BuddhaTB wrote:I don't think people want to pay any more taxes than they already do.
You'd think so, but Newsweek devoted an entire issue to this issue back a few years ago, and found exactly the opposite to be true.
While giving kids something to do after school (and keeping them out of trouble) is cheaper then incarcerating them after some incident, more was being done to build facilities to incarcerate offenders.
With taxpayer support...
And yes, the fact that jails add more jobs than an after-school facility was a major mention...
You'd think that even if people don't care about these offenders, that they'd at least care about their wallet...
But the numbers didn't support that line of thinking...
One only has to read about the prison system in Texas (reported in Newsweek back in May '00) under Bush to know taxpayer money is never a factor in this. Much cheaper to run DNA tests and free non-guilty convicts that to leave them incarcerated for a crime they didn't commit...
But people feel safer knowing that someone (and, yes, quite frankly, ANYONE) has been convicted of a crime...
No one wants to ask why taxpayers aren't willing to stop crime before it happens though...
