No Casting of Stones…

We, at the Nina Van Zandt & August Spies Society, strive to be non-judgmental. We know that a vast number of persons are incarcerated today simply because U.S. prisons comprise a lucrative industry which encourages government officials to partake in keeping them filled to capacity. With over 1.8 million people presently serving time in U.S. penetentaries, as a nation, we surpass even the People’s Republic of China in terms of the number of people who we’ve locked up behind bars, even though China has five (5) times our population.

While it is true that there are a very few truly bad people in this world — persons who ought, rightfully, to be incarcerated — nevertheless, incarceration is truly not the best answer for a great number of persons who are presently behind bars.

Many criminal acts are the culmination of the socioeconomic breakdown of family and community which occurs in America’s financially poorer neighborhoods. Well over one third of those who are incarcerated are serving time pursuant to being convicted for the crime of posession, for their own personal use, of illegal drugs. Many incarcerated persons have committed crimes born out of desperation and a perceived lack of real alternatives. The truth is, with the dismal socioeconomic state of our poorer neighborhoods, compounded by the abysmal state of our nation’s economy, and given the scarcity of real viable possibilities, many incarcerated individuals are in prison precisely because they found themselves in desperate situations in which they felt there to be no other real options.

In instances, such as these discussed above, the government’s action, of incarcerating offenders, typically does nothing to encourage or assist them to engage in self-improvement. Furthermore, incarceration does absolutely nothing to change the underlying forces that played such an instrumental and necessary role in the respective criminal acts. In such instances, the only thing that the government’s actions, of incarcerating people, tends to accomplish is to make more money for the gargantuan prison corporations.

Finally, a significant percentage of those who are incarcerated are completely or partially innocent; notwithstanding, they find themselves wrongfully convicted.

In any and all cases, incarcerated individuals have full marriage rights, guaranteed pursuant to the United States Constitution. Moreover, there is no social good that can be had by failing to give full and rightful respect to our sacred U.S. Constitution which is indispensable to the very genesis and foundation of our great nation.