111–120 of 265 posts
Maybe I shouldn't post this online, but this is one of my biggest fears. Just, being trapped somewhere, alone with your thoughts, with nothing to do. After reading The Jaunt by Stephen King, I was on edge for a day or two afterwards.
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The problem is that the general population is very removed from the prison system and inmates in general so they don't see the long-term effects. So when someone is 'locked up' for a long time they view that as redemption for their or someone else's suffering. So being 'soft on crime' would be viewed as taking away those victims vindication. (I'm not saying I agree with this, but I have just noticed through general c…
The problem isn't so much that the general population is so far removed, it's that the victims are so closely connected. Why's an outsider gonna stand up for a rapist or a murderer when they've got their own problems and the victims will never forget nor will they stand down. You can't get upset at the victims for that, it's very natural. I have empathy for some prisoners and a family member was according to him unfa…
A moment of too much passion, a stupid firstandlast time drug trip, money troubles and "normal people"-addictions- yes, perfectly normal people commit perfectly normal crimes. All the time. Some of them even have company.
Normal crime is just not reported, because nobody wants to hear about how the neighbourhood they moved too- is not so nice after all.
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The politicians know that the media can take one criminal act and magnify it to the most important incident of the decade. The most prominent example of this was the Polly Klaas murder in California in the early 90s. This one criminal act was magnified to the level of a major terrorist attack and kicked off three strikes and a major prison building and imprisonment boom that lasted two decades. It also led to a wave…
The media are responding to their own incentives, you might as well pass the blame again onto the readers/watchers. It's a structural problem, no one group is to blame. I'd say one major factor is the US seems to be mostly devoid of a shame/duty based culture. People need to be driven to act within generalizable moral codes across the whole society. The idea that if the market supports it and it is within the law the…
I don't even know how to start. The US present themselves as paragons of freedom, and then they blatantly violate every kind of basic human right.
They also point fingers and lip service democracy globally, while having their bases all around the globe, meddling with sovereign countries abroad, helping topple legitimate governments, and funding / being cozy with all kinds of scum, from Suharto and the Shah, to Pinochet and the saudis (not to mention arming and befriending half of today's militant islamists, including the celebrated in the 80s Taliban). But that…
Would you rather have Putin or China run the show?
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They also point fingers and lip service democracy globally, while having their bases all around the globe, meddling with sovereign countries abroad, helping topple legitimate governments, and funding / being cozy with all kinds of scum, from Suharto and the Shah, to Pinochet and the saudis (not to mention arming and befriending half of today's militant islamists, including the celebrated in the 80s Taliban). But that…
But that wasn't always the deal. The US up until 1900 was not the top dog. Yeah, the US has a lot of flaws that need to be reformed, but that doesn't make it any different than any more country in history, it makes it exactly like them. It's not an American problem, it's a human problem. When we understand that and stop pointing we'll all be better off.
Of course. The British Empire, for one, did the finger pointing and "white man's burden" hypocrisy back in the day.
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Best. Response. Ever. /s
It seemed appropriate, given the inanity of the parent comment. The United States: a human-rights-abusing farce of a country that is such a hellhole that over a million people from other countries legally immigrate to it every year, half that number are estimated to illegally immigrate to it annually, and the country's judicial system takes a stance to prevent its President from stemming the tide of inbound visitors…
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You're absolutely right. Looking for a solution here, the central problem with the US prison system seems to be the incentive structure. Private prisons are paid based on how many inmates they have. Prisons are therefore incentivized to keep people as long as possible, and ensure that if a convict is ever released, that person commits another crime quickly and winds up back in prison. Instead, what if the state paid…
Private prisons have serious issues, but public ones have issues as well; often they are underfunded, which allowed the private company world to get involved to offer a service for cheaper costs. I would suggest the solution is properly around the question of the willingness of the US taxpayer to adequately fund the government services.
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>Recidivism rates in the US show it is objectively not working, with state prisons leaving inmates to re-offend 76% of the time. [1] In Norway, much derided for their lavish prisons, it's 20%. [2] You can spin this and say that American criminals need to be locked up because they just cause more crime in general. Some see that 76% figure and conclude prison makes them worse. Others see it and think, well these are th…
I'll give you this is a correlation-causation situation. That said, I see little reason to believe that intrinsic to being American is that 1% of the population should be in prison and of them 75% will have another go at it, when both these numbers dwarf the rest of the developed world.
America is sort of unique in that we have very strong rule of law but also have relatively high crime.
Also those recidivism rates you cited are apples and oranges. The US rate includes rearrest and the Norway is re-imprisonment.
This https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4472929/table/p... attempt at apples to apples suggets the US is 36% compared to Norway's 20%. That's a big difference but other western nations are higher than evne ours. Canada, France, Netherlands, Germany, etc. all have similar recidivism rates.
The Scandinavian countries just have very little trouble makers it seems.
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I always found the faith in the revered interpretations of some constitutional document written centuries ago, and the respect for the "Founding Fathers" not as historical figures, but as some kind of guiding lights for today, totally bizarro. Even the name "Founding Fathers" and the way it's thrown around seems quite bizarre for a democracy. It's the people, and the will of the people, that should be respected, not…
The Constitution isn't just a historical document, it's the law. It's certainly open to change by the will of the people, and it defines a process for doing so, which has been used seventeen times. It's not the only law we interpret this way, considering the intent of the people who created it; courts do the same with laws passed by Congress.
But in public discourse, it's not treated as a mere law, something humans created, and they could toss if they like, but as some kind of holy scripture given by some wise old men.
The prison system is a crazy, privatized torture system designed to keep the poor incarcerated to increase profits for all the contract work related to running the prison system. Rikers is a great example of a clearly flawed jail system, with inmates getting stuck for years without trial and sometimes killing themselves after losing hope. Having recently gone through the judicial system as a white male, I can't image…