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Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

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

#41

Post by a8da6b0c91d »

tim333 wrote: post #29
zo1 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point I'm making is that it's implicit that they are "not" criminals by virtue of there being such a huge discrepancy. This needs to be addressed in a clear, and concise manner instead of making sweeping generalizations about the discrepancy.

Who is 'criminal' is fairly arbitrary in many cases. Say you sell some hash to a friend. Legal in some states, can lead to 30 years in some others, generally not a huge crime in the sense of harming others.

Find me one specific example of a person in state or federal prison for small time marijuana dealing or possession. No other crimes involved. Doesn't happen.

Often, the DA will structure a plea bargain on drug or weapons posession (over a long list of more serious charges) because those are very easy to prove.

This idea that the prisons are full of good guys caught up in the system is detached from reality. Most guys doing hard time are guilty of about twenty other things that they haven't been prosecuted for.

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

#42

Post by mlrtime »

sgdesign wrote: post #4

I've been "stopped and frisked" in France before, and it didn't seem out of the ordinary at the time. I just assumed random identity checks was part of the police's job. So I wonder how other countries' laws compare to the U.S. when it comes to random checks like this. And of course, it happened maybe twice in my life, not a couple times a week.

Same thing happened to me in Bangkok. Police stopped our taxi, ordered us all out on the street, searched our pockets (presumably for drugs) and then let us go.

The taxi driver made no indication that it was anything abnormal.

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

#43

Post by jacquesm »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #38
ghostberry wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of interest, why do you think there are so many valid criminals and lawbreakers in the US?

Among other things, our murder rate is higher than that of most other western nations. Assuming murder rate is a good proxy for other "valid" crimes (it's hard to hide a body), we would expect to have 5x the incarceration rate of the UK or France. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

The murder rate is that high because of easy access to weapons that make murdering people relatively easy. Shooting someone is a lot easier than knifing someone, point-and-click.

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

#44

Post by droopyEyelids »

anon3_ wrote: post #40
neverminder wrote: post #6

> The United States has 5% of the world’s population but 25% of the world’s prisoners. This sums it up for me.

In my opinion, it's about drugs and cultural undertones that drugs are permissive, that you can be the "druggie guy", and to some, it's hip and cool. I blame the intelligentsia. Try the scenario when you're in a low income family with an addict. This very easily leads to a vicious cycle - eventual arrest and incarceration. That's one less person coming home with a paycheck. That's a family growing up a generation wit…

If the system was concerned about helping the families of addicts, or even lessening the suffering in society, it would be impossible to make an argument that jailing a non violent drug offender (destroying their family, preventing them from getting a job in the future, inflicting them with mental trauma, probably infecting them with hep-c) is beneficial. That kind of trauma would drive most people further into despair and drug use.

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

#45

Post by [deleted] »

zo1 wrote: post #10
neverminder wrote: post #6

> The United States has 5% of the world’s population but 25% of the world’s prisoners. This sums it up for me.

I find it disturbing how those two tiny stats "sum" it all up for you, yet you make no mention of the third and elusive stat that makes the biggest difference of all: "The percentage of criminals in the United States" Like I said, drawing and inference from the two stats you posted is disturbing because both of those stats say nothing of the actual amount of valid criminals/lawbreakers.

[deleted]

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

#46

Post by DanBC »

zo1 wrote: post #14
vog wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The percentage of criminals in the United States" Not sure how this is really an additional fact. If you defined criminals in the sense of "criminals as defined in the US", you have almost by definition a direct correlation to the number of prisoners. BTW, here in Germany we also have politicians who think that Europe's criminals concentrate in Germany. Probably every country has some people believing that all cri…

The point I'm making is that it's implicit that they are "not" criminals by virtue of there being such a huge discrepancy. This needs to be addressed in a clear, and concise manner instead of making sweeping generalizations about the discrepancy.

You should probably edit your original post, because this point is not at all clear from that post.

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

#47

Post by a3n »

sillygoose wrote: post #19
comrade1 wrote: post #2

I guess the best you can do is hopethat you know the laws for the area you live in. The u.s. has so many laws that are different across states and also so many laws that are enforced arbitrarily. Some states you only have to verbally identify yourself to police. Some states you're required to show I.d. if requested. Some states you can decline a breathalyzer and other states you cannot. And if you know the law then y…

There's this widespread misconception that there are things the police can't do to you because some text somewhere says so. In reality, it's just a question of what they want to do, and whether they can get away with it. For example, if an officer insists on seeing your ID even if the rulebook says you don't have to show it, he can escalate until he gets his way. A police officer can saw off your leg and feed it to s…

There's a saying among cops, "You may beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride." In other words, they can harass you all they want, with impunity. "Oh, he was innocent? Well, darn."

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

#48

Post by CPLX »

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.washingtonpost.com/rweb/commentary/want-to-fix-ba...

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

#49

Post by DaFranker »

Hermel wrote: post #25
maze-le wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that is entireley true. While the Schengen-Zone (EU border agreements) has established that there are no physical borders, where you have to show an id, there is a 50km (maybe more maybe less I don't know exactly) zone around those borders, where Identity checks are permitted. Police is allowed to control your identity in those zones if they have a "reasonable cause" to think yo may be an illegal immigr…

The justification is not "experience" and "statistics". The justification is that it works well. Just like the language of an email can help identifying spam, skin color can help identifying illegal immigrants. I would say that 99% of all spam I receive is written in English, whereas about 80% of my personal emails are in German. Thus, even though there is nothing wrong with that language in general, English words ca…

> I would say that 99% of all spam I receive is written in English, whereas about 80% of my personal emails are in German.

You're missing some important numbers here for this to be meaningful: Base rates.

If you're getting 10 spam emails per month, and 99% of them are in English, but you're receiving 1000 legitimate personal emails per month, and 20% of them are in English, that's a total of 210 English emails on average per month. In this case, while technically true that an email written in English is more likely to be spam than an email written in German, it's also such a very poor indicator that you'd be better off using another indicator entirely.

On top of that, you've only pinpointed two categories out of many more possible categories of emails. What if someone is getting 50 spam emails per month, 5 job offer emails per month, 10 updates relevant to their profession per month, 100 professional emails per month, and 50 personal emails per month, and the English:German ratios for those are all 99:1, 9:1, 4:1, 1:1 and 4:1 respectively? Suddenly just "this email is written in English" isn't all that important anymore.

Base rates are very, very, very, super important when discussing stats like these.

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

#50

Post by chefkoch »

struppi wrote: post #16
sgdesign wrote: post #4

I've been "stopped and frisked" in France before, and it didn't seem out of the ordinary at the time. I just assumed random identity checks was part of the police's job. So I wonder how other countries' laws compare to the U.S. when it comes to random checks like this. And of course, it happened maybe twice in my life, not a couple times a week.

IIRC, in Austria, police CAN ask you about your name and home address at any time, and they can even bring you to the police office if they don't believe you and you don't have an ID to prove it. Even though we don't have an "Ausweispflicht" like Germany, having an ID with you can be a good thing in this situation. They are not allowed to search you without a reason (In theory. I heared that they might just say "I th…

"Ausweispflicht" in Germany only means you have to own an id card or passport, not that you must carry it all the time.
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