Georgia rethinks its prison stance

[mrveggieman]

Your thoughts

http://www.ajc.com/news/georgia-poli...n-1286727.html

[Star_Cards]

I'm all for alternatives to prison especially for non violent crimes or other major type crimes. Seems like there could be some success in rehabbing lots of people that are sitting in jail.

[duane1969]

First step should be legalizing merijuana. That alone would cut prison populations by a big chunk. Then stop putting people in prison for stupid stuff like unpaid parking tickets. Follow that up with alternative punishment for non-violent offenders and you will have a vastly reduced prison population.

[Star_Cards]

I think they could keep marijuana illegal and still adjust the prison populations. I don;t really have an opinion about it being legal or not, but I think if it's under a certain amount it should just be a finable offense, if it's not a regular things for an individual.

I don't believe that you can just say that certain offenses are not jailable. True it sounds absurd that someone would be in jail for parking tickets, but at some point if the person racks up enough of them there has to be a punishment since he's obviously not paying the fines.

[duane1969]

I think they could keep marijuana illegal and still adjust the prison populations. I don;t really have an opinion about it being legal or not, but I think if it's under a certain amount it should just be a finable offense, if it's not a regular things for an individual.

I don't believe that you can just say that certain offenses are not jailable. True it sounds absurd that someone would be in jail for parking tickets, but at some point if the person racks up enough of them there has to be a punishment since he's obviously not paying the fines.

How about simply garnishing their wages until the tickets are paid and slapping them with a few hundred hours of community service?

And if they have like 300 unpaid parking tickets then somebody at city hall needs to explain how they overlooked all of those unpaid tickets for all of that time.