Oh, I'm interested. Our prison system, its unintended side effects and the money trail associated with it make me sick and it all needs to be exposed. Recent history: After the declaration of the WAR ON DRUGS Florida's prisons filled up so quickly and so over capacity that a judge ordered them to do something about it, so, at count time they would load school busses full of prisoners and drive them around the block a few times until count was over because "prisoners in t***sit" did not need to be counted. The way prisons were paid by the state to house prisoners worked like this: For every day a prisoner was good, 2 extra days were knocked off the end of his sentence so if he didn't cause trouble he ended up doing a third of his time. The prison system however, was paid for the full amount rounded up to the nearest year, so if a prisoner had a 18 month sentence he was kicked out in 6 months but the prison system was paid for 2 full years. Oh yeah! Minor drug offenders were a hot commodity then to the legal establishment! They were plentiful, relatively safe to apprehend and they were worth a boatload of taxpayer cash to wh**ever law enforcement agencies that dealt with them. Oh..and the owner of P***E Industries, the prisoner work industry which made everything from soap, to shoes to kitchen chairs and was one of Florida's larger money makers was owned by Jack Eckard who also owned the Eckard drug store chain. Incidently, he ran for governor twice. Thank God he was defeated!

It was tighter 40 years ago during the hippie days. How did that work out? It was tighter during the late 70's and early 80's when the nation went on an orgy of prison building and we became the number one locker-uppers of our citizenry in the world. In 20 years our prison population quadrupled and in some places quintupled! How has that worked out? You obviouly know nothing about prison and the way it turns relatively minor offenders into desperate criminals because if they don't go along with the real monsters who need to be in prison they get k**led. You obviously can't see how our current prison policy turns taxpayer money into campaign warchests for the same people who espouse the very things you cited as being wrong with the country. I hope you get satisfaction from arguing about minute, petty little details. it will keep you distracted while we go broke and anarchy takes over the streets.