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That sounds like a cop out. Not least because the problems mentioned here aren't so much with the prisoners but with the political system that criminalises com

That sounds like a cop out. Not least because the problems mentioned here aren't so much with the prisoners but with the political system that criminalises common behaviour, the legal system that puts non dangerous offenders in prison and the cultural attitude that abuse is warranted. Even if it isn't a cop out, it might be better taken as a suggestion for areas to target for improvement (social dysfunction, social cohesion) than as an excuse for complacency.

rayiner 13y ago
It's an explanation not an excuse. Go to the south side of Chicago and try to see what sorts of cultural ties exist between the people there and the people in the rest of the city. There is a profound disconnect, and a profound lack of any sense of connection to a common community. Obviously Denmark or Norway have poor people. But the sense that one group of people are not even party to the same social contract is not one that is common in Europe, though you see it among Muslim immigrants in the UK and France. Lack of faith in social institutions breeds crime. If you're a poor teenager in Chicago deciding whether to join a gang, you do it because the gang can protect you. The police won't protect you--the police are there to protect the rest of the city from you. And it's not just a matter of decriminalizing common behavior. The young people in Chicago joining gangs aren't non-violent offenders being out away for innocuous crimes. That's what makes the problem so deeply intractable. Even when you take away the overly long sentences and the convictions for innocuous things like mere drug possession, the US has far more crime than Denmark or Norway. Europe is going to see it too, soon. Below replacement fertility has meant increasing immigration, faster than those people can be integrated. And then Europe too will have to deal with the "us versus them" mentality that arises in such populations.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > Obviously Denmark or Norway have poor people. Not really the way the US does: Most recent available Gini Coefficients [1]: Denmark 24.8 Norway 25 Germany 27 E.U. 30.7 India 36.8 World 39 Nigeria 43.7 United States 45 Mozambique 45.6 The biggest underlying problem with the US prison (educational, healthcare, etc.) system is that the US economic system is actively maintained to increase the concentration of wealth and the degree to which Americans don't share a common set of interests. But, still, such broader social problems aren't the only big problems in the prison or other systems, and even though they need to be fixed, there are big steps that can be taken short of fixing them to deal with other real problems in each of those systems. > And it's not just a matter of decriminalizing common behavior. Ending drug prohibition would do quite a lot of to mitigate the problem with prisons, even though it wouldn't deal with the biggest underlying problem. > The young people in Chicago joining gangs aren't non-violent offenders being out away for innocuous crimes. No, but there'd be a lot less broken homes for them to come from if it weren't lots of resources being poored into non-violent offenders being put away for victimless crimes, and there'd be a lot more resources for the kinds of interventions that would stop people from ending up in gangs in the first places. > That's what makes the problem so deeply intractable. What makes the problem deeply intractable is people throwing up their hands and saying that the problem is too hard to deal with. (And, mostly, people seeing their own short-term self-interest being in not dealing with the problem.) [1] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2172.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
- briandear 13y ago
  "Go to the south side of Chicago"... That makes me laugh, I now live near Guadalajara, Mexico and it's safer here, even with cartel violence, than in Chicago. Have a look at the majority of these addresses for the 2013 murders in Chicago: https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0Ak3IIavLYTovdHYxbDItQ255eWh1NzBiQXp5cmxRdmc&output=html https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0Ak3IIavLYTovdHYxbDI... Here's a map for the 52 murders in Chicago in just July 2013: http://homicides.redeyechicago.com/date/2013/7/ http://homicides.redeyechicago.com/date/2013/7/ I'd love to increase cultural ties, however from a risk-assessment standpoint, Chicago is less safe than being a soldier in Afghanistan: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/16/chicago-homicide-rate-wor_n_1602692.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/16/chicago-homicide-ra...
  - rayiner 13y ago
    My first reaction, as someone who loves the city and lived there for several years, was: don't let the statistics dissuade you from visiting; the areas on the north side where you would go are quite safe. And therein is the problem, isn't it.

rayiner 13y ago

It's an explanation not an excuse. Go to the south side of Chicago and try to see what sorts of cultural ties exist between the people there and the people in the rest of the city. There is a profound disconnect, and a profound lack of any sense of connection to a common community. Obviously Denmark or Norway have poor people. But the sense that one group of people are not even party to the same social contract is not one that is common in Europe, though you see it among Muslim immigrants in the UK and France. Lack of faith in social institutions breeds crime. If you're a poor teenager in Chicago deciding whether to join a gang, you do it because the gang can protect you. The police won't protect you--the police are there to protect the rest of the city from you. And it's not just a matter of decriminalizing common behavior. The young people in Chicago joining gangs aren't non-violent offenders being out away for innocuous crimes. That's what makes the problem so deeply intractable. Even when you take away the overly long sentences and the convictions for innocuous things like mere drug possession, the US has far more crime than Denmark or Norway. Europe is going to see it too, soon. Below replacement fertility has meant increasing immigration, faster than those people can be integrated. And then Europe too will have to deal with the "us versus them" mentality that arises in such populations.

dragonwriter 13y ago
> Obviously Denmark or Norway have poor people. Not really the way the US does: Most recent available Gini Coefficients [1]: Denmark 24.8 Norway 25 Germany 27 E.U. 30.7 India 36.8 World 39 Nigeria 43.7 United States 45 Mozambique 45.6 The biggest underlying problem with the US prison (educational, healthcare, etc.) system is that the US economic system is actively maintained to increase the concentration of wealth and the degree to which Americans don't share a common set of interests. But, still, such broader social problems aren't the only big problems in the prison or other systems, and even though they need to be fixed, there are big steps that can be taken short of fixing them to deal with other real problems in each of those systems. > And it's not just a matter of decriminalizing common behavior. Ending drug prohibition would do quite a lot of to mitigate the problem with prisons, even though it wouldn't deal with the biggest underlying problem. > The young people in Chicago joining gangs aren't non-violent offenders being out away for innocuous crimes. No, but there'd be a lot less broken homes for them to come from if it weren't lots of resources being poored into non-violent offenders being put away for victimless crimes, and there'd be a lot more resources for the kinds of interventions that would stop people from ending up in gangs in the first places. > That's what makes the problem so deeply intractable. What makes the problem deeply intractable is people throwing up their hands and saying that the problem is too hard to deal with. (And, mostly, people seeing their own short-term self-interest being in not dealing with the problem.) [1] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2172.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
briandear 13y ago
"Go to the south side of Chicago"... That makes me laugh, I now live near Guadalajara, Mexico and it's safer here, even with cartel violence, than in Chicago. Have a look at the majority of these addresses for the 2013 murders in Chicago: https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0Ak3IIavLYTovdHYxbDItQ255eWh1NzBiQXp5cmxRdmc&output=html https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0Ak3IIavLYTovdHYxbDI... Here's a map for the 52 murders in Chicago in just July 2013: http://homicides.redeyechicago.com/date/2013/7/ http://homicides.redeyechicago.com/date/2013/7/ I'd love to increase cultural ties, however from a risk-assessment standpoint, Chicago is less safe than being a soldier in Afghanistan: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/16/chicago-homicide-rate-wor_n_1602692.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/16/chicago-homicide-ra...
- rayiner 13y ago
  My first reaction, as someone who loves the city and lived there for several years, was: don't let the statistics dissuade you from visiting; the areas on the north side where you would go are quite safe. And therein is the problem, isn't it.