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Because laughing at it proves our toughness. Also rape is a thing that happens to other people, and sociopathy is basically the fundament of American culture.
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Aug 27, 2012 11:12
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Because treating prison rape as a joke lets you ignore that at any time your entire world could crumble for no reason and you could get sent to a dark hole to be raped and nobody would care.
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Aug 27, 2012 14:14
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It's completely loving malicious and should be condemned, but hey it's America so let us allow private groups to make ads that say that underaged drinking will be punished with rape and threats in prison!
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Aug 27, 2012 14:33
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British Tim posted:I have never been raped and prison rape is an American phenomenon, It's mostly unheard of in the UK. Also rape is no laughting matter, I don't understand the mentality of American's treating rape as a joke or threat towards people. Prison rape probably isn't the problem in the United Kingdom that it is in the United States, but it is still a problem. Part of the reason it may be "unheard of" is that it simply isn't talked about like it is in the U.S., but that doesn't mean it doesn't occur: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/may/02/male-rape-prison-jail-howard-league
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Aug 27, 2012 16:17
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British Tim posted:I honestly can't believe how barbaric and capitalist the American prison system is. I am not proud or bragging but when I was younger I served 15 months in a catagory B prison in London. I was not in for anything violent just copyright theft, I was selling fake DVD's on ebay fo about a year. I had a playstation, a VCR, a colour tv and a little cleaning job so I was able to buy some goodies at the end of each week. We had a nice menu to choose from for dinner, I would go and get my food and take it back to my cell and eat it whilst watching the tv. I was really scared of going to prison at first but once I was there dare I say it, I actually really enjoyed it and it wouldn't bother me in the slightest if I had to go back, not that I plan to anytime soon. I know you're probated now, but when you're back would you mind talking about how serving time has impacted your post-prison life? Has it made it harder to find work, or do people treat you notably different? Obviously your crime and sentence where pretty light, but that's what makes me so curious - in the States, most people assume "in prison = Bad Person, was in prison = still Bad Person" (and frankly, due to a lack of rehabilitation, it's pretty accurate that most people who served time will return to crime, though obviously that's not what those people mean), and it's pretty divorced from the crime itself.
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Aug 27, 2012 16:58
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Sarkozymandias posted:This seems relevant: Not to downplay the issue of police violence against black men in particular, but the US population is far greater today than it was in 1892, making this little factoid misleading. I'm sure far more people are struck by lightning every year now than in 1892, simply by virtue of there being a vastly larger number of people to be potentially struck by lightning. That doesn't lessen the fact that cops and cop wannabees in America murder a black man slightly more than every other day is appalling, though.
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Aug 28, 2012 02:30
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Protocol 5 posted:Not to downplay the issue of police violence against black men in particular, but the US population is far greater today than it was in 1892, making this little factoid misleading. I'm sure far more people are struck by lightning every year now than in 1892, simply by virtue of there being a vastly larger number of people to be potentially struck by lightning. That doesn't lessen the fact that cops and cop wannabees in America murder a black man slightly more than every other day is appalling, though. The 1890 census data was apparently destroyed in a fire and I didn't bother looking in too much depth to see if any of the demographics were saved anywhere. Using 1900 census data there were 8.8 million black people in the continental US. From wikipedia the 2008 census estimate says there were 37.6 million black people in the US. Due to the extremely small numbers (just meaning population loss per hour was a small fraction of the total population, not that the actual loss of persons was minimal) I'm going to use parts per billion (ppb) rather than percent of the population, though I do feel somewhat dirty speaking in fractions of a person considering history. 2.10 ppb of the black population was killed per hour using 1900 census data with 1892 lynching data. 0.66 ppb of the black population was killed by a police officer, security guard, or vigilante using 2008 population data with that modern 40 hour statistic. The dates don't match up exactly and I don't know how useful a calculation like this is from a socialogical standpoint. I knew the relative rate would be smaller today due to the population increase but I didn't expect it to be only a factor of 3.
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Aug 28, 2012 06:29
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British Tim posted:I honestly can't believe how barbaric and capitalist the American prison system is. I am not proud or bragging but when I was younger I served 15 months in a catagory B prison in London. I was not in for anything violent just copyright theft, I was selling fake DVD's on ebay fo about a year. Did this sentence seem ridiculous to anyone else? 15 months for selling fake DVDs? in a first world country that's not the USA?
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Aug 28, 2012 17:17
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BelgianSandwich posted:Did this sentence seem ridiculous to anyone else? 15 months for selling fake DVDs? in a first world country that's not the USA? Seriously. I thought copyright infringement like that was basically a civil matter everywhere.
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Aug 28, 2012 18:57
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LeftistMuslimObama posted:Seriously. I thought copyright infringement like that was basically a civil matter everywhere. I'm pretty sure it's a different matter if you're actually selling the end result on eBay, as opposed to simple filesharing or something. Counterfeit goods of all types are pretty serious business, and while I think 15 months is too long, I don't really have a problem with it being a criminal matter rather than a civil matter.
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Aug 28, 2012 19:16
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LeftistMuslimObama posted:Seriously. I thought copyright infringement like that was basically a civil matter everywhere. I don't know how it works in the U.K., but as far as I understand, in the U.S.: quote:§ 506. Criminal offenses6 In many cases of simple file-sharing, it isn't being done for commercial gain, and only a few copies are being distributed (less than $1000 worth) and therefore it is not criminal. Selling copies on e-Bay could lead to criminal liability in the U.S., though, as it is for private financial gain. Even simple file-sharing could theoretically lead to criminal liability, if it was over $1000 worth of material in 6 months. But really, the main thing keeping criminal sanctions from being imposed are simply the public reaction and the difficulty of enforcing them, so it tends to only be applied to large-scale counterfeiters, pirates, and operators of websites distributing a large volume of material. Sir John Falstaff fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Aug 28, 2012 |
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Aug 28, 2012 19:45
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There's also the DMCA; if you broke any sort of encryption or other form of anti-circumvention to make the copies, then you're on the hook for that for up to 5 years in prison.
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Aug 28, 2012 20:21
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CellBlock posted:There's also the DMCA; if you broke any sort of encryption or other form of anti-circumvention to make the copies, then you're on the hook for that for up to 5 years in prison. Doesn't that make anybody who uses MPC, VLC, or any other free player to play DVDs a felon? I thought the DVD functionality in apps like that were all based on breaking encryption because those projects, being free apps, can't afford a license for DVD encryption.
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Aug 28, 2012 20:38
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Heisenborg posted:The dates don't match up exactly and I don't know how useful a calculation like this is from a socialogical standpoint. I knew the relative rate would be smaller today due to the population increase but I didn't expect it to be only a factor of 3. Yeah, that's great. My point was that drawing some sort of equivalency between two vastly different time periods, with widely differing population compositions, distributions, densities and socioeconomic contexts so that you can go, "Police killing black people in the 21st century is worse than lynchings in the 19th century, because the number of deaths per year is higher" is disingenuous. It's worse because it's the 21st goddamn century and some of these are people who are at least ostensibly supposed to be upholding the law and not a bunch of backwoods Klansmen wantonly violating it. It's a nice scary soundbite, but it does gently caress all to actually address what the problem is in a meaningful way.
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Aug 28, 2012 21:11
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LeftistMuslimObama posted:Seriously. I thought copyright infringement like that was basically a civil matter everywhere.
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Aug 28, 2012 21:17
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PT6A posted:I'm pretty sure it's a different matter if you're actually selling the end result on eBay, as opposed to simple filesharing or something. Counterfeit goods of all types are pretty serious business, and while I think 15 months is too long, I don't really have a problem with it being a criminal matter rather than a civil matter. Why should it be a criminal matter? A counterfeiter or an internet pirate doesn't present any sort of danger to society that would justify putting them behind bars.
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Aug 28, 2012 23:42
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Sam. posted:Why should it be a criminal matter? A counterfeiter or an internet pirate doesn't present any sort of danger to society that would justify putting them behind bars. Neither does someone committing fraud, but we still see fit to deal with it as a criminal matter. Granted, I don't think the problem with selling pirate DVDs on eBay is that they're being represented as the real thing, so it's not really applicable, but if you're selling fake goods that you are purporting to be the real thing, that is absolutely harmful to society. Depending on the scale and nature of a for-profit pirate DVD operation, I can see dealing with it criminally. A prison term is probably too harsh unless there are exacerbating circumstances, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be a criminal offense at all.
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Aug 29, 2012 02:49
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PT6A posted:Neither does someone committing fraud, but we still see fit to deal with it as a criminal matter. Granted, I don't think the problem with selling pirate DVDs on eBay is that they're being represented as the real thing, so it's not really applicable, but if you're selling fake goods that you are purporting to be the real thing, that is absolutely harmful to society. If it's a criminal offense and you're not punishing it with prison, what's the punishment? If it's fines, then why not just make it a civil offense and have them pay the value of the goods to the owner? Really, the only reason people should be imprisoned is if they've committed violent crimes like murder or rape that make them a danger to the rest of society, and even then, prison shouldn't be the first choice, because mental treatment would be a better option for them and everyone else in many cases.
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Aug 29, 2012 03:09
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Sam. posted:If it's a criminal offense and you're not punishing it with prison, what's the punishment? If it's fines, then why not just make it a civil offense and have them pay the value of the goods to the owner? You don't think fraud and financial crimes should be criminal matters? The fact that the American prison system is lovely shouldn't dictate what we see as criminal and not criminal -- that should be decided on its own merits.
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Aug 29, 2012 03:38
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PT6A posted:You don't think fraud and financial crimes should be criminal matters? The fact that the American prison system is lovely shouldn't dictate what we see as criminal and not criminal -- that should be decided on its own merits. I think the sentiment is more that custodial sentences should be reserved for those who seriously harm others.
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Aug 29, 2012 07:09
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Protocol 5 posted:Yeah, that's great. My point was that drawing some sort of equivalency between two vastly different time periods, with widely differing population compositions, distributions, densities and socioeconomic contexts so that you can go, "Police killing black people in the 21st century is worse than lynchings in the 19th century, because the number of deaths per year is higher" is disingenuous. It's worse because it's the 21st goddamn century and some of these are people who are at least ostensibly supposed to be upholding the law and not a bunch of backwoods Klansmen wantonly violating it. It's a nice scary soundbite, but it does gently caress all to actually address what the problem is in a meaningful way. The time of lynching was broadly conceived of as an era of extreme personal insecurity and terror for black people. Today, where a Black Man is President and Racism is Over, still more black people are dying to racially motivated violence. While I appreciate that your overwhelming impulse when you see numbers is to pull out your slide rule and protractor and make computer noises and explain the context, I'm pretty sure that's cold consolation to someone who got shot by the cops while reaching for their ID.
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Aug 30, 2012 14:43
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God this thread is sad. I wish my family wasn't pushing me to go be a corrections officer.
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Aug 30, 2012 18:28
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Countblanc posted:I know you're probated now, but when you're back would you mind talking about how serving time has impacted your post-prison life? Has it made it harder to find work, or do people treat you notably different? Obviously your crime and sentence where pretty light, but that's what makes me so curious - in the States, most people assume "in prison = Bad Person, was in prison = still Bad Person" (and frankly, due to a lack of rehabilitation, it's pretty accurate that most people who served time will return to crime, though obviously that's not what those people mean), and it's pretty divorced from the crime itself. I was always a troubled child and I also spent time in young offenders institutes and children's homes but I got past that finished school and went onto college. I don't think anything really impacted my life at all until recently, I have always been in fulltime employment until the last 18 months or so since I was made redundant from my last job. There are not many jobs where I live in the UK and as all the east european immigrants have taken them, for a person like me who also has criminal convictions and served a prison sentence I am effectively on the employment scrap heap before I even reach 30 and just take as much money as I can get off the government. BelgianSandwich posted:Did this sentence seem ridiculous to anyone else? 15 months for selling fake DVDs? in a first world country that's not the USA? There was more to it than simple copyright theft and I was actually sentenced to 28 months of imprisonment but served 15 months. I had a friend who was making a lot of money selling DVD's on Ebay and he offered to sell me DVD's in bulk so I could sell them also. These were A+ copies, you couldn't tell the difference unless you were an expert so I thought everything will be fine. He gave me a good price and I was selling them at just under retail and making a killing. After a few months I was ordering more DVD's than my friend could supply so he put me intouch with his Chinese contact so I could buy direct from source which was even cheaper for me. This went on for over a year when I finally got raided by customs and the police, my so called friend had been caught in a customs sting with a shipment of the DVD's and gave me up aslo. I never really new or counted the exact amount of money I earned until it came out in court. When evidence was been given against me they produced Paypal records with transaction in excess of £620,000 in almost 14 months so I guess that is why I got such a harh sentence.
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Aug 30, 2012 19:06
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side_burned posted:God this thread is sad. I wish my family wasn't pushing me to go be a corrections officer. So don't. Do somethin else. Fight the power if you want, but do somethin else.
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Aug 31, 2012 00:56
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Down Right Fierce posted:So don't. Do somethin else. Fight the power if you want, but do somethin else. Or become a corrections officer and do the job as well as you can? My step-mother is a social worker and she knows very well how bad some social workers can be, and how bad the system is for people. I get the feeling that she does things her way rather than the easy way, with good intentions to help her clients as much as she can. If the only cor. officers who take the job are authoritarian pricks, then of course "all" cor. officers will be pricks.
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Aug 31, 2012 21:37
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anonumos posted:Or become a corrections officer and do the job as well as you can? My step-mother is a social worker and she knows very well how bad some social workers can be, and how bad the system is for people. I get the feeling that she does things her way rather than the easy way, with good intentions to help her clients as much as she can. The problem there, though, is that in the case of police and I'm going to assume correction officers as well, there are two problems. First is that "good cops" can be forced out of the force by "bad cops." As in, if a good cop reports a bad cop for literally murdering somebody, drumming up fake chargers, or skimming drugs and money off of things acquired on raids, a force that is corrupt from top to bottom WILL get rid of the guy. Second is the social side of things. People are tribal creatures. I don't care how much you say others don't affect you, they do. Your peer group does, to at least some degree, affect your actions. A good cop can become a bad cop over time. So, if all of the jail guards are abusive assholes, a new jail guard is highly likely to be influenced to become an abusive rear end in a top hat. Third is the simple fact that authority differences have an incredible tendency to turn people into monsters. There's been experiments that have proven that. Fourth is also the simple fact that most people will follow the orders of their superiors, even if that means brutalizing people that don't deserve it. I've known and met quite a number of corrections officers in my day and, without fail, they view the prisoners as sub-human filth that deserve to suffer. It's seriously so bad that I've heard jail guards say that a guy that was serving a few days for not paying a fine (note: he was unemployed and had neither income nor a way to actually pay the fine) deserved to have his rear end kicked by other prisoners every last day he was there. And as for the rape thing, well...I recommend reading some books written by prisoners. There have been reports that, in many American jails, known prison rapists tend to not get punished because they are used as punishment. As in, jail guards will deliberately room a prisoner they don't like or that misbehaved somehow with a known rapist overnight. Let me spell that out: in some American jails, rape is literally used as punishment.
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Aug 31, 2012 23:43
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ToxicSlurpee posted:The problem there, though, is that in the case of police and I'm going to assume correction officers as well, there are two problems. First is that "good cops" can be forced out of the force by "bad cops." As in, if a good cop reports a bad cop for literally murdering somebody, drumming up fake chargers, or skimming drugs and money off of things acquired on raids, a force that is corrupt from top to bottom WILL get rid of the guy. Second is the social side of things. People are tribal creatures. I don't care how much you say others don't affect you, they do. Your peer group does, to at least some degree, affect your actions. A good cop can become a bad cop over time. So, if all of the jail guards are abusive assholes, a new jail guard is highly likely to be influenced to become an abusive rear end in a top hat. Third is the simple fact that authority differences have an incredible tendency to turn people into monsters. There's been experiments that have proven that. Fourth is also the simple fact that most people will follow the orders of their superiors, even if that means brutalizing people that don't deserve it. Yeah the argument of joining violent institutions to make a difference sounds like joining the mafia with the intent of reducing mob violence. Nobody does that, they just don't fill the ranks. The same could be said of the military, I don't think anyone in the anti-war camp volunteers for the armed forces, because participation is practically sanctioning the activities carried out in the organization.
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Aug 31, 2012 23:52
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LP97S posted:It's completely loving malicious and should be condemned, but hey it's America so let us allow private groups to make ads that say that underaged drinking will be punished with rape and threats in prison! Where have I seen that juxtaposition before? Oh right   Those have been used for years by Just Detention International (one of the leading organizations fighting against sexual assault behind bars).
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Sep 1, 2012 04:26
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Interesting natgeo doco on an Australian maximum security prison: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTDGESXnye0 Of particular note is the Yank, Rodger, who in no way wants to be prisoner swapped back home because prisons in the US are inhuman compared to where he is.
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Sep 1, 2012 15:15
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The Feds have completed their investigation of Arpaio and will not file charges. gently caress America
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Sep 1, 2012 23:32
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:The Feds have completed their investigation of Arpaio and will not file charges. They aren't filing charges with regards to his abuse of powers to cow his political opponents, but he is still being investigated by the Feds for civil rights abuses.
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Sep 2, 2012 04:00
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LeftistMuslimObama posted:Doesn't that make anybody who uses MPC, VLC, or any other free player to play DVDs a felon? I thought the DVD functionality in apps like that were all based on breaking encryption because those projects, being free apps, can't afford a license for DVD encryption. Yep! Sleep well tonight.
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Sep 3, 2012 21:31
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I wasn't sure if there's a thread more pertaining to crime and societal treatment of criminals in the first place (please let me know if there is one and I'll move this there), but I have a problem: an extremely right-wing old friend was going off about a news story concerning someone getting arrested for shooting a robber, and I commented on how lacking in morality you'd have to be to murder or attempt to murder someone just for taking physical objects from you. Cue a tirade of typical "we must be hard on crime" rhetoric, including them (seriously, not kidding) saying that we would have a decreased crime rate if there was no punishment for shooting and killing a trespasser, and of course accusing me of abetting criminal behavior. I have literally asked this person "do you believe that people should have the right to murder someone to protect physical objects?" and they have basically said yes. Is there anything more to say at this point, or is pointing out how completely morally-bankrupt that kind of perspective is the best I can do?
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Sep 4, 2012 01:54
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quote:I wasn't sure if there's a thread more pertaining to crime and societal treatment of criminals in the first place (please let me know if there is one and I'll move this there), but I have a problem: an extremely right-wing old friend was going off about a news story concerning someone getting arrested for shooting a robber, and I commented on how lacking in morality you'd have to be to murder or attempt to murder someone just for taking physical objects from you. There's probably not much track left ahead for that discussion. A lot of the time it's not even that this sort of individual wants to protect their X-Box or DVD collection (by lethal force or otherwise): they just want an entitlement to shoot someone under certain circumstances. They've built-up a fantasy in their mind of blowing away faceless evil, and they want to live it out.
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Sep 4, 2012 02:22
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The Ender posted:There's probably not much track left ahead for that discussion. A lot of the time it's not even that this sort of individual wants to protect their X-Box or DVD collection (by lethal force or otherwise): they just want an entitlement to shoot someone under certain circumstances. They've built-up a fantasy in their mind of blowing away faceless evil, and they want to live it out. Yeah, and that's about how the argument ended; them going "Well, I would never shoot an robber myself, but I guess I'm a horrible evil person for wanting criminals to be punished!". It's depressingly-indicative of how people like this can have such a black and white perspective on anyone that's committed a crime. Because obviously they're just drug-users, and not just people turned to desperation because they got screwed over by society.
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Sep 4, 2012 02:32
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Yeah, once you cross the things > human life line, it's tough to convince them to come back. I had a friend get mugged a few months ago and facebook filled with "if had gun this not happen" and I got shouted down when I pointed out that a gun doesn't stop getting surprise clocked in the head and 34 dollars taken from you; it probably would've gotten stolen/him deaded right there. "That 34 dollars and the ice pack on your head really isnt worth killing someone or getting killed over" is a tough sell.
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Sep 4, 2012 05:29
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Sadly those kinds of crimes are now justifiable down here in FL. The jury's still out on the Trayvon Martin case, but in another case in Miami a guy successfully argued that the FL 'Stand Your Ground' law applied in a case where a man ran a guy down and stabbed him to death in the street for stealing his car radio. All the thief had on him was a bag with a radio in it, but apparently that was enough to get a 2nd degree murder charge dropped and released from prison.
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Sep 4, 2012 06:21
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FlamingLiberal posted:Sadly those kinds of crimes are now justifiable down here in FL. The jury's still out on the Trayvon Martin case, but in another case in Miami a guy successfully argued that the FL 'Stand Your Ground' law applied in a case where a man ran a guy down and stabbed him to death in the street for stealing his car radio. All the thief had on him was a bag with a radio in it, but apparently that was enough to get a 2nd degree murder charge dropped and released from prison. http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/27/2717572/miami-dade-issues-ruling-in-stand.html This shouldn't be compared. A weight swung in this manner is a deadly weapon. Trayvon had candy.
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Sep 4, 2012 06:48
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He also had something called "Arizona Tea" which in some circles is slang for PCblarhghabdhdahahaI can't do it.
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Sep 4, 2012 12:56
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Tea contains significant quantities of psychoactive stimulant drugs though, so we must consider whether or not that played into his behavior.
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Sep 4, 2012 13:03
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