There are many feral young adults in prison for drugs offenses. Because of this the crime rate is lower than it otherwise would be. There seems to be a push now to release these ferals because the punishment is said to be far more severe than the crime warrants. While I agree with this argument, I expect that if enacted the crime rate will rise.
Re #3 and #4 and schools
It is impossible for any sentient human to be religiously, culturally, and politically neutral. Such a state of neutrality can not exist in the mind of any human. This is true for schools as well. Our nation's compulsory K-12 socialist-entitlement schools have **never** been neutral and are **not** now religiously, politically, or culturally neutral. They are, and always have been, a First Amendment and freedom of conscience abomination.
My suggestion to turn all of our nation's K-12 socialist-entitlement schools into charters, and establish vouchers and tax credits. The goal should be eventually complete privatization of all schooling from pre-K through to the highest levels of university graduate school with charity supporting the poorest. If we had tax exemptions equal to the true cost of raising a child, educating a child should not be a financial problem for most parents.
Only in a private school can the politically incorrect teaching and consequences that both the children and their parents need be dished out in heaping shovelfuls. It is impossible for any government school to do this.
Agreed on the druggies. The media likes to pretend prisons are full of little angels who smoked a joint once but didn’t inhale. BS. In reality few make it to real prison except hard core offenders with long criminal careers and many chances blown. Many drugs-only convictions result from plea-bargaining, where the hard-to-prosecute serious charges are abandoned; the sentencing guidelines are not oblivious to this. Cutting sentences for possession without ending plea-bargaining would definitely increase crime and victimization.
The object of public schools is to provide employment and benefits to union members; children are the subjective justification for their ride. Breaking the stranglehold of leftist unions on public schools through vouchers, charter schools, and laws against collective bargaining is fine with me, though the overall problem goes beyond schools. Children have to learn responsibility and values from their families long before school age; it is very hard to fix feral habits once ingrained. Feeding the current problem is that too many progenitors are incompetent, disengaged, amoral morons, who lack the wits to demand quality results from any sort of school. Herding feral children into Charter Schools will undermine Charter Schools. I’m getting more pessimistic the more I think about this.