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I should point out to those not from the US that this is how Americans view the US. There is a lot of crime, the government and NGOs are on the side of the cri

I should point out to those not from the US that this is how Americans view the US. There is a lot of crime, the government and NGOs are on the side of the criminals etc. It is up voted to the top as well, with agreement in the replies, this is how Americans view the US. The US incarcerates more people than China, despite China having more than four times as many people, but the view obviously is the incarceration rate needs to increase even more, as crimes are barely being prosecuted according to him. The US is off the charts in incarceration rates, but he thinks they are far too low and want them increased more, as he sees increasing incarceration even more as the solution to the problem which western Europe does not seem to have to this extent. So those outside the US can get insights into what the US is and how it thinks from threads like this.

dang 3y ago
We detached this generic tangent subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35920712 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35920712.
mlazos 3y ago
I agree the US incarcerates too many people, does the comparison to China make sense? How can we trust their numbers especially when they disappear people.
- Convolutional 3y ago
  Well don't trust China's numbers, and compare the US incarceration rate to those of any industrialized country's numbers that you do trust.
  - Natsu 3y ago
    "Too many" doesn't mean much when you look at actual crime rates of serious things like murder and rape where most people don't want those people to be free to commit more crimes that are less susceptible to reporting bias.
  - mlazos 3y ago
    Yeah I mean we also have more crime too, so I feel like we’d need to normalize this somehow with like incarcerated/crime rate or something. Given I think nonviolent offenses should be less severely punished than they are today.
lordloki 3y ago
China has literal concentration camps and prisoner organ harvesting. I don't think your comparison means much.
- pySSK 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - carabiner 3y ago
    The US has very similar camps in the form of forced labor (i.e. slavery) by prisoners. These slaves have built products in the US that many of us have used, including clothes and office furniture. They make 63 cents per hour - make no mistake, they are slaves.
    - infamouscow 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - loeg 3y ago
        > The US is a massive area of land with a variety of different regional geographic and cultural differences. You wouldn't go about describing Europe or an entire continent with equally broad strokes. The 13th amendment is federal and applies everywhere in the US. Not every state takes full advantage of prison slave labor, sure, but it is legal everywhere, and some do.
    - pb7 3y ago
      This is voluntary work for people who have been convicted. I agree they should be paid more though.
      - cat_food 3y ago
        Several states still do not pay inmates, including Texas.
      - 3y ago
dfxm12 3y ago
It would take Ra's al Ghul to resolve the problems of this city FWIW, the parent poster doesn't want increased incarceration, they want these people executed (probably without due process).
- ravensfan69 3y ago
  This was obvious hyperbole meant to express a deep frustration at having suffered at the hands of criminals in a city I care deeply about. People I love have been terrorized
- stickfigure 3y ago
  Dunno about the parent poster, but I would settle for caning.
  - optimalsolver 3y ago
    Kinky.
- serf 3y ago
  >FWIW, the parent poster doesn't want increased incarceration, they want these people executed (probably without due process). that isn't just wrong -- it's not even what parent said. Their hyperbole was pointing out that the perceived situation is so bad that it would take something drastic to turn it around, not that they in anyway wanted or desired it. There is a lot of purposeful misinterpretation/mis-reading going on in this thread, it seems.
  - user982 3y ago
    "It would take Ra's al Ghul to resolve the problems of this city" dereferences directly to "It would take [mass gassing the residents of Baltimore to death] to resolve the problems of this city", as Batman Begins is the scheme being referred to. Both are hyperbole, but that is indeed what was said and implied. Defend it as rhetoric, don't gaslight it as a purposeful misreading.
livinglist 3y ago
Don’t trust any day from Chinese government..
atkailash 3y ago
[dead]
ravensfan69 3y ago
It feels bizarre to make appeals to a foreign society with a history, culture, government, and demographics which are utterly alien to the situation in the west. We don't live in China. Are you so sure that our situation SHOULD be that of China that you'd be willing to risk you or a loved one being victimized by a violent thug? It always confused me that people would side with criminals over the innocent.
- plagiarist 3y ago
  "...even more than China. We should instead try approaches that, in Europe, have empirically lead to less violent crime." "Why do you love criminals and want innocent families to be terrorized and executed by criminals?"
- Convolutional 3y ago
  The massive incarceration rates in the US don't seem to be solving anything, although you don't think they're enough. The US has the highest incarceration rate in the industrialized world yet in your view it is barely incarcerating at all. If China is too different, look at western Europe. England's incarceration rate is less than one third of the US's. Canada is on sixth of the US's. These countries have lower incarceration rates but less crime.
  - mixmastamyk 3y ago
    There are short-term solutions and there are long-term solutions. What is your long-term solution?
    - seoulbran 3y ago
      Trolls aren't paid to have solutions, just spew garbage. I wouldn't waste any time responding to this troll.
lozenge 3y ago
You could have chosen from about 220 countries with a lower incarceration rate than the US, but because you said China, people are ignoring the substance of your comment. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarce...
- plagiarist 3y ago
  Yeah, that's a weird comparison. But I doubt the people who are deliberately focusing on China instead of Europe would engage in an honest discussion about things even without it.
BurningFrog 3y ago
Locking up violent people and thieves is very popular among those outside the US! You're right about the comparatively huge US prison population, but the difference is NOT because other countries let violent people and thieves roam free!
- plagiarist 3y ago
  That is a false dichotomy version of what they're suggesting. And what do you think is the difference?
  - tohnjitor 3y ago
    The difference is the US has more people who commit violent crimes.
    - plagiarist 3y ago
      Why is that?
      - electriclove 3y ago
        No consequences
      - PathOfEclipse 3y ago
        [flagged]
      - HDThoreaun 3y ago
        America's dominant culture is toxic individualism. Respecting others is largely thought of a waste of time. There is no culture of shame like there is in eastern asian countries. Seriously, disrespecting people is something to be proud of for a huge number of americans. Everyone looks out for themselves and taking care of number 1 is generally seen as the correct decision. There is incredible income inequality which leaves many of the poor feeling abandoned. The cowboy may be the most famous American caricature. It celebrates toxic individualism and law breaking. This leads to tons of cultural artifacts that glorify crime. Those things all add up to a feeling that the social contract has been broken and crime is an acceptable thing to do.
loeg 3y ago
> I should point out to those not from the US that this is how Americans view the US. There is a lot of crime, the government and NGOs are on the side of the criminals etc. It is up voted to the top as well, with agreement in the replies, this is how Americans view the US. What? No. This is not remotely a universal American viewpoint -- especially the government being "on the side of the criminals etc." What would that even mean?
- ravensfan69 3y ago
  > What would that even mean? It would look, and maybe this is sheer coincidence, very much like our present situation
  - loeg 3y ago
    Could you elaborate on some of the specific similarities you see?
- Natsu 3y ago
  > especially the government being "on the side of the criminals etc." What would that even mean? I imagine that people would gesture at stories like this: https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/suspect-in-cherokee-street-shooting-released-after-st-louis-prosecutors-refuse-charges/article_ec0067fe-ef41-11ed-86cc-6f23f36c0547.html https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/suspect... > Police arrested one of two gun-wielding people caught on camera during a double shooting at a crowded holiday celebration this past weekend in south St. Louis, but the 33-year-old woman was released Wednesday afternoon after the prosecutor’s office refused charges against her. > The suspect’s release drew public ire, but Circuit Attorney Kimberly M. Gardner’s office declined to further explain.
  - assimpleaspossi 3y ago
    Kim Gardner has resigned. Read that as "forced out".
    - 3y ago
swearwolf 3y ago
1.) Though this is becoming an increasingly popular viewpoint in many of the American cities that are experiencing these problems right now, it’s far from universally held. 2.) The U.S. is not a monolith, so looking at the prison population of the United States as a whole doesn’t tell you about what’s going on in an individual state or city. 3.) The number of people incarcerated has a long tail. In the U.S. in particular, many people received long sentences during the years following the ‘94 crime bill. Little if any effort is being made to commute these despite policies centered on new incarceration changing. 4.) In the places where reduced incarceration is being tried in the U.S. it’s important to recognize that it’s being tried effectively in a vacuum. In many other places which are able to sustain low incarceration rates, there are a lot of social programs that help make that possible, and also programs to help people rehabilitate after a conviction. The U.S. has little if any of that. Where reduced incarceration is being tried, it’s usually not replaced with something that’s more effective.
- wing-_-nuts 3y ago
  I consider myself a liberal, but while I think pretty much all drug possession charges should be dropped and decriminalized, violent crime? Robbery? Those folks should absolutely be in jail. I don't care if we have to build tent cities to incarcerate them. You hurt someone intentionally, you should not be breathing free air for a while.
  - mindslight 3y ago
    The fundamental problem is that the misguided attempt to criminalize drugs destroyed respect for the law for generations. Once you're at risk of being locked in a cage for decades for engaging in behavior that would otherwise just be called running a small business, then robbery isn't a huge leap. Especially after your industry ends up creating its own parallel justice system because the usual courts have been made unavailable. So yes, while drugs should be deillegalized and those crimes expunged, this is only but a first step on a long road to repairing the severe damage that was done to actual law and order by the very people fallaciously rallying behind "law and order" in the 80's and 90's.
serf 3y ago
>I should point out to those not from the US that this is how Americans view the US. No, it isn't. It's the opinion of a single person, and you're taking it for granted that their comment was made in earnest and that they truly represent 'the American view' -- whatever that is. >So those outside the US can get insights into what the US is and how it thinks from threads like this. No, they can't. They can learn about the opinion of a single person. Can you point me to a country with such a unified opinion that any single person can cover the opinions of the entire populous? If not, why would you assume that such a case may exist for the United States? And more to the point, the premise was that it is ridiculous to hold the manufacturer of stolen goods to be wholly responsible for the theft in a jurisdiction that has law enforcement -- do you disagree with that, or do you just care to make an example out of someone?
lowkey_ 3y ago
High incarceration rate makes sense when the US has a high crime rate. I don't understand why anyone thinks incarceration rate should not be correlated or would not be correlate to crime rate. Incarcerating criminals isn't the issue, having so many criminals is the issue.
- prmoustache 3y ago
  Apparently incarceration and death penalty do not really work as a deterrent in this country. Is it because most of the violent crimes are related to drug addiction?
  - jolux 3y ago
    The US prison system is violent and brutal, which begets a high recidivism rate. In my opinion this is because American culture tends to confuse retribution for justice but opinions vary I'm sure.
    - mc32 3y ago
      In most countries the prison system is unpleasant, including the UK, Italy, Spain, Japan, Ukraine, Mexico, etc. In addition the justice/legal systems slightly favor the prosecution. Salvador was overrun with gang violence, a new government came in, rounded up the gangsters and crime has gone down. On balance the population of Salvador is better off.
      - jolux 3y ago
        The problem with US prisons goes far beyond basic unpleasantness. Take it from the Department of Justice: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-files-lawsuit-against-state-alabama-unconstitutional-conditions-states https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-files-laws... "'The Department of Justice conducted a thorough investigation of Alabama’s prisons for men and determined that Alabama violated and is continuing to violate the Constitution because its prisons are riddled with prisoner-on-prisoner and guard-on-prisoner violence. The violations have led to homicides, rapes, and serious injuries.'" This is not a system that is going to successfully reintegrate people. We owe a basic level of humane treatment even to prisoners, if not for the sake of liberal values than for the pragmatic reason that violent people who are put in an environment which encourages further violence will remain violent people when they are released back into our society.
renlo 3y ago
If China executes prisoners who would be imprisoned in the US, is it a fair to compare the number of incarcerated in the US and China [1]? In the US they get a lengthy prison sentence, increasing the moving sum of incarcerated for the US, in China they are shot, decreasing the moving sum of the incarcerated for China. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_offences_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_offences_in_China
- maxerickson 3y ago
  ~10,000 executions a year¹. It would take roughly 5 million people for China to match the US incarceration rate. So it's probably fair enough to compare incarceration rates and numbers. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_China#Rates_of_execution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_China#Ra...
  - cscurmudgeon 3y ago
    From your link: > The exact numbers of people executed in China is classified as a state secret; In addition to executions, China has been clamping down on entire populations, therefore, preventing future incarceration. > Uyghur birthrate fell by almost half between 2017-2019, research finds, adding to evidence of coercive fertility policies https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/12/chinese-uyghur-policy-causes-unprecedented-fall-in-xinjiang-birthrates https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/12/chinese-uyghur...
mturmon 3y ago
Sorry, these views are not "how Americans view the U.S." The GP comment is pushing a certain narrative that (in my view) has been ginned up by reactionary groups for their own ends. In addition, it's wrong on the facts (insofar as it makes any fact-based claims versus just pushing buttons). I'll go farther. I scoff most profoundly at the viewpoint of the GP post. I view people pushing it as low-information and politically naive (if they actually believe it) or evil and opportunistic (if they are just "intensifying the contradictions" for their own reactionary ends).
Izikiel43 3y ago
> the government and NGOs are on the side of the criminals I lived in Vancouver in Canada, that is true there too, Seattle is the same (the CHAZ bs a couple years ago? 3rd avenue in Downtown?). Hell, in Argentina is also the same and that's south america. I think this is more a problem of places with left leaning politics which consider criminals victims of society which means that they can't be held responsible by their actions. Meanwhile, everyone else suffers.
JPKab 3y ago
> So those outside the US can get insights into what the US is and how it thinks from threads like this. No, everyone outside of your head can get insights into your willingness to cherrypick a single comment and extrapolate to fit your pessimistic, hyper-critical mental model. It's also interesting how you talk about incarceration rates independently of crime rates, and act as if the US is prosecuting and incarcerating broad swathes of innocent people. For those of us who have had loved ones murdered or assaulted, or been mugged/beaten, we don't have the luxury of thinking of this in an abstract way fitting a bong rip session in a dorm room. Take off the Che Guevara t-shirt, take a walk outside, and realize that the world isn't a neat little theory straight from a professor being interviewed on Democracy Now!.
- leothecool 3y ago
  > the US is prosecuting and incarcerating broad swathes of innocent people. There's about half a million people in jail right now who haven't been convicted of a crime. Some of them are innocent, for sure.
  - kevviiinn 3y ago
    Considering how often police lie and plant evidence, I would say a hefty number are innocent
    - roamerz 3y ago
      > Considering how often police lie and plant evidence How often is that, exactly?
      - emodendroket 3y ago
        Interesting question, though difficult to answer. Here's one attempt: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/08/police-testilying.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/08/police-testilyin... > This tendency to lie pervades all police work, not just high-profile violence, and it has the power to ruin lives. Law enforcement officers lie so frequently—in affidavits, on post-incident paperwork, on the witness stand—that officers have coined a word for it: testilying. Judges and juries generally trust police officers, especially in the absence of footage disproving their testimony. As courts reopen and convene juries, many of the same officers now confronting protesters in the street will get back on the stand. > Defense attorneys around the country believe the practice is ubiquitous; while that belief might seem self-serving, it is borne out by footage captured on smartphones and surveillance cameras. Yet those best positioned to crack down on testilying, police chiefs and prosecutors, have done little or nothing to stop it in most of the country. Prosecutors rely on officer testimony, true or not, to secure convictions, and merely acknowledging the problem would require the government to admit that there is almost never real punishment for police perjury. Police and DAs, the parties who do most of the investigating of police perjury, are not exactly eager to share their internal findings for reasons we can probably guess, but the article does offer one striking anecdote: > One NYPD officer, David Grieco—commonly known as Bullethead—has been sued at least 32 times, costing the city $343,252, for civil rights violations, including excessive force and fabrication of evidence. Yet Grieco was promoted and prosecutors continued to call him to the stand long after a slew of his victims blew the whistle on his violent and lawless behavior. Judges continued to rely on his word to lock up defendants. And Grieco’s name did not appear on Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez’s long-secret list of officers with known credibility problems.
xhkkffbf 3y ago
Note: the incarceration rates were much higher in the past and that's the basis of many of these claims. What you're seeing now is the political backlash from those rates. Many crimes aren't prosecuted and the cops often don't do anything. So it's not exactly fair to say that Baltimore has a high incarceration rate these days.
spaceman_2020 3y ago
Although I lived in the US for just a year, my impression was that a) US promoted an all-or-nothing culture, and b) crime, especially gun-related crime, was wildly glorified. My layman belief is that this isn’t just a law and order issue. Its a cultural dysfunction.
- tonfreed 3y ago
  It's the tyranny of low standards. I sat in an airport in Florida in 2016 watching CNN rerunning the same police shooting footage over and over trying to convince anyone still listening that the pistol that had fallen out of the kid's hand was, in fact, a book. At the time I could have told you the exact type of gun it was, too. The criminal is excused because he doesn't know any better, those that defend themselves are punished to the fullest extent because it's politically expedient to do so.
cscurmudgeon 3y ago
1. Two things can be true. The US imprisons a lot and the US doesn't imprison the right folks. 2. Comparison with China is not accurate. a) Can't trust numbers from China and b) China has a much more rigid social structure and rules and the population has been beaten in submission (e.g. make pie Tiananmen square). Imagine a visa system that prevents folks from California from migrating to Texas (we are even for allowing mass migration from outside). Even Politifact rates such comparisons false https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2014/dec/16/matthew-cooke/us-prison-population-big-russia-china-and-north-ko/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2014/dec/16/matthew-co... It is better looking at a local level. And here China exceeds the US. https://apnews.com/article/china-prisons-uyghurs-religion-0dd1a31f9be29d32c584543af4698955 https://apnews.com/article/china-prisons-uyghurs-religion-0d... 3) If this is really not a problem with Baltimore (as you imply), other locations with Kias and Hyundias should also be suing them. As far as I know, they are also sold in China but don't have these issues.
arp242 3y ago
The previous poster didn't really say anything about incarceration. They didn't say anything about any solution – they just said there's a serious problem. You're reading far too much in to their comment.
mnky9800n 3y ago
He says he wants to take the solution of the Batman villain in Batman begins. He doesn't want to incarcerate more people. He wants to destroy the city of Baltimore with all the people in it.
alphanullmeric 3y ago
Think of the poor thieves. Stealing is a basic human right! Hopefully we can spread the word to looters across the country that the EU will welcome them with open arms.
- shjake 3y ago
  I’m unaware of many places in the EU where it’s socially acceptable to walk into a store take a bunch of stuff and leave without paying and without the staff or the police doing anything about it…
  - alphanullmeric 3y ago
    I mean that many europeans do not believe in the right for a victim to defend their property, ie. if they get away they get away, whereas a robber’s choices in America when the victim is armed are to comply or be forced to. And if they are caught, EU police will stick them in a cosy waterfront prison to play with iPads and eat Michelin star food, probably costing the victim more in taxes then whatever was being stolen from them.
    - shjake 3y ago
      I do hope this is sarcasm…
    - pedrosorio 3y ago
      Tell us more about this “EU police”.
draw_down 3y ago
[dead]
forgetfreeman 3y ago
This is how who views America? You're grossly over-generalizing.
shadowtree 3y ago
The US saw an overall 25% drop in imprisonment since 2010, mainly through Covid policies. California has 39mil inhabitants, currently has 97k in prison. Germany has 83mil inhabitants, currently 56k in prison.
cogitoergofutuo 3y ago
I’m also from the US and I’ll second that this is basically correct and should be taken as an implicit assumption about most Americans if you’re looking in from the outside. Most Americans are only presented with increasing incarceration rates as the only realistically viable way of solving most social ills. As such, there are many flavors and colors of “increase the incarceration rate” across the political spectrum, and lots of people will pick a boogeyman (drug addicts, thieves, etc.) to justify it. For those that don’t pick a boogeyman their support of increasing the incarceration rate is tied to something entirely unrelated (e.g. “My guy that supports mass incarceration is so much better than your guy that supports mass incarceration! Look at his track record on {social issue}!”) The fact that this is the view shared by the majority is reflected in the barely-fluctuating incarceration rate and military-sized “crime fighting” budgets. It is also a fact that is reflected in who Americans continue to elect and which policies we vote to enact.
hn_throawlles 3y ago
it looks like they either: - don't understand the origin of crime - own stock in those private companies that run prisons (capitalism at its worse)
voldacar 3y ago
Has it occurred to you that different countries, and different groups of people within those countries, might have different rates of criminal behavior?
WeylandYutani 3y ago
Well the alternative is vast, and I do mean VAST, spending on social welfare. The US is ofcourse rich enough to do it but that would require scrapping every single tax cut since Reagan. Which would inconvenience those in the upper strata of society.
eternalban 3y ago
> The US incarcerates more people than China, despite China having more than four times as many people This is an apple & orange measure. Starting from first principles, that is how people behave in society, we can at least temper superficial reading of bare metrics. Human beings self police under surveillance. This is the entire point of setting up surveillance states. US in contrast tends more towards police state: show of force to partition society in distinct 'social climates', directly informed by economic means. So, yes, a police state will attempt to partition, even to the extremity of incarceration, and a surveillance state (which is a super-set of police-state) applies psychological force and thus has a much reduced subset that it will deem 'problematic'. Ideally, a state like China will like to approach the limit of having every 'citizen' well trained and well behaved, as domesticated humans. Our problem over here is (given a generous disposition) that we struggle with reconciling freedom and order without resorting to brainwashing the population, or (less generously) that structural characteristic of our system where "freedom" is bound with at times grotesque wealth disparities naturally creates social hostility, and the economic incentives of a criminal life.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  China doesn’t count non-judicial punishment as incarceration, so there are lot more people forced into work camps for their behavior (or speech) than those numbers tell. Also, if you get caught stealing a wallet in say Shanghai, the victims friends are more likely to beat you up before the police arrive, with no penalty to them (I didn’t make up this example, I saw it for myself). The problem with the USA’s prison system is that it doesn’t focus on rehabilitation at all and instead focuses on punishment. We get the exact results expected of such a system, which is a lot of repeat business.
unholythree 3y ago
A lot of commenters are on the parent post are of the opinion our American prison rates are high because of more criminal activity, which may be true, but I think it's also important to recall having a small prison population doesn't necessarily equal a just society. There were very few long term prisoners in medieval society, not because of a progressive outlook but because most crimes were punished with some form of torture, execution, or both. Also, many things were crimes that now are thought of as basic human rights. You can have small prison population if your are willing to truly brutalize your population. China performs about half of the execution in the world every year, is known to torture dissidents, and I doubt it reports those being re-educated as prisoners. I would hardly consider that more just than America. A society can also have a small inmate population and be unjust because enforcement is rare, or selective either due to corrupt or ineffective law enforcement. Additionally if acts of vigilantism are common in a society you can have also have less prisoners since "justice" is found in the streets. I think there are reasonable critiques of the American prisons, criminal justice system, and especially for profit prisons, but there are also much worse alternatives. The system we have really is an imperfect attempt in need of adjustment and not a deliberate attempt at cruelty. The cruelty is a bug not the feature.
- protoc 3y ago
  hi cia
- qingcharles 3y ago
  No, there was almost no prison in medieval times because the bulk of crimes were punished with fines (good for the government) or expulsion from the area. Capital punishments were not as common as you imagine, and some forms, such as being pulled apart with horses, have become legendary yet were almost never used.
shuckles 3y ago
This argument suffers from Simpson’s Paradox. While the US may have high rates of incarceration, a city like San Francisco with which I’m familiar has European rates of incarceration. In addition, you can drive down the incarceration rate by reducing sentence lengths instead of reducing conviction rates for crimes or diverting bonafide criminals from prisons into various makework social programs that do not work to keep society safe or rehabilitate criminals.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
IceHegel 3y ago
How can you discuss incarceration rates without discussing crime rates? The more crime, the more criminals. The more criminals, the more prisoners.
phil21 3y ago
Yes, violent people should be removed from society. Full stop. That's the point. The tired trope that the US incarcerates so many non-violent criminals is just that, a trope. It's not based in reality. You could let out every single non-trafficking drug offense today and you wouldn't make a noticeable dent in the prison population at all. Drop that down to all non-violent offenses and it's not much better. At this point it's an outright lie when people bring this topic up, it's not simply being misinformed any longer. The fact is US society is far more violent than many others it's compared to. There are many reasons that should be addressed, but we certainly do not have a problem of over incarceration of habitually violent criminals. Quite the opposite in fact. A very small percentage of people are responsible for the vast majority of the crime, and as a society we simply stopped caring bout their victims and let them roam free after dozens of interactions with law enforcement. Then you have someone who is generally a decent citizen who makes a mistake and gets the entire book thrown at them - since they have something to lose and it's not politically dangerous. This is a problem in the US. Hand-waving it away as saying American's simply want to jail everyone is silly. Live in some of these urban neighborhoods and tell me with a straight face you don't want more people in prison. You will be astounded at the people left to simply walk the streets and terrorize others. Literally everyone in the community knows who they are but nothing at all is done about it.
- deleted 3y ago
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- haldujai 3y ago
  > Then you have someone who is generally a decent citizen who makes a mistake and gets the entire book thrown at them - since they have something to lose and it's not politically dangerous. Speaking of tired tropes... > Live in some of these urban neighborhoods and tell me with a straight face you don't want more people in prison. Since you asked, I've lived in Dallas, Baltimore and the Detroit metro. I can tell you with a straight face I don't want more people in prison. >You will be astounded at the people left to simply walk the streets and terrorize others. It's more like you will be astounded at how dramatized this is, you will not be terrorized walking down the street. > It's not based in reality. You could let out every single non-trafficking drug offense today and you wouldn't make a noticeable dent in the prison population at all. Drop that down to all non-violent offenses and it's not much better. At this point it's an outright lie when people bring this topic up, it's not simply being misinformed any longer. Source?
Bran_son 3y ago
> The US incarcerates more people than China, despite China having more than four times as many people Homicide and incarceration rates per 100k people: homicide | incarceration | incarceration/homicide USA 6.4 | 505 | 79 China 0.5 | 119 | 238 Norway 0.6 | 55 | 92 In other words, China incarcerates 3x as many people per homicide as the USA, and the USA homicide rate is 12.8x that of China. Homicide is used instead of/as a proxy for violent crime, because it is largely immune to bias by overpolicing or racism, which are the usual excuses to dismiss statistics. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...
- pedrosorio 3y ago
  To be fair, killing people is a lot easier in the USA…
  - porkbeer 3y ago
    Is it really?
pauldenton 3y ago
We could also compare the demographics of China and America. What percentage of Chinese are from other countries/cultures with other rules and laws? How many young people are in China vs the US?
birdyrooster 3y ago
Americans view the US in every conceivable way, you haven’t said anything.
seoulbran 3y ago
Actually it's not. At all. Even with the rampant anti American propaganda, anyone with sense understands the privilege of being in this country.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

dang 3y ago

We detached this generic tangent subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35920712 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35920712.

mlazos 3y ago

I agree the US incarcerates too many people, does the comparison to China make sense? How can we trust their numbers especially when they disappear people.

Convolutional 3y ago
Well don't trust China's numbers, and compare the US incarceration rate to those of any industrialized country's numbers that you do trust.
- Natsu 3y ago
  "Too many" doesn't mean much when you look at actual crime rates of serious things like murder and rape where most people don't want those people to be free to commit more crimes that are less susceptible to reporting bias.
- mlazos 3y ago
  Yeah I mean we also have more crime too, so I feel like we’d need to normalize this somehow with like incarcerated/crime rate or something. Given I think nonviolent offenses should be less severely punished than they are today.

lordloki 3y ago

China has literal concentration camps and prisoner organ harvesting. I don't think your comparison means much.

pySSK 3y ago
[flagged]
- carabiner 3y ago
  The US has very similar camps in the form of forced labor (i.e. slavery) by prisoners. These slaves have built products in the US that many of us have used, including clothes and office furniture. They make 63 cents per hour - make no mistake, they are slaves.
  - infamouscow 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - loeg 3y ago
      > The US is a massive area of land with a variety of different regional geographic and cultural differences. You wouldn't go about describing Europe or an entire continent with equally broad strokes. The 13th amendment is federal and applies everywhere in the US. Not every state takes full advantage of prison slave labor, sure, but it is legal everywhere, and some do.
  - pb7 3y ago
    This is voluntary work for people who have been convicted. I agree they should be paid more though.
    - cat_food 3y ago
      Several states still do not pay inmates, including Texas.
    - 3y ago

dfxm12 3y ago

It would take Ra's al Ghul to resolve the problems of this city FWIW, the parent poster doesn't want increased incarceration, they want these people executed (probably without due process).

ravensfan69 3y ago
This was obvious hyperbole meant to express a deep frustration at having suffered at the hands of criminals in a city I care deeply about. People I love have been terrorized
stickfigure 3y ago
Dunno about the parent poster, but I would settle for caning.
- optimalsolver 3y ago
  Kinky.
serf 3y ago
>FWIW, the parent poster doesn't want increased incarceration, they want these people executed (probably without due process). that isn't just wrong -- it's not even what parent said. Their hyperbole was pointing out that the perceived situation is so bad that it would take something drastic to turn it around, not that they in anyway wanted or desired it. There is a lot of purposeful misinterpretation/mis-reading going on in this thread, it seems.
- user982 3y ago
  "It would take Ra's al Ghul to resolve the problems of this city" dereferences directly to "It would take [mass gassing the residents of Baltimore to death] to resolve the problems of this city", as Batman Begins is the scheme being referred to. Both are hyperbole, but that is indeed what was said and implied. Defend it as rhetoric, don't gaslight it as a purposeful misreading.

livinglist 3y ago

Don’t trust any day from Chinese government..

atkailash 3y ago

[dead]

ravensfan69 3y ago

It feels bizarre to make appeals to a foreign society with a history, culture, government, and demographics which are utterly alien to the situation in the west. We don't live in China. Are you so sure that our situation SHOULD be that of China that you'd be willing to risk you or a loved one being victimized by a violent thug? It always confused me that people would side with criminals over the innocent.

plagiarist 3y ago
"...even more than China. We should instead try approaches that, in Europe, have empirically lead to less violent crime." "Why do you love criminals and want innocent families to be terrorized and executed by criminals?"
Convolutional 3y ago
The massive incarceration rates in the US don't seem to be solving anything, although you don't think they're enough. The US has the highest incarceration rate in the industrialized world yet in your view it is barely incarcerating at all. If China is too different, look at western Europe. England's incarceration rate is less than one third of the US's. Canada is on sixth of the US's. These countries have lower incarceration rates but less crime.
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
  There are short-term solutions and there are long-term solutions. What is your long-term solution?
  - seoulbran 3y ago
    Trolls aren't paid to have solutions, just spew garbage. I wouldn't waste any time responding to this troll.

lozenge 3y ago

You could have chosen from about 220 countries with a lower incarceration rate than the US, but because you said China, people are ignoring the substance of your comment. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarce...

plagiarist 3y ago
Yeah, that's a weird comparison. But I doubt the people who are deliberately focusing on China instead of Europe would engage in an honest discussion about things even without it.

BurningFrog 3y ago

Locking up violent people and thieves is very popular among those outside the US! You're right about the comparatively huge US prison population, but the difference is NOT because other countries let violent people and thieves roam free!

plagiarist 3y ago
That is a false dichotomy version of what they're suggesting. And what do you think is the difference?
- tohnjitor 3y ago
  The difference is the US has more people who commit violent crimes.
  - plagiarist 3y ago
    Why is that?
    - electriclove 3y ago
      No consequences
    - PathOfEclipse 3y ago
      [flagged]
    - HDThoreaun 3y ago
      America's dominant culture is toxic individualism. Respecting others is largely thought of a waste of time. There is no culture of shame like there is in eastern asian countries. Seriously, disrespecting people is something to be proud of for a huge number of americans. Everyone looks out for themselves and taking care of number 1 is generally seen as the correct decision. There is incredible income inequality which leaves many of the poor feeling abandoned. The cowboy may be the most famous American caricature. It celebrates toxic individualism and law breaking. This leads to tons of cultural artifacts that glorify crime. Those things all add up to a feeling that the social contract has been broken and crime is an acceptable thing to do.

loeg 3y ago

> I should point out to those not from the US that this is how Americans view the US. There is a lot of crime, the government and NGOs are on the side of the criminals etc. It is up voted to the top as well, with agreement in the replies, this is how Americans view the US. What? No. This is not remotely a universal American viewpoint -- especially the government being "on the side of the criminals etc." What would that even mean?

ravensfan69 3y ago
> What would that even mean? It would look, and maybe this is sheer coincidence, very much like our present situation
- loeg 3y ago
  Could you elaborate on some of the specific similarities you see?
Natsu 3y ago
> especially the government being "on the side of the criminals etc." What would that even mean? I imagine that people would gesture at stories like this: https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/suspect-in-cherokee-street-shooting-released-after-st-louis-prosecutors-refuse-charges/article_ec0067fe-ef41-11ed-86cc-6f23f36c0547.html https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/suspect... > Police arrested one of two gun-wielding people caught on camera during a double shooting at a crowded holiday celebration this past weekend in south St. Louis, but the 33-year-old woman was released Wednesday afternoon after the prosecutor’s office refused charges against her. > The suspect’s release drew public ire, but Circuit Attorney Kimberly M. Gardner’s office declined to further explain.
- assimpleaspossi 3y ago
  Kim Gardner has resigned. Read that as "forced out".
  - 3y ago

swearwolf 3y ago

1.) Though this is becoming an increasingly popular viewpoint in many of the American cities that are experiencing these problems right now, it’s far from universally held. 2.) The U.S. is not a monolith, so looking at the prison population of the United States as a whole doesn’t tell you about what’s going on in an individual state or city. 3.) The number of people incarcerated has a long tail. In the U.S. in particular, many people received long sentences during the years following the ‘94 crime bill. Little if any effort is being made to commute these despite policies centered on new incarceration changing. 4.) In the places where reduced incarceration is being tried in the U.S. it’s important to recognize that it’s being tried effectively in a vacuum. In many other places which are able to sustain low incarceration rates, there are a lot of social programs that help make that possible, and also programs to help people rehabilitate after a conviction. The U.S. has little if any of that. Where reduced incarceration is being tried, it’s usually not replaced with something that’s more effective.

wing-_-nuts 3y ago
I consider myself a liberal, but while I think pretty much all drug possession charges should be dropped and decriminalized, violent crime? Robbery? Those folks should absolutely be in jail. I don't care if we have to build tent cities to incarcerate them. You hurt someone intentionally, you should not be breathing free air for a while.
- mindslight 3y ago
  The fundamental problem is that the misguided attempt to criminalize drugs destroyed respect for the law for generations. Once you're at risk of being locked in a cage for decades for engaging in behavior that would otherwise just be called running a small business, then robbery isn't a huge leap. Especially after your industry ends up creating its own parallel justice system because the usual courts have been made unavailable. So yes, while drugs should be deillegalized and those crimes expunged, this is only but a first step on a long road to repairing the severe damage that was done to actual law and order by the very people fallaciously rallying behind "law and order" in the 80's and 90's.

serf 3y ago

>I should point out to those not from the US that this is how Americans view the US. No, it isn't. It's the opinion of a single person, and you're taking it for granted that their comment was made in earnest and that they truly represent 'the American view' -- whatever that is. >So those outside the US can get insights into what the US is and how it thinks from threads like this. No, they can't. They can learn about the opinion of a single person. Can you point me to a country with such a unified opinion that any single person can cover the opinions of the entire populous? If not, why would you assume that such a case may exist for the United States? And more to the point, the premise was that it is ridiculous to hold the manufacturer of stolen goods to be wholly responsible for the theft in a jurisdiction that has law enforcement -- do you disagree with that, or do you just care to make an example out of someone?

lowkey_ 3y ago

High incarceration rate makes sense when the US has a high crime rate. I don't understand why anyone thinks incarceration rate should not be correlated or would not be correlate to crime rate. Incarcerating criminals isn't the issue, having so many criminals is the issue.

prmoustache 3y ago
Apparently incarceration and death penalty do not really work as a deterrent in this country. Is it because most of the violent crimes are related to drug addiction?
- jolux 3y ago
  The US prison system is violent and brutal, which begets a high recidivism rate. In my opinion this is because American culture tends to confuse retribution for justice but opinions vary I'm sure.
  - mc32 3y ago
    In most countries the prison system is unpleasant, including the UK, Italy, Spain, Japan, Ukraine, Mexico, etc. In addition the justice/legal systems slightly favor the prosecution. Salvador was overrun with gang violence, a new government came in, rounded up the gangsters and crime has gone down. On balance the population of Salvador is better off.
    - jolux 3y ago
      The problem with US prisons goes far beyond basic unpleasantness. Take it from the Department of Justice: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-files-lawsuit-against-state-alabama-unconstitutional-conditions-states https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-files-laws... "'The Department of Justice conducted a thorough investigation of Alabama’s prisons for men and determined that Alabama violated and is continuing to violate the Constitution because its prisons are riddled with prisoner-on-prisoner and guard-on-prisoner violence. The violations have led to homicides, rapes, and serious injuries.'" This is not a system that is going to successfully reintegrate people. We owe a basic level of humane treatment even to prisoners, if not for the sake of liberal values than for the pragmatic reason that violent people who are put in an environment which encourages further violence will remain violent people when they are released back into our society.

renlo 3y ago

If China executes prisoners who would be imprisoned in the US, is it a fair to compare the number of incarcerated in the US and China [1]? In the US they get a lengthy prison sentence, increasing the moving sum of incarcerated for the US, in China they are shot, decreasing the moving sum of the incarcerated for China. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_offences_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_offences_in_China

maxerickson 3y ago
~10,000 executions a year¹. It would take roughly 5 million people for China to match the US incarceration rate. So it's probably fair enough to compare incarceration rates and numbers. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_China#Rates_of_execution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_China#Ra...
- cscurmudgeon 3y ago
  From your link: > The exact numbers of people executed in China is classified as a state secret; In addition to executions, China has been clamping down on entire populations, therefore, preventing future incarceration. > Uyghur birthrate fell by almost half between 2017-2019, research finds, adding to evidence of coercive fertility policies https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/12/chinese-uyghur-policy-causes-unprecedented-fall-in-xinjiang-birthrates https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/12/chinese-uyghur...

mturmon 3y ago

Sorry, these views are not "how Americans view the U.S." The GP comment is pushing a certain narrative that (in my view) has been ginned up by reactionary groups for their own ends. In addition, it's wrong on the facts (insofar as it makes any fact-based claims versus just pushing buttons). I'll go farther. I scoff most profoundly at the viewpoint of the GP post. I view people pushing it as low-information and politically naive (if they actually believe it) or evil and opportunistic (if they are just "intensifying the contradictions" for their own reactionary ends).

Izikiel43 3y ago

> the government and NGOs are on the side of the criminals I lived in Vancouver in Canada, that is true there too, Seattle is the same (the CHAZ bs a couple years ago? 3rd avenue in Downtown?). Hell, in Argentina is also the same and that's south america. I think this is more a problem of places with left leaning politics which consider criminals victims of society which means that they can't be held responsible by their actions. Meanwhile, everyone else suffers.

JPKab 3y ago

> So those outside the US can get insights into what the US is and how it thinks from threads like this. No, everyone outside of your head can get insights into your willingness to cherrypick a single comment and extrapolate to fit your pessimistic, hyper-critical mental model. It's also interesting how you talk about incarceration rates independently of crime rates, and act as if the US is prosecuting and incarcerating broad swathes of innocent people. For those of us who have had loved ones murdered or assaulted, or been mugged/beaten, we don't have the luxury of thinking of this in an abstract way fitting a bong rip session in a dorm room. Take off the Che Guevara t-shirt, take a walk outside, and realize that the world isn't a neat little theory straight from a professor being interviewed on Democracy Now!.

leothecool 3y ago
> the US is prosecuting and incarcerating broad swathes of innocent people. There's about half a million people in jail right now who haven't been convicted of a crime. Some of them are innocent, for sure.
- kevviiinn 3y ago
  Considering how often police lie and plant evidence, I would say a hefty number are innocent
  - roamerz 3y ago
    > Considering how often police lie and plant evidence How often is that, exactly?
    - emodendroket 3y ago
      Interesting question, though difficult to answer. Here's one attempt: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/08/police-testilying.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/08/police-testilyin... > This tendency to lie pervades all police work, not just high-profile violence, and it has the power to ruin lives. Law enforcement officers lie so frequently—in affidavits, on post-incident paperwork, on the witness stand—that officers have coined a word for it: testilying. Judges and juries generally trust police officers, especially in the absence of footage disproving their testimony. As courts reopen and convene juries, many of the same officers now confronting protesters in the street will get back on the stand. > Defense attorneys around the country believe the practice is ubiquitous; while that belief might seem self-serving, it is borne out by footage captured on smartphones and surveillance cameras. Yet those best positioned to crack down on testilying, police chiefs and prosecutors, have done little or nothing to stop it in most of the country. Prosecutors rely on officer testimony, true or not, to secure convictions, and merely acknowledging the problem would require the government to admit that there is almost never real punishment for police perjury. Police and DAs, the parties who do most of the investigating of police perjury, are not exactly eager to share their internal findings for reasons we can probably guess, but the article does offer one striking anecdote: > One NYPD officer, David Grieco—commonly known as Bullethead—has been sued at least 32 times, costing the city $343,252, for civil rights violations, including excessive force and fabrication of evidence. Yet Grieco was promoted and prosecutors continued to call him to the stand long after a slew of his victims blew the whistle on his violent and lawless behavior. Judges continued to rely on his word to lock up defendants. And Grieco’s name did not appear on Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez’s long-secret list of officers with known credibility problems.

xhkkffbf 3y ago

Note: the incarceration rates were much higher in the past and that's the basis of many of these claims. What you're seeing now is the political backlash from those rates. Many crimes aren't prosecuted and the cops often don't do anything. So it's not exactly fair to say that Baltimore has a high incarceration rate these days.

spaceman_2020 3y ago

Although I lived in the US for just a year, my impression was that a) US promoted an all-or-nothing culture, and b) crime, especially gun-related crime, was wildly glorified. My layman belief is that this isn’t just a law and order issue. Its a cultural dysfunction.

tonfreed 3y ago
It's the tyranny of low standards. I sat in an airport in Florida in 2016 watching CNN rerunning the same police shooting footage over and over trying to convince anyone still listening that the pistol that had fallen out of the kid's hand was, in fact, a book. At the time I could have told you the exact type of gun it was, too. The criminal is excused because he doesn't know any better, those that defend themselves are punished to the fullest extent because it's politically expedient to do so.

cscurmudgeon 3y ago

1. Two things can be true. The US imprisons a lot and the US doesn't imprison the right folks. 2. Comparison with China is not accurate. a) Can't trust numbers from China and b) China has a much more rigid social structure and rules and the population has been beaten in submission (e.g. make pie Tiananmen square). Imagine a visa system that prevents folks from California from migrating to Texas (we are even for allowing mass migration from outside). Even Politifact rates such comparisons false https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2014/dec/16/matthew-cooke/us-prison-population-big-russia-china-and-north-ko/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2014/dec/16/matthew-co... It is better looking at a local level. And here China exceeds the US. https://apnews.com/article/china-prisons-uyghurs-religion-0dd1a31f9be29d32c584543af4698955 https://apnews.com/article/china-prisons-uyghurs-religion-0d... 3) If this is really not a problem with Baltimore (as you imply), other locations with Kias and Hyundias should also be suing them. As far as I know, they are also sold in China but don't have these issues.

arp242 3y ago

The previous poster didn't really say anything about incarceration. They didn't say anything about any solution – they just said there's a serious problem. You're reading far too much in to their comment.

mnky9800n 3y ago

He says he wants to take the solution of the Batman villain in Batman begins. He doesn't want to incarcerate more people. He wants to destroy the city of Baltimore with all the people in it.

alphanullmeric 3y ago

Think of the poor thieves. Stealing is a basic human right! Hopefully we can spread the word to looters across the country that the EU will welcome them with open arms.

shjake 3y ago
I’m unaware of many places in the EU where it’s socially acceptable to walk into a store take a bunch of stuff and leave without paying and without the staff or the police doing anything about it…
- alphanullmeric 3y ago
  I mean that many europeans do not believe in the right for a victim to defend their property, ie. if they get away they get away, whereas a robber’s choices in America when the victim is armed are to comply or be forced to. And if they are caught, EU police will stick them in a cosy waterfront prison to play with iPads and eat Michelin star food, probably costing the victim more in taxes then whatever was being stolen from them.
  - shjake 3y ago
    I do hope this is sarcasm…
  - pedrosorio 3y ago
    Tell us more about this “EU police”.

draw_down 3y ago

[dead]

forgetfreeman 3y ago

This is how who views America? You're grossly over-generalizing.

shadowtree 3y ago

The US saw an overall 25% drop in imprisonment since 2010, mainly through Covid policies. California has 39mil inhabitants, currently has 97k in prison. Germany has 83mil inhabitants, currently 56k in prison.

cogitoergofutuo 3y ago

I’m also from the US and I’ll second that this is basically correct and should be taken as an implicit assumption about most Americans if you’re looking in from the outside. Most Americans are only presented with increasing incarceration rates as the only realistically viable way of solving most social ills. As such, there are many flavors and colors of “increase the incarceration rate” across the political spectrum, and lots of people will pick a boogeyman (drug addicts, thieves, etc.) to justify it. For those that don’t pick a boogeyman their support of increasing the incarceration rate is tied to something entirely unrelated (e.g. “My guy that supports mass incarceration is so much better than your guy that supports mass incarceration! Look at his track record on {social issue}!”) The fact that this is the view shared by the majority is reflected in the barely-fluctuating incarceration rate and military-sized “crime fighting” budgets. It is also a fact that is reflected in who Americans continue to elect and which policies we vote to enact.

hn_throawlles 3y ago

it looks like they either: - don't understand the origin of crime - own stock in those private companies that run prisons (capitalism at its worse)

voldacar 3y ago

Has it occurred to you that different countries, and different groups of people within those countries, might have different rates of criminal behavior?

WeylandYutani 3y ago

Well the alternative is vast, and I do mean VAST, spending on social welfare. The US is ofcourse rich enough to do it but that would require scrapping every single tax cut since Reagan. Which would inconvenience those in the upper strata of society.

eternalban 3y ago

> The US incarcerates more people than China, despite China having more than four times as many people This is an apple & orange measure. Starting from first principles, that is how people behave in society, we can at least temper superficial reading of bare metrics. Human beings self police under surveillance. This is the entire point of setting up surveillance states. US in contrast tends more towards police state: show of force to partition society in distinct 'social climates', directly informed by economic means. So, yes, a police state will attempt to partition, even to the extremity of incarceration, and a surveillance state (which is a super-set of police-state) applies psychological force and thus has a much reduced subset that it will deem 'problematic'. Ideally, a state like China will like to approach the limit of having every 'citizen' well trained and well behaved, as domesticated humans. Our problem over here is (given a generous disposition) that we struggle with reconciling freedom and order without resorting to brainwashing the population, or (less generously) that structural characteristic of our system where "freedom" is bound with at times grotesque wealth disparities naturally creates social hostility, and the economic incentives of a criminal life.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago
China doesn’t count non-judicial punishment as incarceration, so there are lot more people forced into work camps for their behavior (or speech) than those numbers tell. Also, if you get caught stealing a wallet in say Shanghai, the victims friends are more likely to beat you up before the police arrive, with no penalty to them (I didn’t make up this example, I saw it for myself). The problem with the USA’s prison system is that it doesn’t focus on rehabilitation at all and instead focuses on punishment. We get the exact results expected of such a system, which is a lot of repeat business.

unholythree 3y ago

A lot of commenters are on the parent post are of the opinion our American prison rates are high because of more criminal activity, which may be true, but I think it's also important to recall having a small prison population doesn't necessarily equal a just society. There were very few long term prisoners in medieval society, not because of a progressive outlook but because most crimes were punished with some form of torture, execution, or both. Also, many things were crimes that now are thought of as basic human rights. You can have small prison population if your are willing to truly brutalize your population. China performs about half of the execution in the world every year, is known to torture dissidents, and I doubt it reports those being re-educated as prisoners. I would hardly consider that more just than America. A society can also have a small inmate population and be unjust because enforcement is rare, or selective either due to corrupt or ineffective law enforcement. Additionally if acts of vigilantism are common in a society you can have also have less prisoners since "justice" is found in the streets. I think there are reasonable critiques of the American prisons, criminal justice system, and especially for profit prisons, but there are also much worse alternatives. The system we have really is an imperfect attempt in need of adjustment and not a deliberate attempt at cruelty. The cruelty is a bug not the feature.

protoc 3y ago
hi cia
qingcharles 3y ago
No, there was almost no prison in medieval times because the bulk of crimes were punished with fines (good for the government) or expulsion from the area. Capital punishments were not as common as you imagine, and some forms, such as being pulled apart with horses, have become legendary yet were almost never used.

shuckles 3y ago

This argument suffers from Simpson’s Paradox. While the US may have high rates of incarceration, a city like San Francisco with which I’m familiar has European rates of incarceration. In addition, you can drive down the incarceration rate by reducing sentence lengths instead of reducing conviction rates for crimes or diverting bonafide criminals from prisons into various makework social programs that do not work to keep society safe or rehabilitate criminals.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

IceHegel 3y ago

How can you discuss incarceration rates without discussing crime rates? The more crime, the more criminals. The more criminals, the more prisoners.

phil21 3y ago

Yes, violent people should be removed from society. Full stop. That's the point. The tired trope that the US incarcerates so many non-violent criminals is just that, a trope. It's not based in reality. You could let out every single non-trafficking drug offense today and you wouldn't make a noticeable dent in the prison population at all. Drop that down to all non-violent offenses and it's not much better. At this point it's an outright lie when people bring this topic up, it's not simply being misinformed any longer. The fact is US society is far more violent than many others it's compared to. There are many reasons that should be addressed, but we certainly do not have a problem of over incarceration of habitually violent criminals. Quite the opposite in fact. A very small percentage of people are responsible for the vast majority of the crime, and as a society we simply stopped caring bout their victims and let them roam free after dozens of interactions with law enforcement. Then you have someone who is generally a decent citizen who makes a mistake and gets the entire book thrown at them - since they have something to lose and it's not politically dangerous. This is a problem in the US. Hand-waving it away as saying American's simply want to jail everyone is silly. Live in some of these urban neighborhoods and tell me with a straight face you don't want more people in prison. You will be astounded at the people left to simply walk the streets and terrorize others. Literally everyone in the community knows who they are but nothing at all is done about it.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
haldujai 3y ago
> Then you have someone who is generally a decent citizen who makes a mistake and gets the entire book thrown at them - since they have something to lose and it's not politically dangerous. Speaking of tired tropes... > Live in some of these urban neighborhoods and tell me with a straight face you don't want more people in prison. Since you asked, I've lived in Dallas, Baltimore and the Detroit metro. I can tell you with a straight face I don't want more people in prison. >You will be astounded at the people left to simply walk the streets and terrorize others. It's more like you will be astounded at how dramatized this is, you will not be terrorized walking down the street. > It's not based in reality. You could let out every single non-trafficking drug offense today and you wouldn't make a noticeable dent in the prison population at all. Drop that down to all non-violent offenses and it's not much better. At this point it's an outright lie when people bring this topic up, it's not simply being misinformed any longer. Source?

Bran_son 3y ago

> The US incarcerates more people than China, despite China having more than four times as many people Homicide and incarceration rates per 100k people: homicide | incarceration | incarceration/homicide USA 6.4 | 505 | 79 China 0.5 | 119 | 238 Norway 0.6 | 55 | 92 In other words, China incarcerates 3x as many people per homicide as the USA, and the USA homicide rate is 12.8x that of China. Homicide is used instead of/as a proxy for violent crime, because it is largely immune to bias by overpolicing or racism, which are the usual excuses to dismiss statistics. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...

pedrosorio 3y ago
To be fair, killing people is a lot easier in the USA…
- porkbeer 3y ago
  Is it really?

pauldenton 3y ago

We could also compare the demographics of China and America. What percentage of Chinese are from other countries/cultures with other rules and laws? How many young people are in China vs the US?

birdyrooster 3y ago

Americans view the US in every conceivable way, you haven’t said anything.

seoulbran 3y ago

Actually it's not. At all. Even with the rampant anti American propaganda, anyone with sense understands the privilege of being in this country.

deleted 3y ago

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