We are throwing people in jail for missing speeding ticket payments. We are throwing people in jail for small amounts of marijuana. We are allowing courts to tear apart homes and ruin lives because Americans have turned a blind eye to courts' jurisdiction and reach. The root cause for much of the issues in inner cities is broken home life. Many fathers of the current generation of kids, have been thrown in jail for years because of small-time marijuana or for having an unpaid fine snow-ball and turn into a serious warrant. We need to focus on hitting the serious felonies harder and helping rehabilitate small time offenders that just made a mistake. See, misdemeanor means that you had a lapse in judgement in which you would otherwise have made the correct decision in a given situation. Felonies, like murder, are usually committed by people with criminal intent. So why is it that a person who is on their 3rd marijuana possession charge can go to jail for life, but a man who molests his daughter can be out in 6months? Our justice system doesn't fit the 21st Century, and we need bills passed and laws enacted to protect the everyday citizen of today. Also, get rid of this for-profit prison system that benefits off of being 90%+ full thus enticing law-enforcement of the such to favorably influence a jail/prison sentence. If we get mad about a kid being discriminated in school for making a clock, then we should surely care just as strongly about a poor man being put in jail because he can't afford to pay the fine.

Aside from the ethical and moral dilemma with our current justice structure; the economical impact is heavy. For every man and woman you put behind bars that is money from tax-payers spent to house them, in which all the remaining funds are absorbed by the entity housing the inmate. So because a person misses a speeding ticket; they can go to jail for 30 days, lose their job, possibly lose their kids/home/car/assets/relationships all because of one mistake that can easily be reconciled outside of a jail sentence.