PowerCycle

What is the point? How on Earth did this method of incarceration even come about? The more I read about this the more pissed off I get. The thing that pisses me off is that kids are being sucked into this disaster Bolivia calls a prison system. They have enough problems as it is living here and someone thought it would be a good idea to let them grow up in prison with their parent(s)? Proponents of this system say, “At least it keeps the family together…”. Well, that’s freaking retarded. Kids shouldn’t grow up in a prison! Period.

So why are kids having to grow up in prison? Drugs of course (and because there are inadequate social programs to support families with no income). 80% of the inmates are in there for drug related offenses. If I was running a country and I saw that 80% of the people I had locked up in jail (with their kids!) were in there for the same thing I’d start to wonder if maybe there was a problem. In this case a problem like maybe the thing they are in there for shouldn’t be illegal or certainly that putting them in prison wasn’t the right solution. If people in North America and Europe want to space out and forget all their 1st world problems (OMG Kate Plus 8 was cancelled!!!) then why should people in Bolivia suffer because of it?

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this out. Growing coca is profitable and hard to compete with due to difficult access farmers have to existing alternatives, the lack of credit and capital and an insufficient development of commercialization mechanisms. 30% of the population live in poverty (less than $2 a day). What the hell else are they going to do so they don’t starve?

It would be nice if people in “developed” countries could get off their couches for a few minutes and at least get something legalized that would do some good for someone besides themselves. There are 119 MILLION users of illicit drugs in the United States. The fact that they still allow their private lives to be controlled, even after all the reasons for making certain narcotics illegal have been proven to be stupid, racist or just wrong, is pretty sad.

Oh, and as far as the foreign tourists that take tours of San Pedro prison, I think they are scum. What kind of person takes advantage of a corrupt system just to have vacation memories of seeing poor people locked up for something they or their country likely contributed to?