241–250 of 356 posts
I thought most of you would come to conclusion that this kid did have serious problems and did make a big mistake.
He needed a slap on the wrist (that's an idiom, don't report me to the police) and a lot of community service.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been to an Africa country. A friend was almost robbed by a member of an ethnic minority. The police brought the suspect in, beat the crap out of him until he confessed. My friends were down the hall while they heard the police beat him up and heard his cries. In the 1990s during the Rwandan Genocide, neighbours turned on neighbours and a million people were hacked to death with machetes. Get real.
I hope you're not implying situations found in the Rwandan Genocide are typical in Africa.
The Comal County District Attorney's Office did not intend for Carter to suffer what happened next, Flanary says, but it was reasonably foreseeable: He was sexually assaulted. The fact that prisoners are commonly subject to sexual assault, and that this consequence is trotted out as an acceptable deterrent to crime, illustrates just how uncivilized the US prison-industrial-complex is in this, the year 2014. Failure t…
Prison in the US isn't about rehabilitation it's about punishment. No one goes to prison thinking they're going to come out as a better person with a new outlook on life. They're going to come out war-torn and barely above functional with little to no prospects.
If there's a single way to spur the economy it would be to close down many of these prisons, and reprogram the law enforcement goal of populating them.
The Comal County District Attorney's Office did not intend for Carter to suffer what happened next, Flanary says, but it was reasonably foreseeable: He was sexually assaulted. The fact that prisoners are commonly subject to sexual assault, and that this consequence is trotted out as an acceptable deterrent to crime, illustrates just how uncivilized the US prison-industrial-complex is in this, the year 2014. Failure t…
"He definitely was not kept safe, " Flanary says. "And that's why it's not good to have innocent 18-year-old [guys] in jail with very, very dangerous people."
The implication being that it's okay for guilty people to be raped. Or older people. The state of our prisons is a class action civil rights case waiting to happen.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> America is pretty good -- don't anecdotes from the internet says deter you. It's not merely anecdotes; there's plenty of hard data. The US locks up more people in absolute numbers than any country in the world, including China, which has 4 times the population and a totalitarian government. Per capita, the only countries with more inmates are a handful of tiny Carribean islands, I believe. Law enforcement is struct…
Fun fact: the USSR under Stalin and the gulag incarcerated fewer people than does the contemporary United States. http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2109777...
>Over all, there are now more people under 'correctional supervision' in America--more than 6 million--than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height
Oh wow, really? Maybe the USSR never surpassed it because people kept fucking dying in the Gulag.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh fuck off, you obviously haven't been to half of these states, especially considering you dumped New Mexico into a list with Mississippi. How that would ever make sense is beyond me. What would you even be fearing? Burritos and Barbeque?
I wouldn't fear anything. But I'm white. If I were not white? I'd fear the corrupt cops, the corrupt legal system, and the corrupt banking system to name a few.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Wow, I didn't realise US police were that bad. You didn't? Stories about attrocious behaviour by US police, and the sorry state of the US prison system, not to mention the fact that the US locks up more people than any other country in the world, have received a lot of attention here and elsewhere. To me, the worst one was the prison that bribed a judge to convict more children.
So one story of the justice system going wrong in the USA means the whole system is systemically corrupt? By this thinking I hope neither of you drive a car to work every day. You'll really be afraid of the risks with that one.
Wow, I didn't realise US police were that bad. After reading this I don't think I could ever feel safe enough to visit the US. Sounds like you'd have a better chance of getting justice in an African dictatorship where at least the dont-rape-me bribe would be affordable. Tourists really should be warned about this, because it's not the image the US tourist boards present to us at all.
In fairness, as an EU citizen, I'd say most justice systems the world over are just shit. Sure, the rich and connected will get all sorts of rights and protections, but if you are Mr. Nobody (and worse, you were not born and bred in the specific area where you're being accused) then some sort of abuse is almost guaranteed. Look at the news in places like UK, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Canada: people "spontaneousl…