7 ms·

There really seems to be a disparity between perceived and actual justice in the United States. I bet 95‰ of the population of the US thinks all people in priso

There really seems to be a disparity between perceived and actual justice in the United States. I bet 95‰ of the population of the US thinks all people in prison deserve to be there and the miscarriages they hear about are the only ones that occur. I dread to think how many innocent people are actually in US jails.

x0x0 11y ago
95% of white people maybe black people have no alternative to understanding how the world really works
- justathrow2k 11y ago
  This is an incredibly racist way to look at the issue.
  - JoshTriplett 11y ago
    It's an incredibly racist way for the world to work, but in practice it does. Fixing that requires noticing it, acknowledging it, and finding the reasons for it.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    Recognizing that, in practice, racial identity in the US has a significant correlation to various differences in life experience is not racism.
    - integraton 11y ago
      It is when it ignores class and takes people of different ethnic and economic groups and treats them as homogeneous based on skin color alone.
      - beat 11y ago
        Racism generally does ignore class. One of my best friends is a very successful man who happens to be black - and large, and very dark-skinned. He's a doctor and hospital administrator with strong financial expertise, definitely a one-percenter. How safe do you think he is if he gets pulled over by the cops? If he's walking down the street toward a white person, do you think they get that twinge of fear, or do they think "Actually, he probably makes about ten times what I do, so why would I be afraid he'd mug me?" Class isn't immediately visible. Skin is.
      - coldtea 11y ago
        >It is when it ignores class and takes people of different ethnic and economic groups and treats them as homogeneous based on skin color alone. You mean just like a racist society does (which makes the statement even more accurate)? Because even a "rich/european/etc" black person is still a n... when it comes to a racist society, and while his experiences might be better, they'd still be shaped by racism.
    - justathrow2k 11y ago
      I would agree, that's not racism. However, I would say that a blanket statement about all members of a race such as this, 'black people have no alternative to understanding how the world really works.', is.
      - coldtea 11y ago
        We all know that blanket statements are just a convenient way to speak for what a group does or tends to do "in general". The fact there are outliers doesn't mean a blanket statement is "racist" as long as it's accurate for the most. It's doubly not racist if it's positive (and "understanding how the world really works" is a positive thing).
        rendall 11y ago
        'We all know that blanket statements are just a convenient way to speak for what a group does or tends to do "in general".' Given that blanket statements such as that, which are meant to imply "in general", are indistinguishable from actually bigoted blanket statements which are meant to be taken literally, it probably is a good discipline to always include "generally" or "typically" as a qualifier, each and every time. It has fallen out of fashion, but let's try to bring it back.
      - dragonwriter 11y ago
        > However, I would say that a blanket statement about all members of a race such as this, 'black people have no alternative to understanding how the world really works.' Context matters: in a discussion of percentages of a population holding particular views, where it is offered to explain why a certain percentage of blacks holding a view is improbable, that's not a blanket statement, its a statement about the relative frequency of experiences relevant to the belief in question.
  - CapitalistCartr 11y ago
    In the USA, the legal system is quite racist.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    There's absolutely nothing racist about that statement. It's actually a very accurate description of how a group that historically is facing systematic injustices and racism get to have fewer illusions than the comfortable majority. If anything, it's ANTI-racist. Not being racist is not the same as believing that racial minorities have absolutely the same experiences and outlooks as the majority. A group of who had the cops enforce Jim Crow and segregation on them, or arrest, harass and shot them far more often than another group, has a different outlook on this "justice" thing.
    - justathrow2k 11y ago
      So, I hope I'm using this term correctly, but it seems like you're building a straw man here. I certainly never made the claim that everyone has the same experience and outlook regardless of race. However, as I mentioned in another one of my replies, making a blanket statement that 'black people have no alternative to understanding how the world really works.', reeks of racism to me. In this day and age, people are born into many diverse situations, regardless of shared racial makeup.
      - coldtea 11y ago
        >In this day and age, people are born into many diverse situations, regardless of shared racial makeup. The problem is that racists don't look into "diverse situations", just racial makeup. E.g. is there any more diverse situation compared to a poor black guy from the ghetto, than being the President? And yet, even the President is often described, from private discussions down to protest banners in racism terms -- heck, even as a n....
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
  - joesmo 11y ago
    Fixed: most black people have no alternative to understanding how the world really works Now it's not "racist". Can we move on? EDIT: Clarified that it never was racist.
  - ddebernardy 11y ago
    Not sure why you're reading racism in that. Around a third of black men spend time behind bars in the US: http://www.alternet.org/story/154587/1_in_3_black_men_go_to_prison_the_10_most_disturbing_facts_about_racial_inequality_in_the__u.s._criminal_justice_system http://www.alternet.org/story/154587/1_in_3_black_men_go_to_...
rhino369 11y ago
There is probably a 3-5% error rate in the justice system. At least that is the academic consensus currently. 3-5% of 2.3 million prisoners is 70~115 thousand people.
- thatswrong0 11y ago
  If there is a 4% error rate with prisoners on death row, I'd imagine that it's even higher in the general prison population (because they're subject to less scrutiny?).
  - Nadya 11y ago
    So long as the majority population deems an error rate to be preferable to letting the more extreme criminals (rapists, murderers, arsonists, blah) 'walk free', there will be an error rate. I'd sooner let ten all-but-certain criminals walk free than convict even a single innocent person. But I am not most people. Furthermore, there is not a good demonstration that decreasing the error rate (which would require imprisoning less actual criminals whom lack certain evidence, etc.) is beneficial for society as a whole. I mean, there's no studies showing it is any worse off either, but I digress. It's not an argument you can make to most people - they'd rather "keep their family safe from potential murderers" than "not be sentenced to 20 years in prison for a crime they didn't do" because they cannot imagine themselves being sentenced for 20 years for a crime they didn't do but they can imagine a criminal harming their family.
    - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
      How many guilty people would you set free to avoid imprisoning an innocent person? You said 10. But probably some of those 10 will be repeat offenders. So how many innocent people will you see murdered in order to avoid imprisoning an innocent person? That's a different question, isn't it? I think this gets to the question of "beneficial for society as a whole". If you stick some plausible values on this (say we're talking about people accused of major crimes, recidivism rate = X%, some weighted values assigned to harm for false imprisonment, being raped, being murdered, etc., and some plausible relationship between false conviction rate and non-conviction of those who are actually guilty), then it should be possible to calculate an optimum rate of convicting people. (Two notes: First, as the rate of false convictions goes up, the rate of non-conviction of the guilty goes down. Second, calculating the optimum is going to depend on the exact values chosen for all those parameters, but it still could be an interesting exercise.)
dragonwriter 11y ago
> I bet 95‰ of the population of the US thinks all people in prison deserve to be there Maybe 95% of the middle- to upper-class white population of the US. (But probably not even that, unless by "deserve to be there" you mean "actually broke the law for which they were sentenced" rather than "deserve to be in prison for breaking the law for which they were sentenced"; I mean, its not like drug prohibition is that popular even among that group.) EDIT: just realized that the parent actually says 95‰ (95 per mille) not 95%. That's equivalent to 9.5%. That may be correct, actually, but is probably not what was intended.

x0x0 11y ago

95% of white people maybe black people have no alternative to understanding how the world really works

justathrow2k 11y ago
This is an incredibly racist way to look at the issue.
- JoshTriplett 11y ago
  It's an incredibly racist way for the world to work, but in practice it does. Fixing that requires noticing it, acknowledging it, and finding the reasons for it.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  Recognizing that, in practice, racial identity in the US has a significant correlation to various differences in life experience is not racism.
  - integraton 11y ago
    It is when it ignores class and takes people of different ethnic and economic groups and treats them as homogeneous based on skin color alone.
    - beat 11y ago
      Racism generally does ignore class. One of my best friends is a very successful man who happens to be black - and large, and very dark-skinned. He's a doctor and hospital administrator with strong financial expertise, definitely a one-percenter. How safe do you think he is if he gets pulled over by the cops? If he's walking down the street toward a white person, do you think they get that twinge of fear, or do they think "Actually, he probably makes about ten times what I do, so why would I be afraid he'd mug me?" Class isn't immediately visible. Skin is.
    - coldtea 11y ago
      >It is when it ignores class and takes people of different ethnic and economic groups and treats them as homogeneous based on skin color alone. You mean just like a racist society does (which makes the statement even more accurate)? Because even a "rich/european/etc" black person is still a n... when it comes to a racist society, and while his experiences might be better, they'd still be shaped by racism.
  - justathrow2k 11y ago
    I would agree, that's not racism. However, I would say that a blanket statement about all members of a race such as this, 'black people have no alternative to understanding how the world really works.', is.
    - coldtea 11y ago
      We all know that blanket statements are just a convenient way to speak for what a group does or tends to do "in general". The fact there are outliers doesn't mean a blanket statement is "racist" as long as it's accurate for the most. It's doubly not racist if it's positive (and "understanding how the world really works" is a positive thing).
      - rendall 11y ago
        'We all know that blanket statements are just a convenient way to speak for what a group does or tends to do "in general".' Given that blanket statements such as that, which are meant to imply "in general", are indistinguishable from actually bigoted blanket statements which are meant to be taken literally, it probably is a good discipline to always include "generally" or "typically" as a qualifier, each and every time. It has fallen out of fashion, but let's try to bring it back.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > However, I would say that a blanket statement about all members of a race such as this, 'black people have no alternative to understanding how the world really works.' Context matters: in a discussion of percentages of a population holding particular views, where it is offered to explain why a certain percentage of blacks holding a view is improbable, that's not a blanket statement, its a statement about the relative frequency of experiences relevant to the belief in question.
- CapitalistCartr 11y ago
  In the USA, the legal system is quite racist.
- coldtea 11y ago
  There's absolutely nothing racist about that statement. It's actually a very accurate description of how a group that historically is facing systematic injustices and racism get to have fewer illusions than the comfortable majority. If anything, it's ANTI-racist. Not being racist is not the same as believing that racial minorities have absolutely the same experiences and outlooks as the majority. A group of who had the cops enforce Jim Crow and segregation on them, or arrest, harass and shot them far more often than another group, has a different outlook on this "justice" thing.
  - justathrow2k 11y ago
    So, I hope I'm using this term correctly, but it seems like you're building a straw man here. I certainly never made the claim that everyone has the same experience and outlook regardless of race. However, as I mentioned in another one of my replies, making a blanket statement that 'black people have no alternative to understanding how the world really works.', reeks of racism to me. In this day and age, people are born into many diverse situations, regardless of shared racial makeup.
    - coldtea 11y ago
      >In this day and age, people are born into many diverse situations, regardless of shared racial makeup. The problem is that racists don't look into "diverse situations", just racial makeup. E.g. is there any more diverse situation compared to a poor black guy from the ghetto, than being the President? And yet, even the President is often described, from private discussions down to protest banners in racism terms -- heck, even as a n....
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
- joesmo 11y ago
  Fixed: most black people have no alternative to understanding how the world really works Now it's not "racist". Can we move on? EDIT: Clarified that it never was racist.
- ddebernardy 11y ago
  Not sure why you're reading racism in that. Around a third of black men spend time behind bars in the US: http://www.alternet.org/story/154587/1_in_3_black_men_go_to_prison_the_10_most_disturbing_facts_about_racial_inequality_in_the__u.s._criminal_justice_system http://www.alternet.org/story/154587/1_in_3_black_men_go_to_...

rhino369 11y ago

There is probably a 3-5% error rate in the justice system. At least that is the academic consensus currently. 3-5% of 2.3 million prisoners is 70~115 thousand people.

thatswrong0 11y ago
If there is a 4% error rate with prisoners on death row, I'd imagine that it's even higher in the general prison population (because they're subject to less scrutiny?).
- Nadya 11y ago
  So long as the majority population deems an error rate to be preferable to letting the more extreme criminals (rapists, murderers, arsonists, blah) 'walk free', there will be an error rate. I'd sooner let ten all-but-certain criminals walk free than convict even a single innocent person. But I am not most people. Furthermore, there is not a good demonstration that decreasing the error rate (which would require imprisoning less actual criminals whom lack certain evidence, etc.) is beneficial for society as a whole. I mean, there's no studies showing it is any worse off either, but I digress. It's not an argument you can make to most people - they'd rather "keep their family safe from potential murderers" than "not be sentenced to 20 years in prison for a crime they didn't do" because they cannot imagine themselves being sentenced for 20 years for a crime they didn't do but they can imagine a criminal harming their family.
  - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
    How many guilty people would you set free to avoid imprisoning an innocent person? You said 10. But probably some of those 10 will be repeat offenders. So how many innocent people will you see murdered in order to avoid imprisoning an innocent person? That's a different question, isn't it? I think this gets to the question of "beneficial for society as a whole". If you stick some plausible values on this (say we're talking about people accused of major crimes, recidivism rate = X%, some weighted values assigned to harm for false imprisonment, being raped, being murdered, etc., and some plausible relationship between false conviction rate and non-conviction of those who are actually guilty), then it should be possible to calculate an optimum rate of convicting people. (Two notes: First, as the rate of false convictions goes up, the rate of non-conviction of the guilty goes down. Second, calculating the optimum is going to depend on the exact values chosen for all those parameters, but it still could be an interesting exercise.)

dragonwriter 11y ago

> I bet 95‰ of the population of the US thinks all people in prison deserve to be there Maybe 95% of the middle- to upper-class white population of the US. (But probably not even that, unless by "deserve to be there" you mean "actually broke the law for which they were sentenced" rather than "deserve to be in prison for breaking the law for which they were sentenced"; I mean, its not like drug prohibition is that popular even among that group.) EDIT: just realized that the parent actually says 95‰ (95 per mille) not 95%. That's equivalent to 9.5%. That may be correct, actually, but is probably not what was intended.