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America's Prison Industrial Complex: Man finally released after 43 years in solitary
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Direct comparisons to the US are only useful if the nations are culturally and demographically similar. That's why I always laugh when people pull Norway out of their ass in these arguments. The country has less people than Minnesota in it.
Its more dehumanizing to blame underlying issues for the actions of an adult than to lock them up.
I think a world view that assumes free will and demands responsibility for ones actions is far more humane than reducing people to a pile of underlying issues.
Damn it, I'm not getting into a free will argument.
This, and the thing that happens in these threads where there is no other country in the world that compares appropriately to the USA. It's tantamount to saying that it's impossible to convince the person claiming that the US is wholly unique and in a situation impossible to compare to other countries, which is fine I guess. It basically means I can stop wasting my own time.
What.
Seriously, what?
It's a pretty stupid argument.
then we make them do farm work on top of that. I don't know what that sounds like to you, but I know what it sounds like to me.
We do have a pretty awesome system in place to consider mitigating circumstances already called trial by jury.
That's -adorable.-
No, it's not.
Also, you seem to now be assuming that "prison reform" means "never throw anyone in prison, ever".
I am still curious if you honestly believe that any reforms that could be interpreted as being "prisoner friendly" will cause an increase in crime rates.
We are actually arguing whether to remove the tumor from society or to try and teach a cancer cell to behave.
Except that not everyone in prison is a "tumor" or a "cancer cell", as much as dehumanizing rhetoric makes it easier for you to accept any injustices in our current prison system.
But then again, you're assuming that removing convicted criminals from society inherently conflicts with the concept of rehabilitation, which it very much doesn't, at all.
Especially since non-violent offenders are also sent to prison.
I've always read those demographic and cultural arguments primarily as a more polite way of phrasing a racial/ethnic argument.
No they don't.
There is literally no chance of a person getting less time because of their low social standing in the United States.
Quite the opposite, really.
This is good because the judge is more likely to know more about prisons and how long even a short stay in prison can feel. Jury's would probably choose much higher sentences due to their lack of knowledge about how the prison system works.
The issues at play here are myriad but the most germane and assailable is the conflation of sentence with punishment. The nature of the crime should be a factor in determining the *punishment,* not the sentence. If all we're debating is the length and severity of penitentiary time, we've already ceded too much ground to the notion of penitentiary time. From a progressive standpoint, I want the murderer rehabbed and back out in society. From a utilitarian standpoint, I want the murderer able to pay some sort of amends or wereguild for what he did. From a regressive perspective, sitting in prison is overly moderate both as punishment and deterrent. So excessive penitentiary time serves the real interest of almost no political bloc besides the prison industry's.
Excessive penitentiary sentences waste all the lives involved and amount to us going "A little of something seems to help so let's try a lot!" and I think we can come up with better social policy than "Like stummies; but BIGGER"
I host a podcast about movies.
Wtf? Is that something there should be a chance for? That's like saying having a low social standing makes you less human and therefore less responsible for your actions.
I'm imagining a progressive sentencing system where time served is dependent on income. Class warfare taken to new levels of retardedness.
"Culture differences" is the all-covering bullshit reason that gets trotted out in almost any argument about why *insert issue here* in the U.S. can't be fixed, when alternative systems elsewhere seem to work better. It's just a fancy way of saying "Eh, it'd take work, and I'm feeling laaazyyyy...".
Another similar one is "The U.S. is so big guys, it just wouldn't work here!" or "U.S. is not homogenous like *insert country here*, and you just don't get how things are here, and it wouldn't work.".
What all these statements share, is that they're justifications for doing nothing to improve the situations, instead of actually putting the effort in to fix things.
http://humanizingideas.law.fsu.edu/faculty/2003-2004workshops/king.pd
So what you are saying is that we should compare the crime rates of Detroit and Iowa city and then make policy prescriptions? Because not taking into consideration variables that influence crime rate because pointing them out gets in the way of policy proposals seems pretty bullshit to me.
Just curious.
You're imagining pretty much the exact current reality.
What I'm saying is that the arguments I highlighted are often used when people run out of any real counters to why a certain improvement shouldn't be implemented. The three arguments I highlighted aren't made in good faith, as problems to be solved, but as roadblocks to cancel out the very attempt at fixing things, as if though they are obvious reasons why something cannot be possibly, ever, done.
I think you're reversing the statement rock was saying rather awkwardly.
He's saying the least advantaged should not be the default and it goes down from there as you increase in privilege.
The ideal system is
punishment = sensible punishment - mitigating circumstances
not
Punishment = (sensible punishment^mitigating circumstances)
Bad social circumstances should at least do nothing, instead of exponentially damning you.
Your reduction ad absurdium, however, is perilously close to the actual system in place which should make you wonder.
I host a podcast about movies.
"Loldetroit is not like Iowa" does not really count, because you're talking the difference between a rural and urban area within one country and not the differences between entire nations. Canada has urban and rural areas too!
People.
Culture exists and ignoring it and using say a comparison between Chicago to Tokyo to judge the effectiveness of criminal justice is retarded.
Gun ownership drives up gun related deaths, including homicides independent to the rest of the homicide/crime rate(as well as other correlative/causal factors such as drug use, poverty, socioeconomic status and history of violence), at the national, state, local and individual level. So the US doesn't has what would otherwise be a substantially lower violent crime rate, but has a truly insane homicide rate.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
So do you think there is an actual problem, and if so, what is it and to what extent?
Because so far you've been simply sniping at people who think we need to change things but offering no actual opinions of your own, and certainly no facts to back up those nonexistent opinions (other than "you guys are wrong").
Now, to be fair to jhffmn, in the surveillance thread we basically said the exact opposite. Not that I think that the criminal justice system is doing at all well, but still.
To be fair I never held that position in the surveillance thread.
But that is that and this is this, and he still needs to define a position other than "not yours".
So, what are the exact cultural differences between Detroit and Iowa that indicate they should take different approaches to criminal justice?
I also think if this was a thread about sexual assault and rape, or white collar crime on Wall Street there would be a lot less "the US is too hard on its criminals" sentiment.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+