Yes, the growing prison numbers are more an indication of society in free fall. The disaffected, and disillusioned who cannot maintain a job turn to drugs to numb the pain and crime to pay. A lot of this could arguably be attributed to the growing gap between the haves and have nots. When we had low unemployment and low crime we had greater productivity and our collective wealth grew as a country. Now we seem to be trying to soak up unemployment with created bureaucracy and inefficiency, with less and less productivity, and more and more overhead. These are generalisations of course and don't fit every scenario, but standing back and looking at the overall picture it is probably not too far off.
Bookmarks