When All Hell Breaks Loose . . .

Guest Post – Dave Webb

When the SHTF, then a lot of things are going to have to change in a hurry. We will have governments with no way to pay their bills. The chances are they are going to release a lot of people from the jails because they cannot afford to keep them.

One of those things that is going to have to change is our justice system or lack thereof.

Does anyone question why we have the most people in jail of any country in the world? I do. China has only 1/4 the number of people in jail as we do, and they are considered tyrants.

At roughly $42,000 a prisoner this amounts to a very large expense for the U.S. Governments. I refer to Federal, State, and City governments. I sort of question how they got there. The prisoners I mean.

I am not saying any one of these prisoners didn’t do something wrong, or did they?

I would like to know how much of this prison population is drug-related crime?

How much is prostitutes taken off the streets. Sometimes with fatal diseases like HIV and AIDS..

How much of this population is redeemable?

This population is not completely any one class of people in America. Though statistically, your poverty stricken population is represented by at least 60% of the people in jail. There are also doctors in this group. Doctors are human too. They make criminal mistakes and are put in jail.

Cannot make a living, on government subsistence, sometimes desperate people in need of mental health help, con artists, druggies, professional criminals (housebreakers), the list goes on and on.

That is just the people that are legitimately in jail. There is a large group of people put there by prosecutors. Some of which used very questionable legal tactics and really didn’t give a hoot whether or not the people were actually guilty. The justice system turns a blind eye to improper behavior on the part of prosectors a lot of the time. That is well documented. The question: Who watches the policemen? Deserves a much better answer than the one given by the American Justice System.

Science has come to the rescue of a few of these people with DNA testing. Over 200 people have been discovered innocent because of DNA testing and the list is growing daily. The state tries to shift away from having to pay for its mistakes by intimidation and threats of keeping these innocent people in jail. Maybe we have put the wrong group of people in jail . . .

The government loves data bases. I suggest we need a data base of all the criminals we have in our jails. I really want to know a lot more about them and why I am housing them, giving them medical care, and feeding the largest population of criminals in the world to the tune of $42,000 a year per prisoner. One clue to their behavior is their religious beliefs or lack there of.

I think a lot of these people are there to avoid working for a living. With the competition of a really bad economy, a lot of these people have given up. They deliberately get into a crime and get caught. End of responsible behavior. Everything is taken care of for them in jail.

Before we parole any one of them, I want a strict accounting of if they are likely to return to the prisons of our country once they are free. The statistics on this are not nice.

I question the way our schools prepare children to be adults. Why does a large segment of a minority group end up in jail? Could it be that they landed there because they could not cope with the living conditions on the outside. Or why does one group of teenagers think their lifespan will end before they are 25? These are kids in big cities. These kids think crime is the only way to make a living.

Then you have the lure of gangs. How many of those gang members are alive today because they were put in jail before someone killed them?

I speak here of our record of failure. The failure is we are not preparing these children to live life in the real world. The real world often doesn’t want them. They are ill prepared to cope with it. So we end up with an expensive prisoner instead.

The problem is when the SHTF the government is going to take a very hard look at the people we are supporting in prisons. How many are going to get out? No one knows. But the numbers do not look good.

When the SHTF the entire welfare system is going to have to change as well. We are going to have to support a lot more prisoners not less. When the system breaks down a lot of people are going to be caught with no way to survive. The temptation to go to jail and wait it out is very great for some of those welfare people. Maybe that is why entire prisons in our remote districts of the west have recently been built. These places are currently empty. We, as citizens, are not supposed to know about these places. A former governor and man living in Mexico recently exposed the existence of those places. I guess I would live where they could not reach me too if I exposed these prisons.

The other problem is Veterans. A lot of these veterans have been in intense combat situations over 2 or even 3 tours of duty in places that are known for harsh and cruel environments both in society and the harsh living conditions of the country. The suicide rate in this group is very high. A lot of them are dumped on society back in our world. A lot of these people are mentally bankrupt. They are not fit to return to society. So the system puts them away in jail instead of helping them to cope with life back in America. I know of people that fit this class of prisoner. These people are permanent residents of our jails. Shame on the military and shame on us for allowing this treatment of veterans! They are mentally incapable because of their service to this country. A lot of them are hopeless alcoholics. They found a way to temporarily escape. It is called alcoholic comas.

I know of one Vietnam Veteran that learned to cope. He became a devout Christian. He still has nightmares of his time in Vietnam.

We have a large group of people that really need help for one reason or another. None of them are really fit to return to society. So we put them away in prisons and hope they stay there. But the bill is coming due. The bill is $42,000 per prisoner per year. I think that number is fudged. I think it is more not less than that number. I am sure any warden in this country could tell you the real numbers.

The problem is the number of prisoners in bad times dramatically increase. With that increase, comes the problem of how to house them with less and less tax revenues to work with.

The economy will not support housing them much longer. That is the problem our government has to come up with a better solution for. I have no real solution. I am afraid. Very afraid they will simply turn them loose.