> OP never said anything about race or incarceration statistics -- he just said the prison system is a mechanism to recreate slavery. He used the term "recreat

> OP never said anything about race or incarceration statistics -- he just said the prison system is a mechanism to recreate slavery. He used the term "recreate slavery", which in this context would mean to re-establish the chattel slavery of people of African ancestry that existed previously in US. And the article he referenced very specifically discussed African-American slavery. So that's what I responded to. As an aside, Americans of Scotch-Irish [1] ancestry (which includes my own background) are a very vengeful people. This culture, which also has some positive traits (bravery, loyalty, etc), had a huge impact on the general culture United States and its attitudes toward criminal justice. But if you've never been around rural people of Scotch-Irish ancestry, you'd probably find their beliefs on justice fairly shocking. These are the people who often believe that if someone who goes to prison for a relatively minor, non-violent offense, and is raped in prison -- even if they're a family member! -- that this person "had it coming" or "deserved it". Prison is for suffering, not redemption. Ironically, these same people are frequently very overt Christians, often evangelicals (they converted en masse from Calvinism--typically Presbyterianism--to Baptist during the great awakenings of the 19th century). But they're definitely Old Testament Christians, with not much use for most of the New Testament (except perhaps Revelations). Anyway, combine that kind of culture with some of the other factors you describe, and you end up with the prison culture we have today in the United States. 1. And no, for us it's not "Scots-Irish". "Scotch-Irish" was in common usage when they immigrated to the US in the 18th century, and that's what's been passed down over the years (and it's how my grandparents described our ancestry, which after careful genealogical study was indeed Ulster Scots with a bit of German thrown in): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch-Irish_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch-Irish_Americans