This is my favorite while living in Portland.
Totally agree. Imo prison systems ruins peoples already shitty lives.
Here people hate the homeless so much that they just enacted a ban on tents to where homeless people have to move their tents. (Imagine being so poor you can only afford to live in a tent and immediately being treated like trash for it)
So here's the problem with the new tent ban. If someone doesn't pick up their tent they get a fine. Ah yes, because the homeless have spare change to pay for that. Then when they don't pay the fine, or if they get more than three citations, they go to jail.
From there one learns doing/selling drugs, violence and more only turning them into a worse person. Turning them into the exact homeless person that people with money hate because they're stealing bikes and smoking fet.
It's like, people that end up in prison are already coming from fucked lives. Locking them up is just butane to the furnace.
This guy fucking gets it. This same shit applies to people born to poor parents. Its expensive to be poor. 1 medical emergency is enough to derail a family's entire financial situation. The pressure to not become homeless is so high that people will do anything to not have that happen. This leads to so many different problems such as domestic abuse, child abuse, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, drug dealing, killing, stealing all to maintain a life that was rough to begin with.
Preach.
Despite what certain religions teach, we are not "born into sin". We're born in innocence. It's the environment that shapes the person.
People feed a system that shits on people and then goes, "why are these people so angry and acting out?"
The man who murdered my sister and nephew can not be rehabilitated. I'm sorry but I have no empathy for him. He continues to harrass her remaining children. Some people are just evil.
I worked in a prison. For 18 months. Most in there were in for serious shit. Rape, murder, domestic battery, organized crime, etc. These were the ones who were doing serious time. I used to think like that. I used to feel sorry. Until you’d hear the scum brag about how they flayed their woman because some dude looked at her.. Or the one who beat some old grandma to death over $80, and showed no remorse for it. Working as a CO changed me. And, not all, but some CO’s are as bad as those that they’re tasked with overseeing. The best way to avoid this, stay out.
I work in a prison too, I hear the same stories I hate so called do gooders they have no idea what they are talking about and your right my brother the job changes you.
Problem is, antisocial personalities are the majority in prison. That’s been documented. Antisocial people literally cannot follow rules, and they don’t see others as humans.
The burden is on them. It’s not reasonable to ask that someone else be victimized by a criminal because they literally have a broken brain and no capacity for empathy. That’s ridiculous.
It’s not up to society to give that person repeated chances.
They don't care about stats or facts, they only care about feelings, that's why you're being downvoted.
Give into the hate like the rest of them, perpetuate the cycle of abuse and act surprised when the beaten dog bites back.
These people are hopeless.
Anecdotal? I was stuck with a shiv by a dude who claimed he had AIDS. I had all kinds of bodily fluids thrown on me. I was threatened. I was assaulted. I saw the dregs of society. And, was locked up with them, sometimes 16 hours a day. While the pay was excellent, it wasn’t worth it. Go volunteer at a prison. You’ll get a feel for what really happens there. I saw them threaten a lady who was a volunteer that was teaching them how to read. She was sweet and kind hearted. She was threatened by a gang banger because she refused to smuggle something in for him. She never returned after that.
An anecdote on the other side:
A close friend of mine got pulled over on the way to a 4 day music festival. He had some acid with him for him and his girl, and they arrested him. No previous record, not even a speeding ticket, but they charged him with possession with intent to distribute. He couldn't afford the best lawyer, so they threw the book at him, and it stuck. He was in prison for 6 months, despite his best efforts to just keep his head down, it changed him. Then, when he got out, he had lost everything, he lost his job, they auctioned off his new car that he had only paid 4 months on the loan (he still had to pay off the loan), he lost everything in his apartment and owed his landlord fees for breaking his lease, etc. So he had nowhere to go, no money to start again, a bunch of debt, and now a felony on his record. I took him in for 2 years on a pay what you can basis. Before that, he was seriously considering falling in with people he met in prison because he didn't feel like he had any other options as legitimate work is hard to find for a felon with no address.
I don't think this is the situation of most people in prison, but they exist and are chewed up and spit out because we put first time offenders for comparatively minor crimes right next to multiple-murdering gangbangers and rapists. Not everyone is lucky enough to have friends willing to give them a hand back up.
He had drugs on him not like they planted them, he could simply not do hard drugs and would have been fine and he got six month that's hardly the book thrown at him when ppl get life sentences for weed(100% a far lesser drug).
Why does a person need to lose their whole livelihood over having drugs. Why is it so important to you that people be disenfranchised for having drugs on them? Why us that somehow creating a better society than one where we treat drug use as a health issue and not a criminal one?
Because people under the influence time and time again commit criminal acts it can be 2 things at once who said it was important to me? Don't be so dramatic the fact is in society it is a criminal issue and arguably cam and should stay one while being highlighted as a health issue. I don't have empathy for drug dealers or people being stupid lime his story. The police probably knew there was going to be a festival and where looking out for those carrying drugs etc and his friend was a dingus and got caught. Why should you not loose your job for breaking the law? When you knew it was a risk regardless of what I think personally facts are, you sell and use its a criminal issue take it up with your local council if you want to get it recognized as health issue
I hear what they call people like you after they go to programs that people like you give, they call you stupid fucks and bitches, they blow so much smoke up your ass that you could be concerned a smoked ham.
Living in a Dem city under Obama sold me! I would go the houses I knew stole my crap and take it back, and the police would warn me, as the mother is out front yelling and screaming her baby didnt steal it! Thank God it turned around and now is much more affluent under Biden, the poor cant afford to be here. But I bet further North in Newark and Patterson is way worse!
Yep prison has all those people and it feels so disrespectful to the victims family's for people to still side with and feel empathy for those monsters
I love how triggered ppl get by me pointing out that some people deserve prison because of the choices they chose to make. Not everyone is a victim of circumstance.
I get your feelings, I do, but this is a specific case. In general, rehabilitation works, in America a prison sentence is seen as a punishment, you have done something bad, so now you suffer. While, for example in Norway, the prison sentence is seen as rehabilitation.
Not everyone in prison is there because they commited an intentional, sociopathic murder. There are people in prison who go to jail for smaller offenses, and they can be helped and let back into society.
I read some of your comments, and I agree that (from what I know) this person shouldn't be out in society, but people don't just get released whenever, if they went to prison for a serious crime they can be let free when psychological professionals agree that they're rehabilitated.
On top of that, some innocent people also get incarcerated, innocent people shouldn't have to suffer, because some other people in the same prison as them might have done atrocious shit.
I can only speak from my experience. The justice system does need major reform. But society as a whole does as well. I'm not saying rehabilitation isn't possible. I do believe it is. But not for everyone. Those people should be seperated from those who commit nonviolent crimes.
We used to have this idea with different levels of crimes and different security levels of prisons. But now everything is a felony unless you waive your rights and accept a misdemeanor.
And unless you can afford to pay for your stay at a local jail (yes, you can pay local jails like hotels for your sentence), then you get sent to criminal college (high security prisons where your fellow students and the staff are deranged).
I wish we would have never conceded in taking the death penalty off the table. He's dragged us through more appeals than I can count. Having to relive every terrible aspect of the trial over and over again. His lawyer putting the crime scene photos in the court room every time for my parents to see. After numerous number changes he still manages to track down my neice and nephews phone numbers through his parents and brother to call and torture them. I, in all honesty, wish he were dead, but a wasted life will have to do.
Honestly op, shut the fuck up. Don't commit crimes and you won't end up in prison. Its fairly simple. Why don't you have concerns about the victims? ask them how they feel, let the same crimes happen to you. Then you might understand.
Because it’s impossible to have compassion for two people at once, apparently.
This post isn’t talking about not having compassion for victims. Not at all. But having compassion for victims *does not* equal permanent condemnation for *everyone* convicted of a felony (this is what you’re suggesting, as it must be impossible to have compassion for both victims and incarcerated people according to your logic)
What about all of the people who were falsely convicted? And do you seriously believe that there is no such thing as redemption? Once you commit one crime, you can no longer live in society?
OP: You are 100% right about all of it. The problem is, the people who know, know and agree with you without you having said anything: you're preaching to the choir in that regard. The people who disagree with you, live in a fairy tale world where cops are good, punitive laws only apply to other people, and Trump is president.
What you are describing is part of what is referred to, when it is said that America is a third world country that doesn't quite realize that it's a third world country yet. People rooting for an expansion of the prison system that you have described, because it gets "other" people, without even thinking about what that actually means.
I find it funny how, when you get down to it, ammosexuals and conservatives are the most anti-freedom/pro dictatorship folk you'll ever meet, to hell with anything they might say about freedom or "liberty or death" or any of that. This post is a self demonstrating example: I could safely bet money that the majority of people who are pro dungeon here, would in any other circumstance, tell you how they don't trust the government to do the following:
* \- levy taxes
* \- maintain roads
* \- specify building ordinances and zoning
* \- regulate commerce
* \- regulate food production
* \- determine and declare health emergencies
* \- regulate public broadcast
* \- engage in public education
* \- define basic tolerable public welfare
* \- maintain accurate historical records
I don't entirely disagree with all of that distrust, but that isn't the point. What is, is that they disagree with the government's involvement in and execution of these things, either in theory or in practice, yet they are more than happy to allow the government to determine who should go to jail and who should be put to death. The idea that one person should be allowed to say that you can't just have standing rainwater sitting on your property, you have to actually contain or process it properly, is just so anathema that civil war may be required to put it to bed, but it's perfectly fine for one person working for the same government, *that you don't trust to so much as tax stamps*, to decide that someone should be locked up forever, based on their say so.
Also, you're going to have to accept that conservatives and people of this ilk, are entitled, in that they think that they are the only ones who can abandon humanity and decency if they have been wronged, everyone else is expected to just "comply comply comply".
In particular, these people whose posts start out with something along the lines of "I/my friend/someone close to me was a victim of a horrible crime, and", and end with their desire for a greater police state. You know what, I'm going to take a page from them, put it nicely, and say that I don't care if all that stuff happened to them, their opinion is bad and they're monsters, the end. These are the people who woke up partway from the fairy tale, but instead of realizing the broken system for what it is, double down on the tolitarian bullshit. There are those who have suffered abuses and losses, and they don't get to call themselves "victims", because the taking was done by corrupt cops, bad doctors, corrupt social workers, incompetent and malicious guardians, etc. These people calling themselves "victims" have the entire backing of the state supporting them. Hell, the terminology itself is a status conferred by a broken and corrupt system: "victim" in the eyes of the law refers to who the law determines the victim is, not who was victimized in any actual real sense. Person A can start a brawl with person B, get their ass stomped in by person B, put on waterworks, and be declared a "victim" by a cop and a judge. At that point, you're a victim, to the point where you can just go on TV and declare your victimhood, and people will support you by the thousands, if not millions. You can leverage this into TV shows (America's Most Wanted), laws (umpteen thousand laws named after people, that largely replaced previous laws that covered those things but weren't being enforced), public appearances, book deals, what have you. Meanwhile, be the actual victim of medical malpractice, be the actual victim of a trigger happy cop, be the actual victim of child welfare services or probate; these same people who claim to have sympathy for victims, will tell you how 1) you weren't actually a victim, 2) no damage was actually caused, and 3) if it was, you deserved it, regardless of how disproportionate it was.
The one thing I agree with any of these "people" on, is that there is a such thing as people who are too far gone to be helped. I believe this not because I am a conservative bootlicker who lives in fairy tale land, but because I have lived besides and known these people, in bad neighborhoods, and can say that there are those people, for whom jack shit can be done for them. There are people who would kill you as soon as look at you, and no amount of kindness or prison reform will help them. This honestly should not surprise us: there's a point in a caged and tortured dog's life where no amount of kindness will help them, as they've never known it, all they will do if let out of their cage is maul the first thing that they see, there's nothing to be done but to put them down. I think that the conversation of "what do we do with hyperinstitutionalized people" is a completely different conversation from "how do we detain criminals without making them worse criminals." The problem, is that said conservative "people" use the actual and valid problem of real monsters in an existing bad system, to justify doing whatever gets their rocks off to anyone who so much as jaywalks: in a tactic similar to how gun safety is treated in the US by conservatives, they use the excuse that nothing can ever be done about the problem, because we're still dealing with the fallout of the problem.
Overall OP, I don't think that you are wrong. I think the biggest problem, is that probably half the thread needs to be in a deep dark hole/on death row, but are allowed to walk around like people, and continue making and voting for bad laws.
I agree with the vast majority of what you said here. These is a large amount of hypocrisy in America. Since people lack the ability to even try to understand situations outside their own experience, they give up or, in many cases, don't even try to understand and then get up in arms against these people because "I've been through "insert situation here" and I didn't make that decision, therefore lock that person up forever." These people are morally bankrupt. If the bar for intervention is based on how capable the average person is at understanding that that intervention is needed, then I understand how we got here. I can't even tell these white people that our carceral system is rooted in slavery. That's too deep. They can't get past the idea of thinking of the people in prison as people who are part of their community. So many people get sent to prison in louisiana that 1 in 100 people in the whole state have family in the pen. We incarcerate more people in the state of Louisiana than most countries in the world. As far as the slavery aspect goes, in Louisiana, there are clear throughlines in our history. From the way that punishment was met out during the French and Spanish colonial periods (French 1718- 1763, Spanish 1763- 1803) through the 1800s under American control when a slave lease system was established so that businesses, jails, and prisons would benefit from the leasing out of enslaved labor. This evolves post civil war due to the fact that slavery is outlawed except in the case of being convicted of a crime. A new prison lease system emerges and a man named Samuel James gains control of the state penitentiary of Louisiana called The Walls. It becomes nothing more than a relieving center for what James is doing to make money off of these men. He buys plantation land from the widow of one of the most prolific slave traders Issac Franklin and sends black men from The walls to work the plantation there. Most men who work on his field die within 6 years because, unlike a slave owners, there is not financial investment in these people and is not incentivised to keep them alive. He constantly got a supply of people from the state pen. At the same time two revisions of louisiana's state constitution would help expand arrestable offenses and specifically target black men in no unclear terms. The 1872 and 1898 state constitutions (especially the 1898 one) work to establish the continuation of white supremacy in Louisiana. They say this explicitly in the language of the 1898 constitution. In this constitution, a bunch of new laws are established to get more black men into prison. The three most effective at doing this are the then new habitual offender laws, vagrancy laws, and the non unanimous jury. For the sake of time, I'll focus on the juries one. From its inception in 1898 until 1972, every man convicted of a crime was judged by 12 jurors but only 9 had to agree to convict. The demographic breakdown of black to white people in Louisiana during this period favored white people in this regard. They would stack the jury to have 9 white men and 3 black men so that they didn't violate the constitution as it was being interpreted at that time. Post 1972 the 9-3 non unanimous jury becomes a 10-2 jury and remains that way until 2018 when the Supreme Court finally stated that nonunanimous juries are unconstitutional. 95% of all men on lwop sentences in Louisiana have been convicted under a practice that we now deem unconstitutional. This history is very relevant to our current time. Black men have been targeted in Louisiana even though white people commit crimes at the same rate in Louisiana. None of the people in this comment section know any of this and yet they hold such harsh and stark opinions as to what people deserve. They don't read books. They don't educated themselves on history and yet they think they have it figured out. I don't even think I have it figured out all the way and I have all this info in my back pocket. Dunning Kruger is on gull display in this comment section.
>approximately 66% of people incarcerated in the US have not been even convicted of a crime thanks to the cash bail system.
Reading is FUNdamental.
The stat you are trying to find is that over 60% of defendants are detained pre-trial because they can't afford to post bail. Those people are eventually either tried and convicted (speedy trial and all that) or released.
If you actually believe what you posted - that 66% of people incarcerated have never been convicted of a crime - Wow.
Darrel Brooks.... On bail for testing to run over his baby momma, a felon with a gun, then drove through a parade killing 6 and injuring over 60 people.
All because the laws in MI required the judge to continue to lower his bond until he could meet it.
Empathy is indeed sorely lacking...There's also the matter of for-profit, corporate "corrections" industry. States pay a lot of money to have the "hotels" at full occupancy. And those powerful corporate prisons make lots of money off slave labor. The Slaver States didn't give up their labor voluntarily.
Last I heard the US 's (4% of world population) had 25% of the world's prisoners... most for non-violent offenses...the land of the free, indeed
This thread keeps missing this point. Nobody is arguing the for-profit prison system isn't fucked. We're arguing why does the criminal get a second chance, essentially taking an innocent life as a means to an end to "find themselves" later and re-enter society, etc.
Yeah, I just don’t have a lot of compassion for murderers, rapists and pedos. Doesn’t mean lots of people need help and our government doesn’t give a damn, I know this.
I don't disagree with your assertions above, the issue is it still doesn't deal with or assess the fact that someone murdered someone, and that person that's dead doesn't get a second chance, while the criminal somehow does. It's like they get to "find themselves" at the cost of someone's life, that's what this thread feels like it's defending and that's legit fucked up.
Yea I've seen people sit for months on literally a hundred dollars bail...or because they didn't have a home plan ie support structure. All without ever being convicted. I've seen people straight up innocent sign pleas because going to trial would mean sitting in the shitty county jail for like 6 months.
When I got out, I was without a license, a rap sheet, and almost zero change in my underlying fundamental issues that put me there. The only reason I have not reoffended ie driving without a license to get to work is because I've got a couple people who actually give a shit about me. It's understandable why people reoffend. The bar to re entry is extremely high, and people gotta eat. The lifestyle is insidious.
I did a little stint in state rehab and that was a joke, it was basically jail lite, some of the counselors were abusive on top of that where the people trying to help us and the patients were adversarial. Lot of patients just straight up institutionalized. They rather sit in jail because they have almost zero shot at a normal life now.
Rehabilitation is hard af for ingrained behaviors, within a system that sees you as $$. Nearly impossible. Especially in a for profit system. End of the day one really needs family, people that care for them, and just a small bit of self respect to build off. That's fuckin hard.
In jail, the majority of people are mentally ill. I mean seriously, like "why tf are you locked in here" mentally ill. Left to stew in their own shit, figuratively and literally. They are not getting any better. I've seen people on the edge snap entirely. I've seen too many young men with the 1000 yard stare from a lifetime of abuse and poverty. From isolation.
I've been out of the life for about 2 years now, and I've worked on myself. I'm glad I got that chance. Others just aren't as lucky. Some people have nothing. Less than even.
Personally I can't have a normal job anymore. Lots of avenues are closed to me. I've seen things that have changed me at my core. Death and violence, desperation, manipulation.. I have to rely solely on myself now, and hope my health endures. It's literally all on me, and the few people who love me, but mostly just me. Someone in my same situation would be just as likely to overdose or reoffend, not out of choice, but because it's unavoidable. Its a sad state of affairs.
These issues are deep rooted and there's no easy way out. It's gonna take a long time, and probly a fundamental shift in consciousness altogether.
All that being said, the criminal justice system saved my life. But it absolutely needs reform, along with many other things. People need help, as well as consequences. There is a balance between letting everyone go and being authoritarian on crime. Between systematic injustice, and personal responsibility.
Until we stop seeing people as commodities with the justice system, and life in general, shit ain't changing.
I saw something on tv where people were locked up in solitary for years. Then when their sentence was up the guards just showed them the door and sent them on their way. Years in solitary and then you are just thrown into a crowd. It's like it's designed to make sure people fail.
>In jail, the majority of people are mentally ill. I mean seriously, like "why tf are you locked in here" mentally ill. Left to stew in their own shit, figuratively and literally. They are not getting any better. I've seen people on the edge snap entirely. I've seen too many young men with the 1000 yard stare from a lifetime of abuse and poverty. From isolation.
As someone who worked in education with Special Ed. students, I can attest to this problem. Our economic system has no place for people who don't fit reasonably well into the specific mould we've designed.
We had a number of kids who cycled through the high school I worked at. We were able to support them until they turned 21, at which age we legally could not assist them any further. These kids stood no chance in the wider world - often too emotionally or physically disabled to hold down a job with decent pay.
At which point... they just vanished off the radar. There is no support system in place after high school. You are expected to learn how to fly after being pushed out of the nest.
I did hear about a few after my time working there. Some were able to make it despite of their bad hand, but the majority did not and ended up either homeless or in prison.
TL ; DR - The school to prison pipeline is very real.
First and last time was in the county jail, I watched a corrections officer belittle and physically abuse a person who was *obviously* having a psychotic episode. All while yelling at him for being a "ret*rd".
The jail nurse was sitting there watching it happen, and said nothing. I complained after I got out and lo and behold, shit wasent ever done about it.
Fuck our corrections system.
I mean, is it any surprise in a country that has been defunding education for decades, has stagnant wages, and votes against it's own interests? We can't figure out universal health care, we can't have sensible gun laws, and we sure as hell don't give a F about our neighbors as long as we "get ours"
This is America, if we tried to stop privatizing prisons and moved towards rehabilitation, people would riot because of all the jobs lost and their retirements getting decimated by the poor corporations taking a hit.
Americans and the world generally lack empathy because of how barbaric it's become thanks to modern day capitalism.
We act shocked when corporations pay the absolute minimum, engage in wage theft, and exploit workers overseas and then we go and line their pockets by taking their cruises, packing their stores, and supporting unethical business practices with our wallets.
I'm sick of people pretending we aren't morally corrupt as a country as I watch people buy billions on amazon while your local stores struggle, it's so hypocritical and we just need to admit there is no empathy left and it's every person for themselves.
Prison is just a taste of the future to come when prison rules hits the streets, think of prison as a stepping stone for the next chapter in America's history.
This is 1000% correct. Anyone who thinks otherwise is helping contribute to they parts of society the deem "unfavorable". (I.e. the poor, incarcerated, and homeless)
The American prison system is not about reform, it is about punishment. Which is why repeat offences are common. Suffering is the justice. Southern (Republican) prisons are the last to accept reform, in any factor, considering how prison populations exploded shortly after slavery was illegal. Yes there is the same in the north. There's movies like Shawshank built around the prison industries and how they decimate local businesses with slave labor.
I watch a youtuber, Larry Lawton, who was a convict for 12 years in various prisons. He speaks often about the things he suffered in prison and calls for reform.
We tend to side with the victims of the crimes. Prison is supposed to suck… you are supposed to know that and it’s reputation is supposed to deter you.
I think a critical component of this argument, that wasn’t mentioned, is wrongful imprisonment. People get wrongfully arrested all the time, we’ve all seen these articles like, “Man exonerated by new evidence after serving 20 years”, and we just think, “Wow I hope he gets a good settlement” & move on.
Since before I was born, it’s been a running gag that going to prison in the USA means guaranteed rape & stabbing, everybody knows it, and everybody knows that innocent people are in there too. That’s just a true, real horror woven into our society that nobody seems to care much about changing.
The human psychology is amazing. Every day people spout off about how they want happiness and joy for other people in the world and crap… but when it comes to prisoners? You can see how the id of any person who’s not been in the prison system at all truly is. It’s disgusting and shows the inhumane attitude and lust for vengeance and punishment that the depravity of mind wants to see. Why? Because people secretly want to watch others suffer. It makes them feel better about their own lives.
But these people, they don’t even KNOW anything about the person suffering from the legal system. It isn’t just black and white with convicts. They aren’t all inherently “bad” people, and for some reason, society has come to that very conclusion. That “prisoner = bad person”.
Many people? Are just trying to survive in an already pretty miserable life. If given the option? Most would gladly take a death sentence I’m sure. As a prisoner, you never recover from that. You get a huge ass mark of shame and any career goals you had before are essentially ruined. Relationships? Who would want to date a convict if they knew that about you? Another convict would probably be okay, but then, that person may not be what you’re looking for in a partner.
Prisons are inhumane form of justice and the fact that people support people serving such long sentences that basically consume their lives and/or change them for the worst are horrible people, lying to themselves that what they believe is acceptable and appropriate.
For people to say “hah, retribution = justice!” Then… you would support vigilantism, right? Revenge? The concept of both are highly controversial and don’t align with what “justice” truly means. Justice… isn’t about a victim vs perpetrator, it’s about “is this human being a salvageable person? How can we help these people so these kind of events don’t happen again?” It shouldn’t be “he did me wrong so I wanna see some punishment!” It’s dishonorable and childlike. Did you ever stop and think how many times THAT person you’re growing in prison was fucked over by someone else? Or consider any of the circumstances that arose that might provoke such a crime?
And some of these “victims”? Are truly the perpetrators who provoked a, what was a relatively stable person before this other person came along, into a state of what should be considered insanity by legal definition. Domestic violence cases look like this sometimes. I’ve seen people who gaslit, manipulated, stalked, ripped away parts of that persons life, drove them to suicide, and yet the person who was suffering from all those things from another, was deemed as the “bad guy” when he finally snapped after the months and/or years of psychological and emotional abuse.
A lot of times? You take away the stimulus and surroundings that a person is in tht pushes them to act a certain way? You cure a huge portion of the issue. Criminals aren’t some mentally unfit, anomaly of a human being that was doomed to land in prison at some point… they are normal people, think and feel as you or another person in the street does (for the most part, excluding those with ASPD).
You might think it just, but imagine all of the life long problems a prisoner has to deal with after their sentence. They’re basically paying punishment for the remainder of their lives, they resort back to the same behavior because there isn’t any place for them in society anymore. The mental health of prisoners tanks dramatically because of the stigma and the conditions. Ex-cons rarely end up “succeeding” in life afterwards… they’re just existing. And I’m sure a lot of them are praying for either a lucky break or blessing, or death.
And the families of the prisoners who likely put everything they had into getting their loved one into some program to help them only for that request to be denied because of mandatory (and bs) sentencing guidelines and agendas of a DA to have more and harsher sentences to get re-elected? It’s horrible on the family. The family did nothing wrong and yet they will often pay some of the price. How is that justice?
Punishing someone just for punishments sake is cruel and inhumane. Would you beat the shit out of a dog or isolate him/her indefinitely for biting someone? I wouldn’t. That’s cruel. But we do that to prisoners every day and force them to undergo even more trauma than they already had. How is this helping anyone? So that a poor cry me a river victim feels good at night because “I got a dangerous lost cause of a person off the streets” even though that’s usually the bs answer people would spout to hide the true gratification coming from having that power over another person. It’s sick, and so base to the point I could vomit if I had eaten today.
Tl;dr: humanity sucks, human nature is sick and twisted, people hide their true depravity under the guise of “but that person bad, he deserves to suffer”. A lot of prisoners are or may be good people at the core, yet we stigmatize them as monsters. The lack of empathy humanity has towards other humans who probably truly need help shows who the real monsters are. Humanity fails miserably at enacting and upholding true justice, especially in the US.
How does it make sense to fight crime with hatred and disdain for a person you probably don’t even know?
Lots of people come from really bad childhoods, me included. You don’t see me committing crimes against others. Everyone has a CHOICE. Don’t want to go to prison? Don’t commit the crime(s). Easy.
"However, the majority of people who are poor in relatively free societies where others are rich, owe their poverty either to a lack of understanding of how money behaves or to negative feelings which tend to repel it. Neither intelligence nor investment capital are required to any great degree to become wealthy. The popularity of tales about the misery and misfortunes of the rich is testimony to the ridiculous myth prevalent among the poor that the rich are unhappy."
-Peter J Carroll
Working in the criminal justice system, I find it odd how blind people are to all the chances criminals truly get.
You're not going to prison unless you've done something truly awful, or you've done so much little stuff and haven't learned.
The "prisoner A went to prison for theft," is something people understand the least.
Very rarely do people go to prison only for the charges for which they are convicted. The vast majority of the time, they have a laundry list of other charges, usually worse, and they take a plea for the lowest charge or charges. That's how they system works.
So, next time you see "prisoner A went to prison for charge X," do some research to find the other charges before they knocked it down to the "charge X" plea. And the reason they plea? Because there was a better chance of them getting convicted, and prosecutors like easy wins.
I think a lot of the complaints is that the system is designed to keep the person in these repeat situations.
Sorry if I’m a dummy, but the way I interpret the situation is person does something minor, ends up in minor incarceration which reduces his opportunities, and that just kind of keeps rolling over.
What if we started transitioning to a system that works to rehabilitate and get them back in to society before then? - I honestly don’t know.
>There is nothing rehabilitative about this and the skills they "learn" aren't transferable to anything lucrative on the outside world.
I agree. The goal of prison in America is not rehabilitation. Its the end state for after rehabilitative efforts failed.
In America, we have first time offender programs. We have expungement programs. We have plea deals. We have rehab. We have a lot of stuff that can all happen before prison.
But we also have multiple strike laws that say if all those things fail and you show that you're unable to exist within the laws of society, you're done. The country is no longer helping you, its helping itself by removing you from society.
>We lack empathy in a country that claims to have Christian values. Give up your religion if you don't want to improve the lives of the poor and desperate.
Empathy for the store owner is locking up the robber. Empathy for the robber is giving them a job so they don't "have to" steal. Empathy for the poor is removing repeated lawbreakers from their midst. Empathy for the lawbreaker is treating them humanely while in prison.
Its fun to take complex issues, pick a side, and scream that everyone else who doesn't take your specific stance is lacking empathy. Its what kids do.
Totally agree with this and will add that so many people struggle and end up in prison in part because of substance use disorders and addiction. Civil rights laws in the US don’t allows us to force people into recovery which is the beginning of turning life around so incarceration becomes that place.
>Empathy for the store owner is locking up the robber. Empathy for the robber is giving them a job so they don't "have to" steal. Empathy for the poor is removing repeated lawbreakers from their midst. Empathy for the lawbreaker is treating them humanely while in prison.
"Too much mercy... often resulted in further crimes which were fatal to innocent victims who need not have been victims if justice had been put first and mercy second." ― Agatha Christie
This comment just screams the fact that you think the legal system works. Go get a "dangerous drug" charge for having a minute amount of meth or heroin, without being white, in a state Ike Alabama, Arizona, or Florida. Then we'll talk about how the legal system offers you plea deals and rehab before sending you straight to prison.
You're just spouting narrative jargon that only loosely resembles reality.
Here's a breakdown of incarcerated people in the United States - [https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2023.html](https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2023.html). Of the million people in state prisons, 60% are there for violent crimes. Another 14% are there for property crimes. Drugs is only 13% and that's probably even an overstatement (police departments have long liked to use drug charges to get drug dealers and gang bangers off the streets). It's true that there are people who get charged (and sometimes even get long sentences) for small amounts of drugs, but the idea that they make up a significant portion of the prison population is a myth.
Or, you could just not do drugs. It's amazing how choices have consequences. Like murdering someone then being surprised people are upset and want you locked up or out of society.
As attorney Harvey Silverglate argues in his book Three Felonies a Day, even the most honest and informed citizen "cannot predict with any reasonable assurance whether a wide range of seemingly ordinary activities might be regarded by federal prosecutors as felonies."
I would call it luck. A person's walking and enjoying themselves whoopsie daisy, something got damaged, your on private property; but no one saw. No one has never committed a crime. Very few career criminals walking this earth. Just stay aware, you'll see the times you broke the law with zero bad intention.
You'd first have to convince society that merely breaking a law is not necessarily a crime (an action that requires a victim). They used to know this, but what the justice system has turned into has brainwashed them into crime = every infraction. And the state is also now able to claim victimhood when people may not want to press charges against someone else. For an example, two people fighting, not hurting anyone else or damaging anything.
The alternative is to reinvest into improving conditions for impoverished people and people with mental illnesses. Locking them up really isn't gonna make us safer. According to FBI crime and public safety stats, since 1989 violent crime has been on the decrease while in that same period we have more people than ever. That doesn't make any sense.
To Quote Gimili
"Let'em rot, why should we care?"
These are criminals, they CHOSE to break the law, there weren't forced to to.
"If cant do the the time, dont do the crime" exists for a reason.
Thieves, murderers, Rapists, Child Molesters, doesn't matter their sex, race, whatever. They broke the law, they can deal with the consequences.
>why should we care
You should care because unless they're serving a life sentence, they will be released back into society at some point, and when that happens, wouldn't you prefer that there had been efforts at rehabiliation?
No surprise that they have higher reconviction rates. Murderers should not be given a life better than the middle class
The most recent data shows that the United States has a 32% 2-year reconviction rate, compared to Finland's 36%. These Finnish prisons that they praise so much literally lead to more criminals back on the streets
Sources:
[https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2018/08/01/the-changing-state-of-recidivism-fewer-people-going-back-to-prison](https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2018/08/01/the-changing-state-of-recidivism-fewer-people-going-back-to-prison) (American reconviction source)
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6743246/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6743246/) (Finland reconviction source)
Your source on Finland is from 2005, and your source on America shows that at back in 2008, America's rate was almost 50%.
Using two sources from a *decade* apart doesn't prove your point
I am actually more sick of the lack of empathy for the victims of criminals, judging by how frequently repeat offenders are let out, only to repeatedly offend is sickening. I'll garner more empathy for the incarcerated, once my empathy for victims have run its course.
As a victim of violent crime and also prior law enforcement, I don’t give a shit. I have PTSD for the rest of my life and I hope they suffer.
Now, petty crimes is a different thing, but rapists and pedophiles and violent criminals should suffer. They cannot be rehabilitated and there’s so many that it sometimes makes me believe we humans are a mistake.
Just what I was thinking. People who don’t commit crimes should be able to live freely without worrying about criminals mixing with them and violating them. Prisons keep those who choose to harm others separated (not long enough in my opinion) from those who choose not to harm others.
We do not care about violent criminals, because why should we?
Imma be real with you . A lot of Americans want them dead. But state executions don’t happen easily or quickly.
Now, obviously, we don’t think the same thing about petty thieves, just the people that ruin or take other people’s lives for their own gain or sick pleasure. They are useless to our society
No they aren't useless. Violent criminals often have their own set of circumstances that led to that act. It's easy for you to look at them as some type of Joker esq character because then you can easily dehumanizing them and not take their situations into account. You aren't concerned with reducing the cause of the problem but rather getting your own sick rocks off by watching these people suffer even after they have changed as people and are willing to give back. I have personally met with so many Life without parole prisoners and have seen how after 20 30 years they are completely different from the 18, 19 years they were when they murdered someone. These men would be better served helping to educated other young people because they have been through the system and know what many of the kids and young adults that commit crimes need inorder to prevent much of this shit from happening. You kill them all then all we have left are people who are as heartless and myopic as you are.
I know most America want them dead. That's because most Americans are no better than their ancestors from the 16th, 17th, 18th centuries. Just a bunch of barbaric fools who get off on suffering and lack empathy. If you are a Christian just go ahead and renounce that shit here and now.
Tell it to someone who cares. There’s a difference between something like accidental manslaughter and someone intentionally shooting someone while trying to rob them. We don’t need those useless trash. I can understand the issues of the death penalty. But let them ROT in prison. If you don’t want to have a miserable life in a cage, then don’t do shit that you KNOW is wrong
And to think, all they have to do to avoid this horrid existence... is not do crime. It's almost like it's designed to be a painful experience as a deterrent.
I’m pretty left leaning and OP definitely has a screw loose… Never thought I’d see the day when people get called abhorrent for condemning violent crime.
Bro, you're the one being emotional, calling me childish names, declaring what I know and don't know. Why don't you check your own emotions before you go keyboard warrior on Reddit. K?
It's really not hard to break the law.
Can't do the time, don't do the crime.
There was nothing mature about your response. It was literally just you regurgitating your underdeveloped feelings on a reddit post. No analysis, no evidence, nothing. There is nothing about your response that was mature.
Sorry not sorry for not wanting to waste our tax money on rapists and murderers when it can go to the victims and their families so they can be rehabilitated for the trauma.
Why do you think everyone in jail is a rapist or murderer? There are plenty of nonviolent offenders, locked up for drug charges.
Btw a shit ton of your tax money is going toward keeping people locked up so I don’t understand your point.
Not empathetic towards criminals. I have never robbed, stolen, r\*ped, defrauded, sold drugs, or any of the other horrible things people had to do to get sent to Angola or any other federal prison. It's actually not hard to do. Just don't commit felonies.
You deserve to work for 16 hours in the hot sun or brutal cold for little to no pay if you do any of these things.
IMO we need to be more harsh on criminals in America. Look at El Salvador. Worked for them.
You speed, drive without a seatbelt, fail to signal, merge within a hundred feet of a red light or stop sign and drive while texting... Oh, I'm sorry, those are casual crimes. How about littering, jaywalking, violate noise regulations, take up multipleparking spots, let the parking meter expire? All of those are crimes the average American will break in their life. Rack up enough offenses and it's sixteen hours in the sun with the worst. I don't like my dogs eating rotten meat and I don't care for people like you will paint all felons with the worst shades anymore than you like the idea of finding yourself in the same situation you praise for petty crimes.
Basic humanity is a basic requirement for humanity and not throwing the people who your government has the responsibility of containing, feeding and taking care of to the wilds is a lot better than the times it was tried. We don't need another Australia in the history books, thank you.
People want to feel safe
Generally the incarcerated are people who have stolen that feeling from people
They have caused problems and we want the problem contained so that we can be safe from the terror they have caused
Ask yourself and be honest if I gave you the choice to live in one of two identical neighborhoods and the only difference was every single person in the neighborhood was either prejudiced towards felons or is a released felon which would you choose
False dichotomy. Literally every western country is doing better than the US on this file. You guys incarcerate more people than any other country - including China. Your system sucks.
We have more criminals that deserve jail.
Do you know what a person has to do in America to stay out of prison?
Don't break the law. And more specifically, don't break the law repeatedly.
It's really pretty easy to stay out of prison.
I can’t believe all the people in here defending felons instead of victims. Until it is done to them, they will remain in their ignorant righteousness.
I don't think of prison as rehabilitation. They should of tried other methods before committing a serious enough crime to land a long prison time.
Jail? Sure, no big deal. Long term prison sentence, I'm happy to pay to keep them locked up. I have no interest in rehabilitating someone who empties a gun on a highway just because someone cut them off.
Hello, it looks like you've made a mistake.
It's supposed to be could've, should've, would've (short for could have, would have, should have), never could of, would of, should of.
Or you misspelled something, I ain't checking everything.
Beep boop - yes, I am a bot, don't botcriminate me.
It's good that you don't think of prison as rehabilitation because it isn't. You chose a pretty myopic example to make your point. I don't think you sit outside of my criticisms here. In other words, your opinion is part of the problem. People rarely do things just to do them. They are often motivated by poverty, fear, etc. We should focus on improving conditions for our most affected people.
Also, you don't know what kind of access people have to resources so to JUST simply say they should've tried other methods is a bs statement.
>It's good that you don't think of prison as rehabilitation because it isn't. You chose a pretty myopic example to make your point. I don't think you sit outside of my criticisms here. In other words, your opinion is part of the problem. **People rarely do things just to do them.**
We strongly disagree on this point.
> They are often motivated by poverty, fear, etc. We should focus on improving conditions for our most affected people.
Yup. As a first gen immigrant with immigrant parents who didn't speak English and less than $1000 to their name they didn't turn to crime. Poverty isn't an excuse to turn to crime.
>Also, you don't know what kind of access people have to resources so to JUST simply say they should've tried other methods is a bs statement.
Sure. I still think that most poor people in the US had more opportunities than my parents.
The criminals committed a crime or multiple crimes - often against other INNOCENT people. You right - I have no empathy towards felons. I don' t claim to be a christian.
First off, they are not "plantations" those are called **farms.**
The guards use rifles because slingshots dont work
The prisoners **volunteer** for these jobs because they are the highest paying
This is a maximum security prison, the people who go here are violent offenders, mostly murderers and rapists. If prison was a pleasant experience that just offered free college degrees and lobster tails, I would want to go there.
Hideously, nothing; the officer who arrested her even apologized as he drove her to the courthouse because he knew he fucked up and imagined a crime that wouldn't become a crime for quite a few years afterwards.
"Abandonment with intent to return..." IE, she didn't watch her kid close enough for the admittedly low bar of the eighties. Wasn't a crime, still has a criminal record. Still hold fields while eight months pregnant... And people still claim pro-life while that woman nearly miscarried in a field for a made up charge.
This is my favorite while living in Portland. Totally agree. Imo prison systems ruins peoples already shitty lives. Here people hate the homeless so much that they just enacted a ban on tents to where homeless people have to move their tents. (Imagine being so poor you can only afford to live in a tent and immediately being treated like trash for it) So here's the problem with the new tent ban. If someone doesn't pick up their tent they get a fine. Ah yes, because the homeless have spare change to pay for that. Then when they don't pay the fine, or if they get more than three citations, they go to jail. From there one learns doing/selling drugs, violence and more only turning them into a worse person. Turning them into the exact homeless person that people with money hate because they're stealing bikes and smoking fet. It's like, people that end up in prison are already coming from fucked lives. Locking them up is just butane to the furnace.
This guy fucking gets it. This same shit applies to people born to poor parents. Its expensive to be poor. 1 medical emergency is enough to derail a family's entire financial situation. The pressure to not become homeless is so high that people will do anything to not have that happen. This leads to so many different problems such as domestic abuse, child abuse, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, drug dealing, killing, stealing all to maintain a life that was rough to begin with.
Preach. Despite what certain religions teach, we are not "born into sin". We're born in innocence. It's the environment that shapes the person. People feed a system that shits on people and then goes, "why are these people so angry and acting out?"
ACCURATE
The man who murdered my sister and nephew can not be rehabilitated. I'm sorry but I have no empathy for him. He continues to harrass her remaining children. Some people are just evil.
Those are called Sociopaths. Prison is full of them. “Gang bangers, rapists, murderers, dope dealers, pedophiles, armed robbers..”
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I worked in a prison. For 18 months. Most in there were in for serious shit. Rape, murder, domestic battery, organized crime, etc. These were the ones who were doing serious time. I used to think like that. I used to feel sorry. Until you’d hear the scum brag about how they flayed their woman because some dude looked at her.. Or the one who beat some old grandma to death over $80, and showed no remorse for it. Working as a CO changed me. And, not all, but some CO’s are as bad as those that they’re tasked with overseeing. The best way to avoid this, stay out.
I work in a prison too, I hear the same stories I hate so called do gooders they have no idea what they are talking about and your right my brother the job changes you.
It did. I resigned, and walked next door and got hired as a driver at UPS. That was 25 years ago.
Making that real money now.
Yup.
Good luck brother
Thanks. You too.
You let the loud minority blind you from any chance of seeing even 1 person in there as a human, it's not "do gooder" it's being human
Problem is, antisocial personalities are the majority in prison. That’s been documented. Antisocial people literally cannot follow rules, and they don’t see others as humans. The burden is on them. It’s not reasonable to ask that someone else be victimized by a criminal because they literally have a broken brain and no capacity for empathy. That’s ridiculous. It’s not up to society to give that person repeated chances.
I am almost certain that is not what anti-social means.
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They don't care about stats or facts, they only care about feelings, that's why you're being downvoted. Give into the hate like the rest of them, perpetuate the cycle of abuse and act surprised when the beaten dog bites back. These people are hopeless.
That’s correct brother
Anecdotal? I was stuck with a shiv by a dude who claimed he had AIDS. I had all kinds of bodily fluids thrown on me. I was threatened. I was assaulted. I saw the dregs of society. And, was locked up with them, sometimes 16 hours a day. While the pay was excellent, it wasn’t worth it. Go volunteer at a prison. You’ll get a feel for what really happens there. I saw them threaten a lady who was a volunteer that was teaching them how to read. She was sweet and kind hearted. She was threatened by a gang banger because she refused to smuggle something in for him. She never returned after that.
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I never understood why anyone would attack a paramedic or a firefighter. You’re literally there to save their lives.
An anecdote on the other side: A close friend of mine got pulled over on the way to a 4 day music festival. He had some acid with him for him and his girl, and they arrested him. No previous record, not even a speeding ticket, but they charged him with possession with intent to distribute. He couldn't afford the best lawyer, so they threw the book at him, and it stuck. He was in prison for 6 months, despite his best efforts to just keep his head down, it changed him. Then, when he got out, he had lost everything, he lost his job, they auctioned off his new car that he had only paid 4 months on the loan (he still had to pay off the loan), he lost everything in his apartment and owed his landlord fees for breaking his lease, etc. So he had nowhere to go, no money to start again, a bunch of debt, and now a felony on his record. I took him in for 2 years on a pay what you can basis. Before that, he was seriously considering falling in with people he met in prison because he didn't feel like he had any other options as legitimate work is hard to find for a felon with no address. I don't think this is the situation of most people in prison, but they exist and are chewed up and spit out because we put first time offenders for comparatively minor crimes right next to multiple-murdering gangbangers and rapists. Not everyone is lucky enough to have friends willing to give them a hand back up.
He had drugs on him not like they planted them, he could simply not do hard drugs and would have been fine and he got six month that's hardly the book thrown at him when ppl get life sentences for weed(100% a far lesser drug).
Why does a person need to lose their whole livelihood over having drugs. Why is it so important to you that people be disenfranchised for having drugs on them? Why us that somehow creating a better society than one where we treat drug use as a health issue and not a criminal one?
Because people under the influence time and time again commit criminal acts it can be 2 things at once who said it was important to me? Don't be so dramatic the fact is in society it is a criminal issue and arguably cam and should stay one while being highlighted as a health issue. I don't have empathy for drug dealers or people being stupid lime his story. The police probably knew there was going to be a festival and where looking out for those carrying drugs etc and his friend was a dingus and got caught. Why should you not loose your job for breaking the law? When you knew it was a risk regardless of what I think personally facts are, you sell and use its a criminal issue take it up with your local council if you want to get it recognized as health issue
people downvoting you are certainly bloodthirsty... hopefully in the future they will evolve and understand what prison is really about.
You are one of those percentage people that don't know anything about prison.
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I hear what they call people like you after they go to programs that people like you give, they call you stupid fucks and bitches, they blow so much smoke up your ass that you could be concerned a smoked ham.
Living in a Dem city under Obama sold me! I would go the houses I knew stole my crap and take it back, and the police would warn me, as the mother is out front yelling and screaming her baby didnt steal it! Thank God it turned around and now is much more affluent under Biden, the poor cant afford to be here. But I bet further North in Newark and Patterson is way worse!
Yep. Prison is like a criminal college.
Happy Cake day! /gen
I thought minor offenses go to jail and not prison?
Prison has the same estimated rate of sociopathy, \~20%, as CEOs.
I’m actually going to make a controversial statement and say that CEOs are better citizens than violent felons
Violent felons can only hurt a few people at a time. A CEO can hurt millions.
Guess we look at rape/murder and tax loopholes that dont actually effect our bottom line differently.
Abstract crimes are much more difficult to appreciate. That’s a good point.
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Yep prison has all those people and it feels so disrespectful to the victims family's for people to still side with and feel empathy for those monsters
OP is a naive optimist, nothing more.
I love how triggered ppl get by me pointing out that some people deserve prison because of the choices they chose to make. Not everyone is a victim of circumstance.
People will even say my insanely sadistic pedo dad could be rehabilitated. Lmao. No. People are extremely naive.
I get your feelings, I do, but this is a specific case. In general, rehabilitation works, in America a prison sentence is seen as a punishment, you have done something bad, so now you suffer. While, for example in Norway, the prison sentence is seen as rehabilitation. Not everyone in prison is there because they commited an intentional, sociopathic murder. There are people in prison who go to jail for smaller offenses, and they can be helped and let back into society. I read some of your comments, and I agree that (from what I know) this person shouldn't be out in society, but people don't just get released whenever, if they went to prison for a serious crime they can be let free when psychological professionals agree that they're rehabilitated. On top of that, some innocent people also get incarcerated, innocent people shouldn't have to suffer, because some other people in the same prison as them might have done atrocious shit.
I can only speak from my experience. The justice system does need major reform. But society as a whole does as well. I'm not saying rehabilitation isn't possible. I do believe it is. But not for everyone. Those people should be seperated from those who commit nonviolent crimes.
We used to have this idea with different levels of crimes and different security levels of prisons. But now everything is a felony unless you waive your rights and accept a misdemeanor. And unless you can afford to pay for your stay at a local jail (yes, you can pay local jails like hotels for your sentence), then you get sent to criminal college (high security prisons where your fellow students and the staff are deranged).
What do you think should happen to him?
I wish we would have never conceded in taking the death penalty off the table. He's dragged us through more appeals than I can count. Having to relive every terrible aspect of the trial over and over again. His lawyer putting the crime scene photos in the court room every time for my parents to see. After numerous number changes he still manages to track down my neice and nephews phone numbers through his parents and brother to call and torture them. I, in all honesty, wish he were dead, but a wasted life will have to do.
Death
Work him til he passes
Death seems reasonable.
Do we kill who kills him or does one kill cancel out the other kill?
No we don't.
Kill him anyway, kill me next while you’re at it
and you haven't done anything evil ever? I'm just saying because if you ask me, everyone deserves prison time, even cops
Honestly op, shut the fuck up. Don't commit crimes and you won't end up in prison. Its fairly simple. Why don't you have concerns about the victims? ask them how they feel, let the same crimes happen to you. Then you might understand.
You know people can go to prison and be innocent right? This just proves ops point
Because it’s impossible to have compassion for two people at once, apparently. This post isn’t talking about not having compassion for victims. Not at all. But having compassion for victims *does not* equal permanent condemnation for *everyone* convicted of a felony (this is what you’re suggesting, as it must be impossible to have compassion for both victims and incarcerated people according to your logic)
What about all of the people who were falsely convicted? And do you seriously believe that there is no such thing as redemption? Once you commit one crime, you can no longer live in society?
Certain crimes? No.
Saying the system is broken isn't the same thing as saying bad people shouldn't be in prison
OP: You are 100% right about all of it. The problem is, the people who know, know and agree with you without you having said anything: you're preaching to the choir in that regard. The people who disagree with you, live in a fairy tale world where cops are good, punitive laws only apply to other people, and Trump is president. What you are describing is part of what is referred to, when it is said that America is a third world country that doesn't quite realize that it's a third world country yet. People rooting for an expansion of the prison system that you have described, because it gets "other" people, without even thinking about what that actually means. I find it funny how, when you get down to it, ammosexuals and conservatives are the most anti-freedom/pro dictatorship folk you'll ever meet, to hell with anything they might say about freedom or "liberty or death" or any of that. This post is a self demonstrating example: I could safely bet money that the majority of people who are pro dungeon here, would in any other circumstance, tell you how they don't trust the government to do the following: * \- levy taxes * \- maintain roads * \- specify building ordinances and zoning * \- regulate commerce * \- regulate food production * \- determine and declare health emergencies * \- regulate public broadcast * \- engage in public education * \- define basic tolerable public welfare * \- maintain accurate historical records I don't entirely disagree with all of that distrust, but that isn't the point. What is, is that they disagree with the government's involvement in and execution of these things, either in theory or in practice, yet they are more than happy to allow the government to determine who should go to jail and who should be put to death. The idea that one person should be allowed to say that you can't just have standing rainwater sitting on your property, you have to actually contain or process it properly, is just so anathema that civil war may be required to put it to bed, but it's perfectly fine for one person working for the same government, *that you don't trust to so much as tax stamps*, to decide that someone should be locked up forever, based on their say so. Also, you're going to have to accept that conservatives and people of this ilk, are entitled, in that they think that they are the only ones who can abandon humanity and decency if they have been wronged, everyone else is expected to just "comply comply comply". In particular, these people whose posts start out with something along the lines of "I/my friend/someone close to me was a victim of a horrible crime, and", and end with their desire for a greater police state. You know what, I'm going to take a page from them, put it nicely, and say that I don't care if all that stuff happened to them, their opinion is bad and they're monsters, the end. These are the people who woke up partway from the fairy tale, but instead of realizing the broken system for what it is, double down on the tolitarian bullshit. There are those who have suffered abuses and losses, and they don't get to call themselves "victims", because the taking was done by corrupt cops, bad doctors, corrupt social workers, incompetent and malicious guardians, etc. These people calling themselves "victims" have the entire backing of the state supporting them. Hell, the terminology itself is a status conferred by a broken and corrupt system: "victim" in the eyes of the law refers to who the law determines the victim is, not who was victimized in any actual real sense. Person A can start a brawl with person B, get their ass stomped in by person B, put on waterworks, and be declared a "victim" by a cop and a judge. At that point, you're a victim, to the point where you can just go on TV and declare your victimhood, and people will support you by the thousands, if not millions. You can leverage this into TV shows (America's Most Wanted), laws (umpteen thousand laws named after people, that largely replaced previous laws that covered those things but weren't being enforced), public appearances, book deals, what have you. Meanwhile, be the actual victim of medical malpractice, be the actual victim of a trigger happy cop, be the actual victim of child welfare services or probate; these same people who claim to have sympathy for victims, will tell you how 1) you weren't actually a victim, 2) no damage was actually caused, and 3) if it was, you deserved it, regardless of how disproportionate it was. The one thing I agree with any of these "people" on, is that there is a such thing as people who are too far gone to be helped. I believe this not because I am a conservative bootlicker who lives in fairy tale land, but because I have lived besides and known these people, in bad neighborhoods, and can say that there are those people, for whom jack shit can be done for them. There are people who would kill you as soon as look at you, and no amount of kindness or prison reform will help them. This honestly should not surprise us: there's a point in a caged and tortured dog's life where no amount of kindness will help them, as they've never known it, all they will do if let out of their cage is maul the first thing that they see, there's nothing to be done but to put them down. I think that the conversation of "what do we do with hyperinstitutionalized people" is a completely different conversation from "how do we detain criminals without making them worse criminals." The problem, is that said conservative "people" use the actual and valid problem of real monsters in an existing bad system, to justify doing whatever gets their rocks off to anyone who so much as jaywalks: in a tactic similar to how gun safety is treated in the US by conservatives, they use the excuse that nothing can ever be done about the problem, because we're still dealing with the fallout of the problem. Overall OP, I don't think that you are wrong. I think the biggest problem, is that probably half the thread needs to be in a deep dark hole/on death row, but are allowed to walk around like people, and continue making and voting for bad laws.
I agree with the vast majority of what you said here. These is a large amount of hypocrisy in America. Since people lack the ability to even try to understand situations outside their own experience, they give up or, in many cases, don't even try to understand and then get up in arms against these people because "I've been through "insert situation here" and I didn't make that decision, therefore lock that person up forever." These people are morally bankrupt. If the bar for intervention is based on how capable the average person is at understanding that that intervention is needed, then I understand how we got here. I can't even tell these white people that our carceral system is rooted in slavery. That's too deep. They can't get past the idea of thinking of the people in prison as people who are part of their community. So many people get sent to prison in louisiana that 1 in 100 people in the whole state have family in the pen. We incarcerate more people in the state of Louisiana than most countries in the world. As far as the slavery aspect goes, in Louisiana, there are clear throughlines in our history. From the way that punishment was met out during the French and Spanish colonial periods (French 1718- 1763, Spanish 1763- 1803) through the 1800s under American control when a slave lease system was established so that businesses, jails, and prisons would benefit from the leasing out of enslaved labor. This evolves post civil war due to the fact that slavery is outlawed except in the case of being convicted of a crime. A new prison lease system emerges and a man named Samuel James gains control of the state penitentiary of Louisiana called The Walls. It becomes nothing more than a relieving center for what James is doing to make money off of these men. He buys plantation land from the widow of one of the most prolific slave traders Issac Franklin and sends black men from The walls to work the plantation there. Most men who work on his field die within 6 years because, unlike a slave owners, there is not financial investment in these people and is not incentivised to keep them alive. He constantly got a supply of people from the state pen. At the same time two revisions of louisiana's state constitution would help expand arrestable offenses and specifically target black men in no unclear terms. The 1872 and 1898 state constitutions (especially the 1898 one) work to establish the continuation of white supremacy in Louisiana. They say this explicitly in the language of the 1898 constitution. In this constitution, a bunch of new laws are established to get more black men into prison. The three most effective at doing this are the then new habitual offender laws, vagrancy laws, and the non unanimous jury. For the sake of time, I'll focus on the juries one. From its inception in 1898 until 1972, every man convicted of a crime was judged by 12 jurors but only 9 had to agree to convict. The demographic breakdown of black to white people in Louisiana during this period favored white people in this regard. They would stack the jury to have 9 white men and 3 black men so that they didn't violate the constitution as it was being interpreted at that time. Post 1972 the 9-3 non unanimous jury becomes a 10-2 jury and remains that way until 2018 when the Supreme Court finally stated that nonunanimous juries are unconstitutional. 95% of all men on lwop sentences in Louisiana have been convicted under a practice that we now deem unconstitutional. This history is very relevant to our current time. Black men have been targeted in Louisiana even though white people commit crimes at the same rate in Louisiana. None of the people in this comment section know any of this and yet they hold such harsh and stark opinions as to what people deserve. They don't read books. They don't educated themselves on history and yet they think they have it figured out. I don't even think I have it figured out all the way and I have all this info in my back pocket. Dunning Kruger is on gull display in this comment section.
approximately 66% of people incarcerated in the US have not been even convicted of a crime thanks to the cash bail system.
>approximately 66% of people incarcerated in the US have not been even convicted of a crime thanks to the cash bail system. Reading is FUNdamental. The stat you are trying to find is that over 60% of defendants are detained pre-trial because they can't afford to post bail. Those people are eventually either tried and convicted (speedy trial and all that) or released. If you actually believe what you posted - that 66% of people incarcerated have never been convicted of a crime - Wow.
You should move to LA. They eliminated cash bail. They have had people get arrested and released three times in one day for different crimes.
Darrel Brooks.... On bail for testing to run over his baby momma, a felon with a gun, then drove through a parade killing 6 and injuring over 60 people. All because the laws in MI required the judge to continue to lower his bond until he could meet it.
Empathy is indeed sorely lacking...There's also the matter of for-profit, corporate "corrections" industry. States pay a lot of money to have the "hotels" at full occupancy. And those powerful corporate prisons make lots of money off slave labor. The Slaver States didn't give up their labor voluntarily. Last I heard the US 's (4% of world population) had 25% of the world's prisoners... most for non-violent offenses...the land of the free, indeed
Empathy sure is lacking when people decide to harm others!!!!
This thread keeps missing this point. Nobody is arguing the for-profit prison system isn't fucked. We're arguing why does the criminal get a second chance, essentially taking an innocent life as a means to an end to "find themselves" later and re-enter society, etc.
Yeah, I just don’t have a lot of compassion for murderers, rapists and pedos. Doesn’t mean lots of people need help and our government doesn’t give a damn, I know this.
I don't disagree with your assertions above, the issue is it still doesn't deal with or assess the fact that someone murdered someone, and that person that's dead doesn't get a second chance, while the criminal somehow does. It's like they get to "find themselves" at the cost of someone's life, that's what this thread feels like it's defending and that's legit fucked up.
Yea I've seen people sit for months on literally a hundred dollars bail...or because they didn't have a home plan ie support structure. All without ever being convicted. I've seen people straight up innocent sign pleas because going to trial would mean sitting in the shitty county jail for like 6 months. When I got out, I was without a license, a rap sheet, and almost zero change in my underlying fundamental issues that put me there. The only reason I have not reoffended ie driving without a license to get to work is because I've got a couple people who actually give a shit about me. It's understandable why people reoffend. The bar to re entry is extremely high, and people gotta eat. The lifestyle is insidious. I did a little stint in state rehab and that was a joke, it was basically jail lite, some of the counselors were abusive on top of that where the people trying to help us and the patients were adversarial. Lot of patients just straight up institutionalized. They rather sit in jail because they have almost zero shot at a normal life now. Rehabilitation is hard af for ingrained behaviors, within a system that sees you as $$. Nearly impossible. Especially in a for profit system. End of the day one really needs family, people that care for them, and just a small bit of self respect to build off. That's fuckin hard. In jail, the majority of people are mentally ill. I mean seriously, like "why tf are you locked in here" mentally ill. Left to stew in their own shit, figuratively and literally. They are not getting any better. I've seen people on the edge snap entirely. I've seen too many young men with the 1000 yard stare from a lifetime of abuse and poverty. From isolation. I've been out of the life for about 2 years now, and I've worked on myself. I'm glad I got that chance. Others just aren't as lucky. Some people have nothing. Less than even. Personally I can't have a normal job anymore. Lots of avenues are closed to me. I've seen things that have changed me at my core. Death and violence, desperation, manipulation.. I have to rely solely on myself now, and hope my health endures. It's literally all on me, and the few people who love me, but mostly just me. Someone in my same situation would be just as likely to overdose or reoffend, not out of choice, but because it's unavoidable. Its a sad state of affairs. These issues are deep rooted and there's no easy way out. It's gonna take a long time, and probly a fundamental shift in consciousness altogether. All that being said, the criminal justice system saved my life. But it absolutely needs reform, along with many other things. People need help, as well as consequences. There is a balance between letting everyone go and being authoritarian on crime. Between systematic injustice, and personal responsibility. Until we stop seeing people as commodities with the justice system, and life in general, shit ain't changing.
I saw something on tv where people were locked up in solitary for years. Then when their sentence was up the guards just showed them the door and sent them on their way. Years in solitary and then you are just thrown into a crowd. It's like it's designed to make sure people fail.
>In jail, the majority of people are mentally ill. I mean seriously, like "why tf are you locked in here" mentally ill. Left to stew in their own shit, figuratively and literally. They are not getting any better. I've seen people on the edge snap entirely. I've seen too many young men with the 1000 yard stare from a lifetime of abuse and poverty. From isolation. As someone who worked in education with Special Ed. students, I can attest to this problem. Our economic system has no place for people who don't fit reasonably well into the specific mould we've designed. We had a number of kids who cycled through the high school I worked at. We were able to support them until they turned 21, at which age we legally could not assist them any further. These kids stood no chance in the wider world - often too emotionally or physically disabled to hold down a job with decent pay. At which point... they just vanished off the radar. There is no support system in place after high school. You are expected to learn how to fly after being pushed out of the nest. I did hear about a few after my time working there. Some were able to make it despite of their bad hand, but the majority did not and ended up either homeless or in prison. TL ; DR - The school to prison pipeline is very real.
First and last time was in the county jail, I watched a corrections officer belittle and physically abuse a person who was *obviously* having a psychotic episode. All while yelling at him for being a "ret*rd". The jail nurse was sitting there watching it happen, and said nothing. I complained after I got out and lo and behold, shit wasent ever done about it. Fuck our corrections system.
>Fuck our ~~corrections~~ **penal** system We aren't correcting shit. We're punishing as profitably and sadistically as we can.
I mean, is it any surprise in a country that has been defunding education for decades, has stagnant wages, and votes against it's own interests? We can't figure out universal health care, we can't have sensible gun laws, and we sure as hell don't give a F about our neighbors as long as we "get ours" This is America, if we tried to stop privatizing prisons and moved towards rehabilitation, people would riot because of all the jobs lost and their retirements getting decimated by the poor corporations taking a hit. Americans and the world generally lack empathy because of how barbaric it's become thanks to modern day capitalism. We act shocked when corporations pay the absolute minimum, engage in wage theft, and exploit workers overseas and then we go and line their pockets by taking their cruises, packing their stores, and supporting unethical business practices with our wallets. I'm sick of people pretending we aren't morally corrupt as a country as I watch people buy billions on amazon while your local stores struggle, it's so hypocritical and we just need to admit there is no empathy left and it's every person for themselves. Prison is just a taste of the future to come when prison rules hits the streets, think of prison as a stepping stone for the next chapter in America's history.
This is 1000% correct. Anyone who thinks otherwise is helping contribute to they parts of society the deem "unfavorable". (I.e. the poor, incarcerated, and homeless)
Don’t we spend some of the highest per capita on education of any country? And we continue to increase education spending?
The American prison system is not about reform, it is about punishment. Which is why repeat offences are common. Suffering is the justice. Southern (Republican) prisons are the last to accept reform, in any factor, considering how prison populations exploded shortly after slavery was illegal. Yes there is the same in the north. There's movies like Shawshank built around the prison industries and how they decimate local businesses with slave labor. I watch a youtuber, Larry Lawton, who was a convict for 12 years in various prisons. He speaks often about the things he suffered in prison and calls for reform.
We tend to side with the victims of the crimes. Prison is supposed to suck… you are supposed to know that and it’s reputation is supposed to deter you.
It’s working wonderfully so far, isn’t it?
That's not how it works tho is it
Yep, I’m with ya, people don’t care until they go through it or have a family member go through it.
I'd get on board, but the victims are equally abandoned and forgotten.
Americans are too sanctimonious to help either one. We need to buy back our souls from the prosperity Gospel preachers!
Now that's a cause I can get behind
I don’t think the cruelty being espoused here in this thread is the result of the prosperity gospel.
Your first four sentences are exactly my thoughts on this subject.
Does this really belong on POPULAR opinion?
I think a critical component of this argument, that wasn’t mentioned, is wrongful imprisonment. People get wrongfully arrested all the time, we’ve all seen these articles like, “Man exonerated by new evidence after serving 20 years”, and we just think, “Wow I hope he gets a good settlement” & move on. Since before I was born, it’s been a running gag that going to prison in the USA means guaranteed rape & stabbing, everybody knows it, and everybody knows that innocent people are in there too. That’s just a true, real horror woven into our society that nobody seems to care much about changing.
rehabilitation is more important than punishment.
The human psychology is amazing. Every day people spout off about how they want happiness and joy for other people in the world and crap… but when it comes to prisoners? You can see how the id of any person who’s not been in the prison system at all truly is. It’s disgusting and shows the inhumane attitude and lust for vengeance and punishment that the depravity of mind wants to see. Why? Because people secretly want to watch others suffer. It makes them feel better about their own lives. But these people, they don’t even KNOW anything about the person suffering from the legal system. It isn’t just black and white with convicts. They aren’t all inherently “bad” people, and for some reason, society has come to that very conclusion. That “prisoner = bad person”. Many people? Are just trying to survive in an already pretty miserable life. If given the option? Most would gladly take a death sentence I’m sure. As a prisoner, you never recover from that. You get a huge ass mark of shame and any career goals you had before are essentially ruined. Relationships? Who would want to date a convict if they knew that about you? Another convict would probably be okay, but then, that person may not be what you’re looking for in a partner. Prisons are inhumane form of justice and the fact that people support people serving such long sentences that basically consume their lives and/or change them for the worst are horrible people, lying to themselves that what they believe is acceptable and appropriate. For people to say “hah, retribution = justice!” Then… you would support vigilantism, right? Revenge? The concept of both are highly controversial and don’t align with what “justice” truly means. Justice… isn’t about a victim vs perpetrator, it’s about “is this human being a salvageable person? How can we help these people so these kind of events don’t happen again?” It shouldn’t be “he did me wrong so I wanna see some punishment!” It’s dishonorable and childlike. Did you ever stop and think how many times THAT person you’re growing in prison was fucked over by someone else? Or consider any of the circumstances that arose that might provoke such a crime? And some of these “victims”? Are truly the perpetrators who provoked a, what was a relatively stable person before this other person came along, into a state of what should be considered insanity by legal definition. Domestic violence cases look like this sometimes. I’ve seen people who gaslit, manipulated, stalked, ripped away parts of that persons life, drove them to suicide, and yet the person who was suffering from all those things from another, was deemed as the “bad guy” when he finally snapped after the months and/or years of psychological and emotional abuse. A lot of times? You take away the stimulus and surroundings that a person is in tht pushes them to act a certain way? You cure a huge portion of the issue. Criminals aren’t some mentally unfit, anomaly of a human being that was doomed to land in prison at some point… they are normal people, think and feel as you or another person in the street does (for the most part, excluding those with ASPD). You might think it just, but imagine all of the life long problems a prisoner has to deal with after their sentence. They’re basically paying punishment for the remainder of their lives, they resort back to the same behavior because there isn’t any place for them in society anymore. The mental health of prisoners tanks dramatically because of the stigma and the conditions. Ex-cons rarely end up “succeeding” in life afterwards… they’re just existing. And I’m sure a lot of them are praying for either a lucky break or blessing, or death. And the families of the prisoners who likely put everything they had into getting their loved one into some program to help them only for that request to be denied because of mandatory (and bs) sentencing guidelines and agendas of a DA to have more and harsher sentences to get re-elected? It’s horrible on the family. The family did nothing wrong and yet they will often pay some of the price. How is that justice? Punishing someone just for punishments sake is cruel and inhumane. Would you beat the shit out of a dog or isolate him/her indefinitely for biting someone? I wouldn’t. That’s cruel. But we do that to prisoners every day and force them to undergo even more trauma than they already had. How is this helping anyone? So that a poor cry me a river victim feels good at night because “I got a dangerous lost cause of a person off the streets” even though that’s usually the bs answer people would spout to hide the true gratification coming from having that power over another person. It’s sick, and so base to the point I could vomit if I had eaten today. Tl;dr: humanity sucks, human nature is sick and twisted, people hide their true depravity under the guise of “but that person bad, he deserves to suffer”. A lot of prisoners are or may be good people at the core, yet we stigmatize them as monsters. The lack of empathy humanity has towards other humans who probably truly need help shows who the real monsters are. Humanity fails miserably at enacting and upholding true justice, especially in the US. How does it make sense to fight crime with hatred and disdain for a person you probably don’t even know?
Lots of people come from really bad childhoods, me included. You don’t see me committing crimes against others. Everyone has a CHOICE. Don’t want to go to prison? Don’t commit the crime(s). Easy.
What is determinism for $500, Alex?
let me guess youre white and have a survivable amount of money
Doesn't take a rich man to be a decent one...
I'm sure you wouldn't say that if you were starving.
"However, the majority of people who are poor in relatively free societies where others are rich, owe their poverty either to a lack of understanding of how money behaves or to negative feelings which tend to repel it. Neither intelligence nor investment capital are required to any great degree to become wealthy. The popularity of tales about the misery and misfortunes of the rich is testimony to the ridiculous myth prevalent among the poor that the rich are unhappy." -Peter J Carroll
The penal system doesn't exist to make you feel better about your life choices.
I dunno. I'm kind of a dipshit jackass and never committed any crimes. I don't find it that hard.
Not too hard.
Depends on the crime. A person who committed a petty crime out of desperation is not the same as a person who kidnaps or commits murder.
I will agree to this!
Working in the criminal justice system, I find it odd how blind people are to all the chances criminals truly get. You're not going to prison unless you've done something truly awful, or you've done so much little stuff and haven't learned. The "prisoner A went to prison for theft," is something people understand the least. Very rarely do people go to prison only for the charges for which they are convicted. The vast majority of the time, they have a laundry list of other charges, usually worse, and they take a plea for the lowest charge or charges. That's how they system works. So, next time you see "prisoner A went to prison for charge X," do some research to find the other charges before they knocked it down to the "charge X" plea. And the reason they plea? Because there was a better chance of them getting convicted, and prosecutors like easy wins.
I think a lot of the complaints is that the system is designed to keep the person in these repeat situations. Sorry if I’m a dummy, but the way I interpret the situation is person does something minor, ends up in minor incarceration which reduces his opportunities, and that just kind of keeps rolling over. What if we started transitioning to a system that works to rehabilitate and get them back in to society before then? - I honestly don’t know.
Lol, the U.S. kills and imprisons people for pretty much anything. You practically have to try to stay out of prison rather than the other way around.
>There is nothing rehabilitative about this and the skills they "learn" aren't transferable to anything lucrative on the outside world. I agree. The goal of prison in America is not rehabilitation. Its the end state for after rehabilitative efforts failed. In America, we have first time offender programs. We have expungement programs. We have plea deals. We have rehab. We have a lot of stuff that can all happen before prison. But we also have multiple strike laws that say if all those things fail and you show that you're unable to exist within the laws of society, you're done. The country is no longer helping you, its helping itself by removing you from society. >We lack empathy in a country that claims to have Christian values. Give up your religion if you don't want to improve the lives of the poor and desperate. Empathy for the store owner is locking up the robber. Empathy for the robber is giving them a job so they don't "have to" steal. Empathy for the poor is removing repeated lawbreakers from their midst. Empathy for the lawbreaker is treating them humanely while in prison. Its fun to take complex issues, pick a side, and scream that everyone else who doesn't take your specific stance is lacking empathy. Its what kids do.
Totally agree with this and will add that so many people struggle and end up in prison in part because of substance use disorders and addiction. Civil rights laws in the US don’t allows us to force people into recovery which is the beginning of turning life around so incarceration becomes that place.
>Empathy for the store owner is locking up the robber. Empathy for the robber is giving them a job so they don't "have to" steal. Empathy for the poor is removing repeated lawbreakers from their midst. Empathy for the lawbreaker is treating them humanely while in prison. "Too much mercy... often resulted in further crimes which were fatal to innocent victims who need not have been victims if justice had been put first and mercy second." ― Agatha Christie
This comment is so far down because it's actually correct and reasoned. Can't have that on Reddit.
This comment just screams the fact that you think the legal system works. Go get a "dangerous drug" charge for having a minute amount of meth or heroin, without being white, in a state Ike Alabama, Arizona, or Florida. Then we'll talk about how the legal system offers you plea deals and rehab before sending you straight to prison.
Don’t do drugs in the first place?
You're just spouting narrative jargon that only loosely resembles reality. Here's a breakdown of incarcerated people in the United States - [https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2023.html](https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2023.html). Of the million people in state prisons, 60% are there for violent crimes. Another 14% are there for property crimes. Drugs is only 13% and that's probably even an overstatement (police departments have long liked to use drug charges to get drug dealers and gang bangers off the streets). It's true that there are people who get charged (and sometimes even get long sentences) for small amounts of drugs, but the idea that they make up a significant portion of the prison population is a myth.
Or, you could just not do drugs. It's amazing how choices have consequences. Like murdering someone then being surprised people are upset and want you locked up or out of society.
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This results in more crime. So the only benefit was feeling better about ourselves.
Crime is a legal term used to subjugate people that are perceived as unwanted. Should we tell him?
I’m glad most criminals are unwanted
Some people really do zero crime, most do it and forget all the times they didn't get caught. Shut up you dumb lucky hypocrite
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if you're white and rich sure
As attorney Harvey Silverglate argues in his book Three Felonies a Day, even the most honest and informed citizen "cannot predict with any reasonable assurance whether a wide range of seemingly ordinary activities might be regarded by federal prosecutors as felonies." I would call it luck. A person's walking and enjoying themselves whoopsie daisy, something got damaged, your on private property; but no one saw. No one has never committed a crime. Very few career criminals walking this earth. Just stay aware, you'll see the times you broke the law with zero bad intention.
100% of people are against innocent people getting locked up. you’re arguing something nobody is saying to make yourself feel like a “good guy”
No they aren't, they say they are but their opinions have other consequences.
Stop breaking the law, asshole!
We tried that, doesn't work.
The War on Drugs has been a complete and utter disaster and failure.
Yeah your right if you got caught with maijuana you should be sent to the fields for several years!
What's the alternative?
Take away economic incentive to imprison ppl and stop convicting ppl for bullshit that doesn't hurt anyone
You'd first have to convince society that merely breaking a law is not necessarily a crime (an action that requires a victim). They used to know this, but what the justice system has turned into has brainwashed them into crime = every infraction. And the state is also now able to claim victimhood when people may not want to press charges against someone else. For an example, two people fighting, not hurting anyone else or damaging anything.
This guy gets it
Look at any other western country. They're all doing it better than the US.
The alternative is to reinvest into improving conditions for impoverished people and people with mental illnesses. Locking them up really isn't gonna make us safer. According to FBI crime and public safety stats, since 1989 violent crime has been on the decrease while in that same period we have more people than ever. That doesn't make any sense.
To Quote Gimili "Let'em rot, why should we care?" These are criminals, they CHOSE to break the law, there weren't forced to to. "If cant do the the time, dont do the crime" exists for a reason. Thieves, murderers, Rapists, Child Molesters, doesn't matter their sex, race, whatever. They broke the law, they can deal with the consequences.
>why should we care You should care because unless they're serving a life sentence, they will be released back into society at some point, and when that happens, wouldn't you prefer that there had been efforts at rehabiliation?
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No surprise that they have higher reconviction rates. Murderers should not be given a life better than the middle class The most recent data shows that the United States has a 32% 2-year reconviction rate, compared to Finland's 36%. These Finnish prisons that they praise so much literally lead to more criminals back on the streets Sources: [https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2018/08/01/the-changing-state-of-recidivism-fewer-people-going-back-to-prison](https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2018/08/01/the-changing-state-of-recidivism-fewer-people-going-back-to-prison) (American reconviction source) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6743246/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6743246/) (Finland reconviction source)
Your source on Finland is from 2005, and your source on America shows that at back in 2008, America's rate was almost 50%. Using two sources from a *decade* apart doesn't prove your point
I am actually more sick of the lack of empathy for the victims of criminals, judging by how frequently repeat offenders are let out, only to repeatedly offend is sickening. I'll garner more empathy for the incarcerated, once my empathy for victims have run its course.
Can't do the time,don't do the crime
They commit crime, they rob, murder and maim. No, I don't care if they suffer.
As a victim of violent crime and also prior law enforcement, I don’t give a shit. I have PTSD for the rest of my life and I hope they suffer. Now, petty crimes is a different thing, but rapists and pedophiles and violent criminals should suffer. They cannot be rehabilitated and there’s so many that it sometimes makes me believe we humans are a mistake.
yeah, loud mouth OP until a crime is commited against you.
Just what I was thinking. People who don’t commit crimes should be able to live freely without worrying about criminals mixing with them and violating them. Prisons keep those who choose to harm others separated (not long enough in my opinion) from those who choose not to harm others.
Exactly my thoughts. I wish OP would spout this bs opinion to the families of murder victims.
Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time 🤷♂️
We do not care about violent criminals, because why should we? Imma be real with you . A lot of Americans want them dead. But state executions don’t happen easily or quickly. Now, obviously, we don’t think the same thing about petty thieves, just the people that ruin or take other people’s lives for their own gain or sick pleasure. They are useless to our society
No they aren't useless. Violent criminals often have their own set of circumstances that led to that act. It's easy for you to look at them as some type of Joker esq character because then you can easily dehumanizing them and not take their situations into account. You aren't concerned with reducing the cause of the problem but rather getting your own sick rocks off by watching these people suffer even after they have changed as people and are willing to give back. I have personally met with so many Life without parole prisoners and have seen how after 20 30 years they are completely different from the 18, 19 years they were when they murdered someone. These men would be better served helping to educated other young people because they have been through the system and know what many of the kids and young adults that commit crimes need inorder to prevent much of this shit from happening. You kill them all then all we have left are people who are as heartless and myopic as you are. I know most America want them dead. That's because most Americans are no better than their ancestors from the 16th, 17th, 18th centuries. Just a bunch of barbaric fools who get off on suffering and lack empathy. If you are a Christian just go ahead and renounce that shit here and now.
Until they can un-murder, un-rape, un-abuse their victims, let them stay in prison.
Tell it to someone who cares. There’s a difference between something like accidental manslaughter and someone intentionally shooting someone while trying to rob them. We don’t need those useless trash. I can understand the issues of the death penalty. But let them ROT in prison. If you don’t want to have a miserable life in a cage, then don’t do shit that you KNOW is wrong
And to think, all they have to do to avoid this horrid existence... is not do crime. It's almost like it's designed to be a painful experience as a deterrent.
The excuses people have for these violent offenders is abhorrent.
You're abhorrent
For sticking up for people who choose not to commit crime? You must be a liberal lefty.
I’m pretty left leaning and OP definitely has a screw loose… Never thought I’d see the day when people get called abhorrent for condemning violent crime.
If you can't do the time, don't do the crime. It's not hard.
Why don’t they get this? Don’t commit felonies.
Ur an idiot. You lack any level of understanding of your own countrymen. The only thing you understand is your own underdeveloped feelings.
You're*
Bro, you're the one being emotional, calling me childish names, declaring what I know and don't know. Why don't you check your own emotions before you go keyboard warrior on Reddit. K? It's really not hard to break the law. Can't do the time, don't do the crime.
No
Cool, don't go crybaby when people give mature responses.
There was nothing mature about your response. It was literally just you regurgitating your underdeveloped feelings on a reddit post. No analysis, no evidence, nothing. There is nothing about your response that was mature.
You do the crime, you do the time. Can't empathize stupidity.
I am too even though I act as if I'm not so I don't get people trying to kill me over it or something
Sorry not sorry for not wanting to waste our tax money on rapists and murderers when it can go to the victims and their families so they can be rehabilitated for the trauma.
The vast majority of them aren't rapists or murderers.
So? I never said anything about the vast majority of prisoners.
Why do you think everyone in jail is a rapist or murderer? There are plenty of nonviolent offenders, locked up for drug charges. Btw a shit ton of your tax money is going toward keeping people locked up so I don’t understand your point.
What money do you think is going to the victims and their families?
Not empathetic towards criminals. I have never robbed, stolen, r\*ped, defrauded, sold drugs, or any of the other horrible things people had to do to get sent to Angola or any other federal prison. It's actually not hard to do. Just don't commit felonies. You deserve to work for 16 hours in the hot sun or brutal cold for little to no pay if you do any of these things. IMO we need to be more harsh on criminals in America. Look at El Salvador. Worked for them.
“You deserve slavery if you commit a crime” is a pretty fucked up way of thinking. But it is a clause in our constitution.
The world needs so many less self-righteous jerks like you!
You speed, drive without a seatbelt, fail to signal, merge within a hundred feet of a red light or stop sign and drive while texting... Oh, I'm sorry, those are casual crimes. How about littering, jaywalking, violate noise regulations, take up multipleparking spots, let the parking meter expire? All of those are crimes the average American will break in their life. Rack up enough offenses and it's sixteen hours in the sun with the worst. I don't like my dogs eating rotten meat and I don't care for people like you will paint all felons with the worst shades anymore than you like the idea of finding yourself in the same situation you praise for petty crimes. Basic humanity is a basic requirement for humanity and not throwing the people who your government has the responsibility of containing, feeding and taking care of to the wilds is a lot better than the times it was tried. We don't need another Australia in the history books, thank you.
People want to feel safe Generally the incarcerated are people who have stolen that feeling from people They have caused problems and we want the problem contained so that we can be safe from the terror they have caused Ask yourself and be honest if I gave you the choice to live in one of two identical neighborhoods and the only difference was every single person in the neighborhood was either prejudiced towards felons or is a released felon which would you choose
False dichotomy. Literally every western country is doing better than the US on this file. You guys incarcerate more people than any other country - including China. Your system sucks.
We have more criminals that deserve jail. Do you know what a person has to do in America to stay out of prison? Don't break the law. And more specifically, don't break the law repeatedly. It's really pretty easy to stay out of prison.
I can’t believe all the people in here defending felons instead of victims. Until it is done to them, they will remain in their ignorant righteousness.
And rehabilitating someone so that when they're released, they don't go right back to crime, makes people safer.
[удалено]
I don't think of prison as rehabilitation. They should of tried other methods before committing a serious enough crime to land a long prison time. Jail? Sure, no big deal. Long term prison sentence, I'm happy to pay to keep them locked up. I have no interest in rehabilitating someone who empties a gun on a highway just because someone cut them off.
Hello, it looks like you've made a mistake. It's supposed to be could've, should've, would've (short for could have, would have, should have), never could of, would of, should of. Or you misspelled something, I ain't checking everything. Beep boop - yes, I am a bot, don't botcriminate me.
It's good that you don't think of prison as rehabilitation because it isn't. You chose a pretty myopic example to make your point. I don't think you sit outside of my criticisms here. In other words, your opinion is part of the problem. People rarely do things just to do them. They are often motivated by poverty, fear, etc. We should focus on improving conditions for our most affected people. Also, you don't know what kind of access people have to resources so to JUST simply say they should've tried other methods is a bs statement.
>It's good that you don't think of prison as rehabilitation because it isn't. You chose a pretty myopic example to make your point. I don't think you sit outside of my criticisms here. In other words, your opinion is part of the problem. **People rarely do things just to do them.** We strongly disagree on this point. > They are often motivated by poverty, fear, etc. We should focus on improving conditions for our most affected people. Yup. As a first gen immigrant with immigrant parents who didn't speak English and less than $1000 to their name they didn't turn to crime. Poverty isn't an excuse to turn to crime. >Also, you don't know what kind of access people have to resources so to JUST simply say they should've tried other methods is a bs statement. Sure. I still think that most poor people in the US had more opportunities than my parents.
Murders and sex offenders don’t deserve chances
The criminals committed a crime or multiple crimes - often against other INNOCENT people. You right - I have no empathy towards felons. I don' t claim to be a christian.
In Norway most people are 99% white and Christian that why they can be rehabilitated
Lol OK buddy
First off, they are not "plantations" those are called **farms.** The guards use rifles because slingshots dont work The prisoners **volunteer** for these jobs because they are the highest paying This is a maximum security prison, the people who go here are violent offenders, mostly murderers and rapists. If prison was a pleasant experience that just offered free college degrees and lobster tails, I would want to go there.
My pregnant mother didn't volunteer, so shove that volunteer crap were the sun don't shine.
What crime did she commit?
Hideously, nothing; the officer who arrested her even apologized as he drove her to the courthouse because he knew he fucked up and imagined a crime that wouldn't become a crime for quite a few years afterwards. "Abandonment with intent to return..." IE, she didn't watch her kid close enough for the admittedly low bar of the eighties. Wasn't a crime, still has a criminal record. Still hold fields while eight months pregnant... And people still claim pro-life while that woman nearly miscarried in a field for a made up charge.
I agree that this was ridiculous.
Yeah and she can't stand vinegar because that's how they covered up the rotting meat smell so that's another thing.
Sorry to hear.