CRUEL and UNUSUAL or, Getting Screwed Twice by the Justice [sic.] System

Were a judge to sentence a prisoner to ten years of beatings, humiliation and rape, we'd be outraged!  Yet we send first-time 20-somethings holding small quantities of drugs for personal use to prison for ten years... which is exactly the same thing.

How can we expect people to come out of prison better than they went in when half of them will leave sadists and the others victims of mental and physical torture, the effects of which may be as permanent and that done by turning the sadist half loose on the public after 10 years of frustration and practice.  On top of that, the exiting prison population has an AIDs rate 2.5 time the general population, now released into our communities.

First, one may be screwed by the system... but who then wants to be screwed by the big guy in the cage with you?  My contemplation, were I sentenced to prison (not an impossibility as Durbin of IL wants to move Gitmo to the middle of our country (he's holding up funding the US Cmn. on Human Rights to get his pork (How convenient now that the penumbra of legislation to enable LEOs to designate US citizens "terrorists" (It's off to GITMO IL you go!))), would center upon the mercy of death and how to achieve it.