RT America: Thom Hartmann- 'No Mercy For American Convicts'

Source:RT America- Left-wing talk show host Thom Hartmann, appearing on President Vladimir Putin's Russia Today.

"RT (formerly Russia Today) is a Russian state-controlled[1] international television network funded by the federal tax budget of the Russian government.[15][16] It operates pay television channels directed to audiences outside of Russia, as well as providing Internet content in English, Spanish, French, German, Arabic, and Russian.

RT is a brand of TV-Novosti, an "autonomous non-profit organization" founded by the Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti in April 2005.[10][17] During the economic crisis in December 2008, the Russian government, headed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, included ANO "TV-Novosti" on its list of core organizations of strategic importance to Russia.[18][19][20] RT operates as a multilingual service with channels in five languages: the original English-language channel was launched in 2005, the Arabic-language channel in 2007, Spanish in 2009, German in 2014 and French in 2017. RT America (since 2010),[21] RT UK (since 2014) and other regional channels also produce local content. RT is the parent company of the Ruptly video agency,[5][6][7] which owns the Redfish video channel and the Maffick digital media company.[8][9]

RT has been described as a major propaganda outlet for the Russian government and its foreign policy.[2] Academics, fact-checkers, and news reporters (including some current and former RT reporters) have identified RT as a purveyor of disinformation[42] and conspiracy theories.[48] UK media regulator Ofcom has repeatedly found RT to have breached its rules on impartiality, including multiple instances in which RT broadcast "materially misleading" content.[55] RT's editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan compared the channel to the Ministry of Defence and stated that it was "waging an information war, and with the entire Western world".[16][56] In September 2017, RT America was ordered to register as a "foreign agent" with the United States Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.[57] RT has been banned in Ukraine since 2014,[58] and in Latvia[59] and Lithuania[60] since 2020." 

From Wikipedia

"Reeducation vs. lock-up: what's right for American convicts? In Europe authorities work to reeducate and reintegrate the prison populations. In the US however authorizes prefer to lock them up for as long as possible. Radio Host Thom Hartmann argued that historically, due to the massive size of the United States, people were viewed as disposable, whereas in Europe people were more closely connected to one another because of the denser population centers. Today the US is confronting this issue head-on as US population density increases.  The US is large and hosts at least six distinct cultures, said Hartmann, which makes reform even more challenging."

From RT America

As long as you have what's called a corrections system, then that should mean something. That if you send people to prison for years and decades at a time, but you know they are one day going to get out because they do their time and don't get additional time by avoiding committing more felony's in prison, then we should make the term and system and corrections system actually mean that.

Otherwise we no longer have a corrections system, but a prison system or a human warehouse system. Where we just send people way to warehouse them do our best to make sure their human needs are met at tax payer expense at the expense of people who work for a living. And have made good decisions with their lives and avoided going to prison. We have now approaching 2M people in the corrections system in America.

And there are several factors we have so many prison inmates: our education system isn't doing a good enough job preparing our young people for life as adults. These kids don't get the education they need to survive in life and prosper in a legal way. So they end up hanging out with the wrong crowd, organized crime getting into trouble.

If you look at our prison inmate population, maybe half of them even graduated high school, very few have even ever been to college. We don't do a very good job of rehabilitating our prison inmates or even make the effort in some cases. San Quentin Prison in California is an example of a prison that tries to rehabilitate its inmates and they've had some success. And they ned up in prison with very little if any education and leave prison with the same situation.

What we should be doing is several things: I'm not making the argument for being soft on crime, or giving convicted felons amnesty and slapping them on the hand and hoping they don't do it again. It's called crime and punishment and prison for a reason. And prison inmates need to know they are in prison and why they are there. They shouldn't feel like they are getting a free vacation or going to summer camp for free either.

But having said all that it needs to be a productive experience for, the tax payers who are putting up the bills and deserve to have some security in their lives, the prison staff to make their jobs a little less dangerous. But also for the Prison Inmates so they know why they are there and get themselves the skills that they need to avoid coming back to prison in the future, by putting an end to their criminal careers. And having the skills that they need to get a good job and live a productive life legally in the free world. Something like 2/3 of all of our prison inmates end up back in prison. About the same percentage end up being released from prison while they are still living. We can do much better with our corrections system.