You would not want your daughter sitting on the adjacent bench next to one of these guys in a prison cell while waiting to see a judge for jaywalking in this new get tough on crime utopia you are proposing. You would want the jail space to be available for real criminals only. Cramming a whole bunch of non violent offenders in the same room with hardened violent offenders is a pretty stupid move if the goal is to decrease crime. They cannot build enough prisons to contain all these people if they tried. People who don't belong in prison should not be in prison and people who belong in prison should be in prison. As far as corrections is concerned everybody should be in prison for anything as long as it lines their pockets with large amounts of money. The courts are the same way attorneys make a killing on legal fees and judges and political cronies have lavish salaries and work environments all paid for by average tax paying Americans.
So, you don't know much about prisons and how they operate, do ya...it's OK, most people don't. All statements below are for the Great State of Arizona only.
Your daughter will never ever be sitting next to a male inmate. Ever. Not even if the male inmate "identifies"as a female, trans, or a tulip. She will be, if an incarcerated inmate, only be housed with female inmates.
If you look at the law books you will find laws that make felons out of very ordinary people for laws we didn't even know exist. So if you want "real criminals only", better get to work with your elected officials to define what a "real criminal" is, to start with. Also, we seperate by crime if violent or not, and different custody levels based on many criteria, crime being one of them. It is highly unlikely a garden variety criminal would be housed with a murderer or rapist.
We don't have enough space? Dude we SHUT DOWN an ENTIRE unit, and are looking at closing Florence Complex completely - come see Central Unit when it gets turned in to a museum. I have stories from that place......we have plenty of space. The population is DROPPING. For example, use that link below and you can find in Jan 2018, the total population was 41,727, and in March of this year, with the most recent numbers, is 36,704.
People who don't belong in prison - same as above. Here's a great example - pot smokers. Now Arizona JUST decriminalized Maui Wowie for domestic use, but for a very long time it was illegal. So the most common thing I heard was "let out all the non violent dope smokers and we'll have lots of prison space!" This got so prevalent that ADCRR started tracking just how many we actually have, for pot only. Would you like to know? We'll go back to November of 2020, because when legalization passed, several DAs quit prosecuting. So, November of 2020, out of a total population of 38,141, we had...99 in for weed. Point three percent of the total population.
https://corrections.az.gov/sites/default/files/REPORTS/CAG/2020/cagnov-20.pdf
Corrections makes money? Not from where I am sitting - state departments SPEND money not make it, and the level of custody determines cost. IIRC, a level 1/2 is about $25K a year while a level 5 max is over $50K a year to house, feed, educate, (mandated), program, (mandated), provide health care, clothing, etc. T'ain't cheap at all. Now if you talk PRIVATE prisons, now the answer is yes - they lobby for harsher sentences for non violent crimes because lengthy stays for easy to manage inmates is what they like, makes good money for them off the state. Some states have realize prisons for profit are a bad move - we'll get there. Many of the private prisons in AZ are actually housing interstate compact inmates from Hawaii and California. They won't take anything above Level 3 medium, and they love SOs, because sex offenders tend to be both easier to manage and have longer sentences.
Attorneys DO make money on legal fees....the DEFENSE attorneys. The DA and those that work for the DA are on state paychecks. So the ones who are trying to put people IN prison are NOT the ones making bank. Judges - no idea, but you are right about one thing - the judge and the DA DO work for the same person - the governor.
Now that we covered all that, just so we can SLIDE this back to
black powder in the news, the Yuma Territorial Prison had a famous black powder firearm in the news well over 100 years ago when they used their Gatling gun to fire at escaping inmates. They missed, the escapees were recaptured, and the gun is still on display in Yuma, or so I've been told.
Moderators, sorry, but sometimes I just gotta say something, being the guy behind the wire for almost 20 years.