The only way to get this fixed (peacefully) is to raise a ruckus and get the public to fight their elected officials into Doing the Right Thing.
You can bet your ass that the number of dollars able to be rallied for this purpose is dwarfed by the incumbent interests. Further, it's trivial to say "Do you want to have your kid growing up next to an evil ~=felon=~?" and sway votes, because people are not rational above family-unit decisions.
So, understanding that it's probably a hopeless cause, the best thing you can do is support ex-felons, help them find work and learn useful skills, and vote whenever possible for anything that helps curtail or curb the police state.
That means voting for legalization of everything, full stop. That means voting for reduced surveillance powers, full stop. That means voting for less defense spending, full stop. That means voting for fewer crimes and smaller police forces, full stop. Anything else is playing into the hands of the oppressors.
Problem is, prisons like all government institutions are controlled by fads and fears and money - Senators don't do anything until votes are at stake or campaigning dollars. So nothing happens for a long time, and then Bang some extreme measure is passed to show that they care or something.
We closed the mental institutions and released folks into the general population, and that didn't work very well. Closing the prisons would be worse, because some of the people in there actually mean to do us harm.
You can bet your ass that the number of dollars able to be rallied for this purpose is dwarfed by the incumbent interests. Further, it's trivial to say "Do you want to have your kid growing up next to an evil ~=felon=~?" and sway votes, because people are not rational above family-unit decisions.
So, understanding that it's probably a hopeless cause, the best thing you can do is support ex-felons, help them find work and learn useful skills, and vote whenever possible for anything that helps curtail or curb the police state.
That means voting for legalization of everything, full stop. That means voting for reduced surveillance powers, full stop. That means voting for less defense spending, full stop. That means voting for fewer crimes and smaller police forces, full stop. Anything else is playing into the hands of the oppressors.