I think there are a lot of issues in the criminal justice system. There are so many cracks in the system that so many people are able to slip through. I think it is not going to work really well until we figure out how to change things for the better. We talked about the PIC in class and I was able to learn more about it. I think that since most people in jail are there because of the people who make money off of them. It's a selfish way for people to become rich easily. They can throw people in jail and take advantage of the lack of obeying labor laws in prisons. It is crazy to me because we are told prisons are used to correct wrongs that a person has done when really all they do is separate us from the problem so we no longer see it. That does not keep the problem from existing though. It is like putting a band-aid on a cut. It temporarily protects it, but it does not actually do any healing. What we need to do is solve the problems that cause people to be put in jail instead of just building more prisons and filling them up and then moving on to building the next prison. I think in the article about abolishing the PIC was most interesting to me. I liked the idea of creating more rehabs for people and providing more resources for them to get help. Drug addicts do not get the help they need in jail and it does not solve the problem of why they were in there in the first place. It just puts the problem away for a certain amount of time and then when they can no longer hold it, they let it back out into the world to only end up back in the same place later on. It is like people do not want to see people change for the better. I feel like it is just a way for people to be able to keep a "bad" part of society existing so that they feel more superior about themselves. I also think that we should decriminalize low income schools. People assume that they are going to cause problems because of stereotypes and prejudice towards typically people of color when really most of the time all we leave for them to do is follow their stereotypes. We do not leave room for people to be able to change and become more than what we say they are. If someone grows up being told that they are a criminal then almost every time they are going to believe it. I think the best thing for us to do is start by breaking many vicious cycles that exist in our culture today that keep putting more and more people in prison and allowing business and government to get rich off of them.
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