Here's something to ponder...

[Mary]

Here's a couple of question's for you all. There's no right or wrong answers, just asking for opinions.

Question # 1

Why is it that in recent years, some people who intend to commit suicide now feel they have to take innocent lives with them???

I never heard of this when I was growing up....now that's a weekly occurrence it seems.

Question # 2;

Is there hope for mankind?

Mary

[jimpres]

Question 1, Nothing has changed except that there is better reporting the news and with the increase in population the same percentage will produce more incidents like this.
Question 2. I will leave that to the philosophers.

[Jaga]

Hello Mary,

***Why is it that in recent years, some people who intend to commit suicide now feel they have to take innocent lives with them???***

this is sad but true. I guess, nobody likes to die alone. They are ready to leave a statement behind and this statement is many other lives lost.
I think, it is also too easy to get a gun to these teens. We did not have any easy access to guns at all in Poland. Without a gun, it is just harder to kill so many

+++Is there hope for mankind?+++

could you be more specific? Some countries and organizations justify their violent actions (see Hamas, Israel, wars) for a good cause but they bring lots of deaths. So what is good for some is evil for others.

[Jaga]

here is interesting article, which relates to the fact that in the US there is more people in prisons than ever before. Should we not use prevention rather?


US Spends 6 Times More on Prisons than Education

For the first time in history, more than one in every 100 American adults is in jail or prison, according to a new report tracking the surge in inmate population and urging states to rein in corrections costs with alternative sentencing programs.

The report, released Thursday by the Pew Center on the States, said the 50 states spent more than $49 billion on corrections last year, up from less than $11 billion 20 years earlier. The rate of increase for prison costs was six times greater than for higher education spending, the report said.

Using updated state-by-state data, the report said 2,319,258 adults were held in U.S. prisons or jails at the start of 2008 — one out of every 99.1 adults, and more than any other country in the world.

The steadily growing inmate population “is saddling cash-strapped states with soaring costs they can ill afford and failing to have a clear impact either on recidivism or overall crime,” said the report.

Susan Urahn, managing director of the Pew Center on the States, said budget woes are prompting officials in many states to consider new, cost-saving corrections policies that might have been shunned in the recent past for fear of appearing soft in crime.

“We’re seeing more and more states being creative because of tight budgets,” she said in an interview. “They want to be tough on crime, they want to be a law-and-order state — but they also want to save money, and they want to be effective.”

The report cited Kansas and Texas as states which have acted decisively to slow the growth of their inmate population. Their actions include greater use of community supervision for low-risk offenders and employing sanctions other than re-imprisonment for ex-offenders who commit technical violations of parole and probation rules.

rinf.com/alt-news/contributions/general/us-spends-6-times-more-on-prisons-than-education/2600/