the spread of violence in
communities by using the methods and strategies associated with
epidemic disease control: detecting and interrupting conflicts,
identifying and treating the highest risk individuals, and changing social
norms.
What are the “real costs of prisons”?
the harms that incarceration imposes on the people it locks up, their families and their
communities
Look up the word “usurious” if you don’t know what it means.
Usurious is the acts of charging illegal or exorbitant rates of interest for the use of money
What effect do prisons have on crime?
Prison doesn’t reform those nor teach a valuable lesson on those who have performed a
criminal act
What percentage of the prison population is in state prison?
90 percent
What percentage of the prison population is in federal prison?
10 percent
And what percentage of those in state prison are there for drug crimes?
15 percent
And what percentage of those in federal prison are there for drug crimes?
10 percent
Will changing how we punish drug crimes reduce the prison population? Why or why not?
What else may reduce the prison population?
Changing how drug crimes are handled could possibly reduce the prison population, those
who have been through the cure violence program and other forms of reforming are less
inclined to doing crime again once let free
According to this article, who perpetuates violence?
Those who push for more jail time (?)
What does the author mean when he says we can “treat violence in a less, well, violent
way” (bottom p.6)?
Instead of worrying about costs and the amount of money being made, putting all things
that benefit themselves can begin to truly try to reform and give people the change they
need in order to be less violent and treating them as humans whilst doing so
What is the “political nightmare” of prison reform?
Public perception and fear of crime. Many politically involved people stray away from
wanting to publicly endorse prison reform so they do not lose votes or anything such as
that.
This is the second place that John Pfaff says private prisons are not the ones that “benefit”
from incarceration; so who benefits?
“It is various public sector actors who truly benefit. About two-thirds of $50 billion we
spend on prisons— $33 billion or so—goes to the wages and benefits of prison staff.”
What is “prison gerrymandering” (you might need to look up “gerrymandering” if you don’t
know what that is).
It refers to counting the individuals who are locked up as residents of the district of where
the prison is located instead of where they are where they are actually from.
