Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers • Hacker News Board

Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

#211

Post by jisaacstone » Wed, May 20, 2015, 4:34 PM UTC

seiji wrote: post #148

pessimizer wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

African-American males are 0.25% of the world's population, but 10% of the world's prisoners.

White males are [X percent of the world population], but like 99% of the world's billionaires. Success and punishment aren't evenly distributed due to innate corruption/advantages built into The System. How do we fix inequality? Companies run american prisons now, companies control elected officials, and voters are manipulated by basic psychological tricks to keep voting against their own interests (vote GOD, not bas…

OK I feel compelled to tell you that the 99% white billionare thing is incorrect. USA does have the most billionares but they are not all white and also China is currently in the #2 spot with India in #4.

Also if you are referring to the proplem of private prisons I do agree it's probably not a good thing but since less than 1/5 of prisons are privately run I don't think it is the main cause of the problem.

Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

#212

Post by CPLX » Wed, May 20, 2015, 4:35 PM UTC

lsniddy wrote: post #198

CPLX wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes these things happen. They should not happen. But they happen in most counties --even homogenous countries. What homogenous countries with a comparable level of economic wealth have situations that even remotely resemble our mass incarceration and drug war policies?

China is a good example, though they incarcerate less and execute more

A quick glance at the stats suggests the U.S. incarceration rate is approximately 5x higher than China's. That's a big difference.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcerat...

Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

#213

Post by darkroasted » Wed, May 20, 2015, 4:35 PM UTC

beat wrote: post #205

darkroasted wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think it's random happenstance that urban blacks get arrested for experimenting with drugs in a way that suburban whites do not? It's more complicated than that. Police are actually much more tolerant of open-air/street corner drug-dealing in black ghetto neighborhoods than in suburbia. If you read books or news articles about these neighborhoods, you see that the dealing gets ignored for months and mon…

Do you really think things are different in wealthier communities because they "self-police"? Calling the police in a poor neighborhood is dangerous business... not because of gang retaliation, but because of the police themselves. And as you observe, the police generally do nothing about street dealers, and what they do is ineffectual. So why even bother calling them?

Well, in a "wealthy" community, generally the police are members of the community. They live nearby, go to the same schools, etc. So all policing in a sense is self-policing. There is much less of a sense of the police being the "other", and vice versa, the police have less of sense that the population is all "others" and all "savages". When you are an outside police force, you only deal with the criminals, so you it becomes your sense that the entire community is criminal.

Also, I put "wealthy" in scare quotes, because this dynamic also applies to areas like Chinatown or the Hasidic Jew communities of Brooklyn. These communities are not rich, but have low crime rates and rarely involve the police in their disputes, they mostly take care of problems using internal social sanctions.

More generally, "self-policing" means problems are nipped in the bud early before they escalate to crimes requiring the police, and never have a chance to escalate to murders and retaliation killings. Most "policing" is taken care of by families and parents. Growing up, it was normal for one parent to complain to another parent about the behavior of the second parent's child, and the second parent to enforce discipline on their own children. I cannot remember a single time in my neighborhood where we had to call the police on a neighbor. I cannot actually recall a single instance of crime, such as burglary.

Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

#214

Post by beat » Wed, May 20, 2015, 4:36 PM UTC

ctdonath wrote: post #115

lars wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The drug war is part of it. But the big thing to fix is income inequality. High income inequality is correlated with higher homicide rate, higher robbery rate, lower civic participation, higher mortality, lower social cohesion and lower well-being in children. So many social problems are strongly predicted by this variable, yet many refuse to consider inequality to be a problem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_…

Many consider inequality a symptom/consequence of one's own chosen behavior, not a cause. (ETA "chosen behavior" clause.)

It's usually people who have never been poor that think that.

(I've been poor. I don't think that.)

Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

#215

Post by CPLX » Wed, May 20, 2015, 4:37 PM UTC

rmxt wrote: post #165

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't assume bad intentions. I used to think that there is a strong racial component, simply because it matched my everyday experiences. Only after I started traveling more did my opinion change - I'm now pretty sure that its mostly cultural. Your previous reply sounded a lot like those "you are not allowed to say this" stuff that does a lot of harm, because it suffocates discourse. So thanks for posting a factual fo…

Thank you for the reminder. I genuinely am not trying to suffocate discourse and I am interested in engaging in conversation, but I have no qualms about pointing out disingenuous or deceptive pseudo-discourse when I see it. Posting a link to a study that mentions testosterone in a different medical context, and using it to justify to racist institutions is, IMO, inflammatory and dishonest to say the least.

It's actually easier not to engage with racist trolls[0] at all, you're not likely to change anyone's mind.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9576895

Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

#216

Post by beat » Wed, May 20, 2015, 4:38 PM UTC

j_m_b wrote: post #159

CPLX wrote: post #48

There's all this discussion of these issues, which relate to racism, economic issues, police brutality, crime, etc. They seem complicated and nuanced and people throw their hands up and say well what can we do. The answer to that question is actually so simple you can say it in four words: End the drug war. Someone far more eloquent than me, The Wire creator David Simon, can flesh that out a little: http://www.washin…

Few in the media have the courage to state the obvious, end the drug war. A call for the end of the drug war irritates too many governmental and private sector interests and points the finger on exactly what is to blame. Bringing up racism, economic issues, police brutality, crime, etc. allows the blame to be spread, appeals to popular sensibilities and muddles the real issue.

I think you have the causality backwards. We have a drug war because we have racism. We don't have racism because we have a drug war. Look up the history of the heroin and marijuana laws... it's depressing.

Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

#217

Post by crpatino » Wed, May 20, 2015, 4:38 PM UTC

ctdonath wrote: post #115

lars wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The drug war is part of it. But the big thing to fix is income inequality. High income inequality is correlated with higher homicide rate, higher robbery rate, lower civic participation, higher mortality, lower social cohesion and lower well-being in children. So many social problems are strongly predicted by this variable, yet many refuse to consider inequality to be a problem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_…

Many consider inequality a symptom/consequence of one's own chosen behavior, not a cause. (ETA "chosen behavior" clause.)

That is a falsifiable statement, you know.

Is there any statistic to show what percentage of today's top 1% earners where born to a bottom 50% family from the previous generation, and viceversa? If less than what you would expect from two non-correlated random variables, this suggest where you start in life has an effect of how far you can go. This does not invalidate your hypothesis, but may suggest that upwards mobility takes more than one generation to lift people from poverty to wealth.

Further more, we can do the same analysis to figure out how many people from bottom 50% families grow to reach 75% percentile or above. I do not know what it would be, but if much lower than expected, that would suggest that upwards mobility is quite limited, invalidating your hypothesis.

Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

#218

Post by beat » Wed, May 20, 2015, 4:41 PM UTC

Bostonian wrote: post #60

CPLX wrote: post #48

There's all this discussion of these issues, which relate to racism, economic issues, police brutality, crime, etc. They seem complicated and nuanced and people throw their hands up and say well what can we do. The answer to that question is actually so simple you can say it in four words: End the drug war. Someone far more eloquent than me, The Wire creator David Simon, can flesh that out a little: http://www.washin…

Legalize which drugs? Only marijuana, or also crack, heroin, or LSD? If a certain drug causes brain damage and makes its users invalids, who will support them? I think a cost-benefit analysis needs to be done for each drug.

Alcohol? If you did that kind of analysis, you'd be banning alcohol ASAP. Tobacco too.

LSD is effectively non-toxic. It's not addictive. It's less likely to make people do something dangerously stupid than alcohol, which kills thousands in drunken accidents every year. Marijuana is also non-toxic, and generally makes people cautious rather than risk-prone.

Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

#219

Post by rhino369 » Wed, May 20, 2015, 4:43 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #80

Bostonian wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Empirically, crime rates do depend on race, not just class. It's not crazy to recognize reality.

detected crime rates depend on race. That's not surprising when institutional racism creates a system focused on criminalising black people.

Look at murder rates that are harder to overlook. The murder rage amongst black men is about 8-10x more then white men.

Obviously historical racism is the huge cause here. But you cannot just write off the crime rates due to different policing.

Poor Black neighborhoods are simultaneously over and under policed. Gangs and criminals have free reign and then cops capriously make a show of force.

Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

#220

Post by beat » Wed, May 20, 2015, 4:45 PM UTC

darkroasted wrote: post #213

beat wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think things are different in wealthier communities because they "self-police"? Calling the police in a poor neighborhood is dangerous business... not because of gang retaliation, but because of the police themselves. And as you observe, the police generally do nothing about street dealers, and what they do is ineffectual. So why even bother calling them?

Well, in a "wealthy" community, generally the police are members of the community. They live nearby, go to the same schools, etc. So all policing in a sense is self-policing. There is much less of a sense of the police being the "other", and vice versa, the police have less of sense that the population is all "others" and all "savages". When you are an outside police force, you only deal with the criminals, so you it…

This problem, applied racially, leads to an uncomfortable question. If black communities are less effective than white communities at "self-policing", why is that? Is it because of externally imposed social structure issues (the consequences of racism), or is it because of internal nature (blacks are less intelligent and moral than whites)?

You have to start with this raw, painful question. Either you argue for racial inferiority, or you acknowledge that the problems are truly from external rather than internal sources. Once you acknowledge that, complaining about "self policing" sounds like blaming the victim, because it is.