“It’s amazing: some 1.5 million able-bodied people are now enjoying free housing, free meals, television, libraries, educational services, and gymnasiums, all without working and all at the expense of the American taxpayer. All they had to do to qualify for this deal: kill, rob, or rape somebody.”

Or get caught with a couple of ounces of hemp.

What is amazing is that: (1) most people in our prison system did not kill, rob or rape anyone; (2) there are people outside our prison system who seem to think that living within it is like going to a spa.

How many million more are still robbing, raping and killing while collecting welfare? Government support of the criminal class is exactly why we must never give up our guns.

We should put the prisoners to productive work that would cover their room and board while teaching them a useful skill. The profit from the work must never exceed their room and board or it woud appear to be enslavement for the benefit of the "state". Do you remember the "state"?

Waffler, it was your liberal Supreme Court that forbids us to work the inmates without paying them at least minimum wages.

We should put men who are in prison because of rape and abuse in the same prison as women and those who have killed on a desert island with lions. As Reston said, most in prison shouldn't be there - it's a business that needs feeding.

The US imprisons more than 2 million people, the overwhelming majority of whom are non-violent political prisoners, i.e. those that have not violated the rights of anyone, for crimes in which there was no victim other than himself, and for refusing to support the fascist state. Neither the Republicans nor Democrats care one iota that habeas corpus has been suspended for nearly ten years -- they want complete arbitrary power to imprison anyone who threatens their racketeering. It costs only a little more to imprison a man than to put him through public school. The same government contractors provide the same meals to both as well as maintain similar facilities. Institutionalism is what statism is all about. PS, most of the techniques used for control in prisons and schools are straight from industrialized farming practices -- to butcher them all is simply an extra expense.

Archer, well said