4 ms·
It's wild that you think the problem with the US is too low of an incarceration rate. 25% of all prisoners in the world are in the US
by culi 9mo ago
It's wild that you think the problem with the US is too low of an incarceration rate. 25% of all prisoners in the world are in the US
- co_king_5 8mo ago[dead]
- monero-xmr 8mo agoWhy would you want someone who commits a violent crime to avoid prison?
- nullocator 8mo agoMost offenders in the U.S. prison system that U.S. citizens tax dollars are paying for are not violent offenders, at least not until they've been in and out of the prison system at least once, then their chances of committing additional crimes sky rocket. So to answer your sneakily worded question (throwing in the word violent like some kind of gotcha for the first time): I personally don't want more people in prison because I think it is wasteful both in terms of capital and in terms of human experience, there are proven better alternatives like rehabilitation that work for most people and have significantly better outcomes, and finally because the united states prison system is effectively captured by corporate interests which is antithetical to a society that should be against cruel punishments.
- monero-xmr 8mo agoSure but as long as we are on the same page about aggressively pursuing and incarcerating violent criminals
- co_king_5 8mo ago[dead]
- monero-xmr 8mo agoI’m glad you agree we need to aggressively prosecute violent crime, which is something that is not aggressively pursued in my large blue American city
- co_king_5 8mo ago[dead]
- odie5533 8mo agoWhy is your focus so narrow on ensuring people get punished for crimes rather than ensuring there is no crime? We have the highest incarceration rate in the world. Increasing that isn't going to turn us into Iceland.
- polski-g 8mo agoIncarceration isn't for punishment. It's not for justice. It's not for rehabilitation. It's too protect society from the evil doer.
- al_borland 8mo agoIf there is no real penalty for being a career criminal, people will continue to be career criminals. If someone knows they can rob people and get away with it, why would they do honest work for a living? What is your solution to prevent crime without incarceration as a possible outcome for people breaking the law… especially those who do it repeatedly? It’s easy to talk down to solutions being used today, but without offering up a realistic alternative, this provides no value.
- co_king_5 8mo ago[dead]
- al_borland 8mo agoYou said incarceration is “neo slavery”. The base assumption is slavery is wrong. So what should the penalty be?
- co_king_5 8mo ago[dead]
- al_borland 8mo agoObviously slavery is wrong, that’s why I said it. You continue to dodge my question about the alternative to incarceration, when we continue to have significant numbers of repeat offenders. You know what I’m asking, yet continue to try and distract from it by nitpicking semantics. I don’t think you have an answer.
- scarecrowbob 8mo agoHoss, if you cared you'd know about all the many, many efforts at things like "Restorative Justice". Hell, you'd know what the statistics are around recidivism in the US versus other countries and be able to tell us why other places in the world have such different outcomes. There are plenty of reasons. Mass incarcertaion is a strategy, and it's unique to the US. If you're really curious, a good entry point is the film "13th". As a third person observing this conversation, you seem neither curious nor interested in learning why someone might think of US mass incarceration in such strong terms. The answers are out there, if you actually cared to find them.
- barnabee 8mo agoIt can be true (and likely is) that both: a) much more time and effort should be focused on catching and stopping the most persistent repeat offenders (sometimes by locking them up); and b) orders of magnitude too many Americans are currently in prison.
- morkalork 8mo agoFrom the outside, it looks like the US's society and culture fosters an unusually large criminal class compared to other western countries? If people had access to education, healthcare, jobs that aren't shipped overseas, minimum wage that wasn't laughable, etc, there wouldn't be so much problems? Arguing over severity of punishment while ignoring systemic issues is silly.
- monero-xmr 8mo agoNon-developed countries do not have functional law enforcement and they are highly corrupt, so any statistics outside of developed countries should be ignored. For developed countries, none but America have such high levels of immigration nor the racial diversity America has. It is much easier to convince society to promote high-trust empathetic solutions when society is racially homogenous and shares cultural background. It’s impossible to compare America to any European country, although soon it may be possible if immigration continues
- lhopki01 8mo agoHow are you measuring that? There are plenty of developed countries with a higher immigrant share like Switzerland and Australia. If you're taking about visible minorities then Canada has a higher proportion of the population.
- KMcCMedia 8mo agoI don't think you can make a facile pronouncement that European countries and ethnically and culturally homogenous any longer. We can't have a High-trust society in the USA when politicians scapegoat immigrants, in spite of their being more law-abiding on the whole. We can't avoid having a demoralized populace when corporate funded politicians of both parties drag their feet instead of giving citizens of the most productive and wealthy country in the history of the world parity with less wealthy countries, in terms of healthcare, education, housing, retirement and lack of life precariousness, like going into bankruptcy over medical debt...
- roysting 8mo agoWho do you think those people are that are incarcerated in the USA? I come across this rather frequently among people from sheltered backgrounds like those who graduated from mom and dad taking care of them, all the way through to Mega Corp/university taking care of them, and absolutely cannot fathom why everyone doesn’t just eat cake. I have a working theory that this effect, whatever one wants to call it, of people being too abstracted from reality, is ultimately the source of collapse of all kinds of organizations of humans… including civilizations. It is, for example also why America can have so many vile warmongering people, because not only do they not have to lead troops into battle, have their children drafted into the front lines, or pay for the invariable disaster and murder they perpetrated and orchestrated; but in the most grotesque way, they profit from it and immensely; usually also combining it with other types of fraud like “money printing”, i.e., counterfeiting, which they use to plunder the wealth they accumulated through murder, mayhem, and fraud.
- cucumber3732842 8mo agoThis isn't a new complaint. People have been identifying this group as the source of a lot of bad stuff at least as far back as Marx. The petty or petite bourgeoisie, the professional managerial class, Karens, the name changes with the times. But the constant derision for these groups is rooted in people observing that these groups are disposed to the sort of "driving society off a cliff" behavior you are listing examples of.
- bagels 8mo agoThe real problem is people who don't want to be victims of crime, not the people doing the crime?
- sdkfjhdsjk 8mo agoNow you're getting it. You have exactly identified the problem. Instead of identifying and addressing the real problems--mass unemployment, homelessness, hopelessness--your dystopic "solution" is simply more and bigger jails, more and better armed cops with surveillance cameras attached, more laws, more weapons, more bondage and discipline, more "you will do what I say or else." Doesn't work. Never works. Read the essay "Fate of Empires" by Sir John Glubb to see how things this time are not in fact any different than what came before.
- phendrenad2 8mo agoOr maybe repeat offenders can be put in jail, and other people could be let out. Just a random thought that occurred to me.