ry. Today we are trading higher education and essential community services for the security of knowing that we have incarcerated millions of those who break our laws; mostly non-violent drug laws.

Public humiliation and shaming were used often and usually the more severe punishment was whipping. But a second motive of incarceration was to remove the offender from society to protect others, or to protect the offender from himself or others. Sex offenders and other predators were sentenced and incarcerated to separate them from the innocent, and to punish them by removing their freedom. In modern times this incarceration was to provide some form of rehabilitative treatment as well.

The need to segregate violent criminals from the rest of society is understood by most who try to solve this perplexing moral situation of crime and punishment. This non-secular approach is no exception. I believe that the driving force behind finding alternatives to incarceration are founded in this ethical approach of love, faith, and respect for all involved. It is through a caring, involved, and responsible community that we find successful and workable alternatives to incarceration particularly for the “non-violent drug” offenders who receive counseling while under probation or house arrest. Communities can deal firsthand with their wayward citizens and find restitution and retribution through supervised community service and programs. Working models have been established in the U.S. and are spreading throughout the Northeast and northern Midwestern states. This alternative to institutionalized incarceration is called “Retributive Justice”.

The purpose of incarceration has had several motives throughout history. The first and foremost, was to punish the violator of some law or custom of the society where the offense took place. However, incarceration as a punishment has always put a burden on the convening authority and in earlier times, prior to the nineteenth century, punishments were inflicted swiftly and publicly in many forms and fashions. Incarceration was only used to temporarily hold persons until their trial or hearing. This, however, sometimes took days, months, or even years!

This secular approach to our expanding prison population is based on economics while satisfying the public’s demand for safety. The politicians do not mind spending billions of dollars if the voting taxpayers are satisfied with the results. Most taxpayers have little knowledge of what really is taking place within the criminal justice system. As for safeguarding law-abiding citizens from violent sociopaths, even with the dramatic increase in prison populations, “the proportion of offenders being sent to prison each year for violent crimes has actually fallen during the prison boom.”6 This approach by our government feels that it is taking moral responsibility to protect the freedom of those law-abiding citizens while following human reasoning and science in how it deals with maintaining law and order. We feel that we have to take a reasonable approach in protecting ourselves from the unlawful with respect for all concerned, but this approach fails in many areas of human rights and the

Some topics in this essay:
Industrial Complex, Provincial Conventions, Head Start, Insurance Association, Vietnam War, African Americans, Complex” PIC, Singapore Netherlands, Supreme Court, PIC Texas, justice system, criminal justice, criminal justice system, crime rate, prison population, crime rates, motive incarceration, law enforcement, local law enforcement, political leaders, tough crime, forty-two dollars, tough crime policy”, dollars day prisoner,