Question: Could Rand call on Obama to pardon non-violent drug offenders?

[Kotin]

nope. pick your battles.

 

[tod evans]

It wasn't the OP that I replied to. I quoted the person I was responding to.

My mistake..:o

 

[jkob]

I think the drug war is fertile ground but calling to release prisoners right now is a bridge too far at this time.

 

[AgentforPathfinder]

There is no Republican base.

 

[Root]

I would love to see for one politician to start calling for the release of non-violent drug offenders. This is a little old but the numbers are mind numbing.

Victimless Crime Constitutes 86% of The Federal Prison Population | Libertarian News

In other words, 1 in 42 Americans is under correctional supervision. This constitutes over 2% of the entire U.S. population. That percentage jumps up drastically if we limit the comparison to working aged adult males, of which there are around 100 million. Over 5% of the adult male population is under some form of correctional supervision, alternatively stated, 1 in 20 adult males are under correctional supervision in the U.S.

According to 2006 statistics, 1 in 36 adult Hispanic men are behind bars, as are 1 in 15 adult black men. If we limit the data to black males between the ages 20 to 34, 1 in 9 are behind bars. Keep in mind that 86% of those men in federal prisons are there for victimless crimes. They have not stolen any property, damaged any property or harmed anyone directly by their actions. Of course, if you are reading this and live in the US, you are paying for all those people to subsist on a daily basis. Roughly 34% of all prisoners in the U.S. are incarcerated for victimless crimes.

Slavery didnt go away, they just found a better way to hide it.

 

[whoisjohngalt]

I really haven't seen this. Most Evangelicals I've talked to are against this. Granted, I'm for it, but I'm one of the few that I've seen.

Pat Robertson came out in favor of "legalization" (aka regulation) of marijuana and he is old school evangelical. I think that most Americans, including evangelicals, are starting to understand the costs far outweigh the benefits especially from a humanitarian perspective.

This is the kind of issue you want to avoid until after you have secured the nomination, but that is gold when campaigning in the general if framed correctly. If you approach it from a "we have 25% of the world's inmates and only 5% of the total population, law enforcement and housing them is costly and it means dangerous criminals are going free because we don't have the money or space to house them all" angle, it has tremendous potential.

Now is certainly not the time.

 

[whoisjohngalt]

He mentioned it in his CPAC speech. I'm paraphrasing but he said, "Ask the Facebook generation if they want to imprison non-violent drug offenders and they will say NO."

Got a pretty pathetic response, so... that probably answers the question.