If you have ever played the game MONOPOLY you know the phrase GO TO JAIL!!!

Seems pretty harmless part of the popular game.

But in the real world, jail is anything but harmless. In fact, jail-time is causing billions of dollars of damages to the country!

It works like this…The United States has the highest prison population in the world (see chart below).

1 in every 31 adults facing probation (in prison or outside of prison) or on parole.

Courtesty Wikipedia

The problem is… prisons aren’t working well. These “correctional” institutions are not correcting the inmates as many return to crime upon release.

Writer Adam Serwer found the large prison population is costing the economy big time.

“US economy los[t] the equivalent of 1.5 to 1.7 million workers…but there was also a national $57 billion to $65 billion loss in productivity and output”

Clearly, the answer isn’t to just “let criminals go,” but there is some validity to rethinking our prison system as a whole.

Non-violent offenders, including “financial fraudsters” (as Andrew Sullivan puts it), could serve an alternative sentence of sorts, giving up their assets, doing community service, and operating under a curfew. This way, these non-violent criminals would not need to be a burden on the state.

Maybe this is something we should stop to think about. What do you think? Are there better alternatives for these non-violent offenders or the prison system as a whole?