>what makes you think that up to half of who is in there probably
>"shouldn't be" ...?
I don't know about half but it is true that large sectors of the prison population come from groups that weren't there in the past.
For example, many more women are put in prison in the U.S. now than ever before. One in three are there on drug charges (in federal prison it's 80%). This creates a cycle of imprisonment because most of the women in prison are, or were before they were imprisoned, primary caregivers for their children. The chances of a kid winding up in prison are greatly increased when he/she grows up with one or both parents in, or in and out of, jail.
We also incarcerate thousands of people with diagnosed mental conditions. The Los Angeles County jail system is called, by the sheriff's department itself, the largest defacto mental institution in the country.
>Twin Towers jail in central Los Angeles, which Los Angeles county
>sheriff's department calls the biggest known jail in the world, has
>become a national symbol of the crisis. About 2,000 mentally ill
>prisoners, recognizable by yellow shirts and the letter M on their
>name tags, make up almost half its intended occupants.
>
>"The more unstable they are, the higher up they are," Deputy Sheriff
>Daniel Castro said, conducting a tour of the building where the men
>are housed. "Up on the seventh floor are the most unstable."
>
>All are on medication. It was noticeable that the higher the floor,
>the slower and more sluggish the movements of the inmates. "Some
>guys, all they do is sleep all day," Mr Castro said.
>
>Many are both mentally ill and homeless, and have committed minor
>offences such as public drunkenness or vagrancy, or are awaiting
>trial. They spend most of the time lying on their bunks or watching
>television. A few read, but many are illiterate. They are allowed
>two 30-minute visits a week.
>
>"We shouldn't be running the largest de facto mental institution in
>the country," the sheriff's spokesman, Steve Whitmore, said
>yesterday. "We are doing it to the best of our ability but we just
>don't have the resources. We have to have an alternative to what is
>going on now."
>
>The sheriff, Lee Baca, says it is not the job of the police and the
>county jails to incarcerate mentally disturbed people who have
>committed only misdemeanors. He would like to see a place
>established in central Los Angeles where they could be given
>treatment and help rather than locked up.
>
>"Jails are not the appropriate place for the mentally ill," he said
>yesterday, adding that the problem had been at "crisis emergency"
>level for some time.
>
>Nationally the problem is growing. There were at least 283,000
>inmates classified as mentally ill in 2000, according to the justice
>department.
>
>It was exacerbated by the closure of many mental institutions under
>the "care in the community" policy introduced in the 80s during
>Ronald Reagan's presidency. (A similar policy was introduced in the
>UK around the same time.)
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0303-09.htm