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What next? "Well, American prisons suck, but at least the prisoners don't get attacked by rabid coyotes every day. See, could be worse!"
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May 28, 2012 11:33
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Well, if they didn't want to get torn apart by rabid coyotes they shouldn't have done those things that poor people do when they get desperate. 
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May 28, 2012 13:08
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Yeah it's totally rehabilitative. If it weren't, why would they call them "correctional facilities?" Come on man, you just don't get it. (in case you were wondering this post is dripping with sarcasm)
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May 29, 2012 03:58
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Is there any data out there on how many prisoners are there for violent crime against petty crime? If memory serves me right, violent criminals are actually a fairly small minority in prisons. But when you put petty criminals in for a few years, they come out violent criminals.
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Jun 10, 2012 18:19
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Consider what tends to turn people criminal in the first place. lovely life, being poor, being minority. Rather than giving them a stipend to stay out, give them an education or some kind of training so they can actually start a non-lovely life when they get out. You know, set them up to succeed. The system right now sets ex-cons up to fail.
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Jun 12, 2012 21:11
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Loomer posted:You'd think the GOP would oppose prison rape on the grounds that rape isn't family friendly, and also that the 'homosexuality' (ignoring the reality of contextual sexuality not necessarily reflecting ordinary orientation, likewise with non-consensual acts) is wrong. No but see, it's OK because it's punishing criminals, see? If they didn't want to get raped they'd never have committed a crime that would send them to jail. And if they committed a crime because they were starving and couldn't afford food, so they stole something, well, they shouldn't have chosen to be poor, you know? They were asking for it.
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Jun 21, 2012 07:08
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Yeah so instead of sentencing them to life without parole, we can sentence them to life with the possibility of parole and then just never give it to them. Way to go!
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Jun 26, 2012 02:42
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Positive Optimyst posted:What is hard to understand is that someone would do a string of armed robberies and even discharge a gun in Florida. Read the article and notice something; he was a very poor person from a lovely neighborhood and was living on outright meager payments from the government. Chances are, IF he got a job, it would be minimum wage with no hope of advancing, ever, and probably being treated not exactly well because he's a fat black guy. So we have a very poor person with lovely life prospects. He said he wanted to go to trade school. It's highly unlikely that he'd be able to do so without funding. Which, of course, means money. The economy is poo poo right now, unemployment is utterly rampant among the black, and people living in poverty find that college is pretty much impossible. Did it ever occur to you that he started crime because he literally had no other choice if he wanted to, you know, not starve to death slowly? Also consider that he was a teenager. As in, young and stupid. It probably seemed like a good idea. My guess is that he's just a regular dude put into a really, really lovely situation and got desperate. So, I ask, which would be better; putting him away for life and leaving him to rot, or giving him an opportunity for a life that doesn't involve guns and robbery? You're making the choice to turn him into a burden on society. Every prisoner needs fed, clothed, and cared for but don't necessarily produce anything. A bit of job training and, next thing you know, this guy could be a productive member of society.
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Jul 7, 2012 22:09
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-Troika- posted:Or they could try not doing things that cuase them to be charged with robbery. The unemployment among blacks is radically higher than among other races. Good jobs don't magically appear. People from poor, black neighborhoods tend to be very poorly educated and aren't qualified to do much more than flip burgers because of this fact. Getting into college is basically impossible and any sort of government aid is highly unlikely to give them a standard of living higher than sharing a tiny apartment in a building that should be condemned with 6 other people in a lovely neighborhood with high crime. The kind of neighborhood where "good jobs" literally don't exist. As for my starving to death comment, government food benefits don't necessarily give you enough money to not be hungry. Florida is an especially lovely place to be poor. I'm not saying that he shouldn't be punished. He committed robbery. A crime. What I'm saying is that the punishment he received is absolutely loving crazy and 162 years of prison time without parole is exactly the wrong response here. What I'm saying is that the sentence should be way, way shorter and he should be given the opportunity to have the life of a regular dude when he gets out if he wants it. You know, job training, some proper education. Send him to a trade school or let him start taking classes at a university or something, then set him up to succeed so that, when he gets out, he's less likely to crime again. But what the system advocates is destroying the criminal's life forever or...destroying his life forever. It's a life sentence or, if somebody in that situation does get out, they are told to go work lovely minimum wage jobs forever with no hope of advancement, while their status as a felon makes it difficult or impossible to function in normal society. Which, of course, drives them back to crime. What I'm saying is that this decision is an insane call made by a fundamentally broken system. The other side of it is that if we understand why this guy did what he did, we can do things that will prevent similar people in similar situations from doing similar things. Deterrence can only do so much and is only part of the equation, especially when you have people that are utterly desperate. Aside from that, when you have people that are dirt goddamned poor and have lovely prospects, they have less to lose, which makes them more likely to commit crimes. ToxicSlurpee fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Jul 8, 2012 |
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Jul 8, 2012 16:06
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anonumos posted:It's the same for the robber. They look at their options and choose the one they believe is best in their circumstances, from their point of view, with possibly damaged psyches, and most certainly a lack of awareness of viable options. If the economy squeezes a person with little education, few resources, and perhaps several examples of other law-breakers getting ahead by robbery, they will break the law, too. It's a simple given. It's almost a law of economics. Actually, it basically is a law of economics at this point. Gary Becker has been studying this sort of thing and found that there's a weighing of the possible punishment, the chances of getting caught, and the reward. On the other side, there's the costs involved in hiring police, investigating crimes, and building prisons. Both sides are ultimately economic decisions. And, at the same point, you can't prevent all crime through deterrence OR prevention. Wall Street and K Street are kind of outliers, just as there are always those few people that are going to go try to rob a bank because they're just greedy, or arms dealers and what have you. Some people give no fucks, they just want as much money as possible as quickly as possible, risks be damned. Most people, however, prefer to avoid risks. Something like 90% of the human race is quite risk averse. The vast majority of people, if given a choice between the safe life of a steady, secure job that doesn't pay well, but is enough to live on, and you can keep it forever, and a risky shot at riches, will generally choose the safer bet. Game theorists study this sort of thing. Though the other side of it is the AMOUNT of stuff being risked. If I, for example, called you onto a game show, handed you a $50 bill, and said you could either walk away and keep it or take a 50/50 double or nothing chance, you'd probably take the shot. $50 isn't much. But if I handed you a check for $50,000 and gave you the same offer, you'd probably walk away with the check. Same game, higher stakes. Which is why that "good life" thing is very, very valid and is part of why poor folks commit more crime than middle class folks. Why would you risk prison time for $5,000,000 if you already make $75,000 a year and have full medical benefits? It's to risky. But if you have no job, no prospects, and nothing to lose, well...take the shot, you might win. As for high-profile white collar crime, generally, these are either inherited wealth or people that did take a major gamble and won. For every investor that makes millions on the stock market, there are a bunch of others who broke even, lost, or are making safer bets. Think of it like a casino. If you offer games with high payouts but lovely odds beside games with low payouts but good odds, people are going to mostly gravitate toward the better odds games. However, there are people that are going to be willing to take the biggest risks. You'll have a few winners, sure, but a gently caress ton of losers. But who gets the attention? This is, of course, also why there are so many people that dream of being rockstars, even though they have little actual chance of it happening. The payouts are massive. It's a risky bet to rely on it. Granted, in this case, you can snag a guitar for a few hundred bucks and have fun along the way, so unless you put all your eggs in that basket, you didn't really LOSE much along the way. Which is also part of why so many people play guitar, even though they'll likely never get the biggest payout. edit: Something occurred to me about Wall Street. The reason that they keep doing the things they do is that punishment is unlikely to happen and, if it does, will be mild, at best. ToxicSlurpee fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Jul 10, 2012 |
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Jul 10, 2012 16:40
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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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I know people are going to be all "yeah gently caress prisoners" but the thing with using prisoners as slave labor for less than minimum wage is that it, in the end, sucks jobs out of the market. Every job a prisoner is doing is a job that free people can't have because they literally can't compete with that price. This give an advantage, and thus a major, major incentive, to prisoner labor.
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Mar 1, 2013 00:52
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I think the best way to understand this sort of situation is to assume that the system is set up for people that end up in it to fail. Once you get in there is no getting out. Ever. No bettering yourself, no getting promotions, no going to school. You're treated as bottom rung filth your whole life and god loving drat it you will stay there.
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May 23, 2013 17:00
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VideoTapir posted:He said a lot of food service workers are dealing. It is a particularly well-suited industry to that. Lots of public contact and lots of legitimate transactions to cover for drug transactions. You'd never spot the drug dealer just by watching him from a distance. It's a mix of things but that's certainly part of it. The other part of it is that a lot of food service workers are USING and don't make enough to pay for their habits. Food service is a loving terrible job almost universally and you spend your time getting yelled at, talked down to, belittled, abused, mistreated, and you get paid nothing for it. You end up spending time working off the clock, it's stressful as hell, and management will hold your job (and your livelihood) hostage for petty reasons. Upper management will sometimes walk through the store and randomly fire somebody for no readily apparent reason. Some people have trouble keeping up with the pace so they start doing stimulants. Restaurants also often don't drug test new employees. The turnover rate is often pretty high so they don't. So, of course, you get a lot of drug users that can't find jobs anywhere else because they would never, ever pass a drug test. With that, of course, comes drug dealer contacts at the very least. It's pretty easy to get drugs if you know a guy that knows a guy. Which is, of course, another reason that food service folks end up dealing. If you're the guy that knows the guy then employees and their friends are going to come to you. Restaurant employee friends are also generally in pretty terrible situations and want a way out. And hey, you can score, right? Me and some buddies are having a party this weekend, can you get me some [insert drug here]? Thanks, brah. Gorilla Salad posted:Unless you live in a civilised country. The American criminal justice system is literally set up to force you to fail. Like people don't have a chance. You get that scarlet letter of "I was in jail once" which makes it harder for you to find a job at all let alone a good one. There are a bunch of offenses (drug ones, mostly) that make you ineligible to get student loans, which of course means no education. No education, no skills, no good jobs. Sometimes you get restrictions on your activities after you get out on parole that are so vague there is no way to NOT violate them. Sometimes you get restrictions on when you are and are not allowed to be out. This is most severe in house arrest but I used to work with a guy that was on something between parole and house arrest. He had a single drug offense and was in the system for years because of it (as an aside, he was Hispanic). He managed to get a job in a restaurant which barely paid what he was required to pay in court fees, parole, and for his ankle bracelet. Went back to living with his parents. He'd have been homeless otherwise. Now, as we all know, restaurant schedules are an approximation. If you close sometimes you get out at 11, sometimes 1. That's just how it is. His parole officer was demanding to know EXACTLY when he would get out every day and said that under absolutely no circumstances was he supposed to be out past 11. Get home by 11 or go to jail. End of story. He ended up quitting the job, couldn't pay what he owed, and went to jail. The system set him up for a "go to jail, or go to jail kind of later" situation. Really was a false choice. ToxicSlurpee fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Jun 5, 2013 |
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Jun 5, 2013 16:28
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America has seen an increase in private prisons and the Constitution allows using prisoners as slave labor. There is profit to be had in incarcerating as many people as humanly possible.
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Jun 7, 2013 23:23
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My understanding is that teenagers are only tried as adults for really, really serious crimes. Like a 17 year old wouldn't likely be tried as an adult for an ounce of pot but is probably getting tried as an adult for murder. At least that's how it works where I'm from. When I was in high school a kid was tried as an adult for first degree murder after shooting his younger sister like 9 times.
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Jun 9, 2013 23:27
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TURN IT OFF! posted:It doesn't make any sense though, to say that you are an adult because your crime was more heinous than another. Unless murder is seen as a mature and reasonable adult response to something. Do remember that we live in a society with zero tolerance laws coming to be en vogue. It doesn't matter if you were 7 years old and don't understand anything yet, one wrong word comes out of your mouth and you have a black mark for life.
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Jun 16, 2013 15:23
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Imapanda posted:It's going to take so loving long for humans to treat other humans like humans. Fun fact: because of how your brain works you can have a pretty limited number of people that you think of as actual people. People that are outside of that circle don't register as PEOPLE they register as THINGS. If you dehumanize an entire group or category of people enough your brain has about the same response to mistreating them as you would smashing a rock. This is what makes war possible but also makes a lot of people feel like real assholes after the fact. America has done a really good job of dehumanizing the poo poo out of criminals to the point that you have people advocating literal torture for anybody that's in jail at all for any reason. Things are not people. Things do not have family. Things do not have friends. They are things. Totally inanimate, no feelings, no wants, no needs. Just things to be used and discarded when no longer useful. They are beneath your consideration. It can take a lot to make somebody realize that all people are just that; people. It isn't prison-related but a very interesting story I heard came from a WW2 vet that was fighting in the Pacific theater. The guy killed a Japanese soldier and was so extremely proud of his first kill that he ran over to the still warm corpse and started rifling through pockets looking for a trophy. He found the guy's wallet and thought to himself "yeah, I'll even get money!" He found his trophy, all right. The first thing he saw when he opened the wallet was a photograph of the guy with his wife and children. It's one of the things that can lead to some nasty brutality in the system too. A police officer that becomes convinced that all people that are NOT law enforcement people are inferior scum that are all guilty of SOMETHING is going to view the world as divided between "people in police uniforms" and "things that get punished." It's certainly possible to have some level of compassion for strangers and an understanding that people you don't know are still people. The problem is that takes effort and the brain isn't necessarily wired exactly that way. It's kind of a thing that's learned. Pretty sure the entirety of human history is a good indicator of that, as are how laws came into place in the first place.
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Jul 17, 2013 16:28
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NurhacisUrn posted:While this is a frightening and sobering thread, I would like to thank you all because throughout my years I have never seen a thread full of a more human group of people. Where I live, when I rail against the Prison Industrial Complex I get looked at very disapprovingly. Sadly, I think fair and equitable treatment of prisoners is something far too few people care about because they are so insular they could give a toss about their fellow human beings, and do not see the social reasons and circumstances behind crime. Thank you for posting a plethora of fascinating information that sheds light on this malicious meat-grinder. Only bad people go to prison. I am not a bad person so atrocious prison conditions will never affect me. My friends and family are also not bad people or I would not associate with them. Nobody I care about will ever be at risk of spending 20 years alone in a 10x6 cell so I don't give a poo poo. Everybody that goes to prison is obviously a baby-eating monster and deserves every bad thing that happens to them. Poverty only causes crime because the poor are just too goddamned lazy to go out and get real work.
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Jul 18, 2013 23:23
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Tias posted:I'm sorry if this is either stupid or obvious (non-US citizen, and not so acquinted with the politics), but isn't it because a new group of voters with prison background could launch and support a candidate running on prison reform? The thing is you had to actually be a felon to lose your voting rights. Some places it was permanent, some places it wasn't, but you couldn't lose your voting rights for minor poo poo. Generally it's a felony if it's a serious crime or the prison sentence was longer than a year. This was for things like rape, murder, massive fraud, and grand theft. For a long time you couldn't lose your right to vote for things like petty theft, drug possession, public drunkenness, getting into a fight, etc. It wasn't considered a huge deal because it was really, really hard to lose your voting rights and you had to do major poo poo that would separate you from society for a long time anyway. The problem is that this "let's be tougher on crime" mentality is seeking to make more and more things felonies or have longer prison terms. You have people getting like 15 years for what amount to minor drug charges. Actually you understand American politics perfectly well now. Elected officials are almost impossible to vote out. If memory serves like 91% of elections are won by incumbents. As much as people obsess over the presidential election the ones that really matter are senatorial and representative ones, which are posts generally held by the same people for decades. With all the redistricting going on these elections have been warped into corrupt insanity. Part of the reason the two party system sticks around is tribalism and gerrymandering but that's too big a thing for one post and the details aren't relevant to this thread. In particular the Republican party wants people that don't vote for them to just stop loving voting. One thing to note is that black people with drug charges tend to get much nastier sentences than white people. Meanwhile, white people tend to use cocaine, black people tend to use crack, the latter of which has severely harsher sentences, often past the magic number of a year. Guess which party black people tend to vote for? The American prison system is not for reforming criminals. In a lot of places the system is specifically designed for ex-cons to fail. Cole posted:What kind of situation are you putting yourself in that cops are busting down your door to plant narcotics? It doesn't need to be putting yourself in a situation. In a lot of places police can just decide you're guilty of something, end of story. SCOTUS decided rather recently that "I don't know, I thought I smelled weed, I guess" is reason enough to smash in somebody's door, ransack the place, and arrest somebody. ToxicSlurpee fucked around with this message at 17:38 on Jul 30, 2013 |
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Jul 30, 2013 17:36
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angry armadillo posted:I guess there are some good eggs out there is the rather unimportant point I'm trying to make... The U.S. prison system is, as a whole, absolutely god awful. Our justice system is far beyond draconian and forgot what "justice" meant a long time ago. Non-violent criminals with minor drug charges have the potential to go away for decades. The prison population is exploding and private prisons are cropping up everywhere to ease the burden. The problem is that these are for-profit prisons owned by people who are only interested in income. The laws and enforcement are lax at best and, worse yet, the private prisons are notorious for being worse than our already horrifying public ones. Remember that in the U.S. it's legal and perfectly OK to use prison populations as literal slave labor. This is in a society that contains many people that will cheer and applaud if they hear that somebody in jail got raped or murdered or was the victim of police brutality. Our society treats prison rape and violence as jokes rather than serious issues that need dealt with.
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Mar 10, 2014 02:35
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It isn't surprising, really. This is a nation where it's perfectly socially acceptable to hope and wish that a person that goes to prison gets raped until their rear end no longer works properly.
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May 25, 2014 21:00
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Cold and Ugly posted:It hurts my feelings when you say stuff like this, man. It's true that there are lots of people who for some reason think that prison rape is naturally part of the deal for felons, and there's not much you can do about that. It's extremely false that "the rest" don't think it's worth the effort, because I for one totally do. I think that's one of the reasons that poo poo like PREA is so necessary. Because even the dipshits who think prison rape is hilarious will be pushed into doing the right thing to keep their nice state job and their overtime check. I mean, hopefully some of them will be. No, really, the right believes that the proper thing to do with criminals is to chuck them in a hole full of brutality, rape, and misery. That's all there is to it, really. They want to make prison conditions worse so anything that might make prison suck less is A Bad Thing. This is the party that constantly complains that prisoners actually get three hot meals every day and a warm bed, as if it were too good for them.
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Jun 6, 2014 17:49
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Main Paineframe posted:Not just the right! When someone is accused of a vile enough crime, even many self-proclaimed liberals will start crying for blood and vengeance. I'm well aware. However, the right cries for harsher punishments for all crimes. Remember that Rush Limbaugh, one of their figureheads, has numerous times over the years declared that all drug users, every single one of them, should go to jail for life even after one use. This, of course, coming from an addict himself. I'm looking at what policy I hear being suggested from the right as well as what their figureheads are saying rather than what individuals seem to believe. The typical thing coming from the right is "make people we do not like suffer more because gently caress them." This is the party of making our already deplorable conditions worse, making being poor more awful, and ratcheting up sentences. While individual conservatives may disagree with these things that is what the party believes.
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Jun 8, 2014 03:29
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Soulcleaver posted:Any politician who suggests treating prisoners like humans will be condemned as "soft on crime", an immediate death sentence to his career. That's shifting, for some crimes anyway. Drug charges really comes to mind. When you have a poo poo load of people with that one cousin that lost his job, went to jail for a year, and had his life completely destroyed because somebody in a blue uniform caught him with a joint people start going "you know what? Maybe we shouldn't be so hard on drug users." That and the constant stories of SWAT teams shooting dogs, killing people after raiding the wrong house, or severely injuring babies with flashbangs are making people wonder just what the gently caress we're trying to accomplish.
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Jun 26, 2014 20:07
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Murmur Twin posted:I have lots of close friends who have been arrested for having small amounts of substances on them, and I'm honestly sick of it. At this point I'm genuinely more scared of cops than I am of criminals, and that's hosed up. And that, right there, has nailed another side of it. When "never speak to police, ever" became good advice that everybody was giving everybody else people started asking questions. When word got out that "I thought I smelled pot" was enough justification for a police officer to smash your front door in and start shooting people rightfully got angry.
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Jun 26, 2014 20:37
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Zesty Mordant posted:How thick do people have to be to not understand that even in that Norwegian prison will all its (helpful, rehabilitative) amenities, the inmates have still been temporarily deprived of one of the most basic human rights? Does Conway not value Liberty? The American prison complex is all about brutal punishment and gives no shits about rehabilitation. The American view is that the threat of prison should be enough to keep people from doing crimes. The other awful snag of it is that American prisons are often for-profit. Some area's justice systems are actually intentionally set up to be revolving doors; as in they know that it doesn't rehabilitate prisoners, the prisoners are given dismal resources when they are let out, and not helped get out of the criminal life. So, of course, they end up going right back. It's a dramatic difference in views and shows a difference in core values. Norway is asking "how do we take criminals and turn them into productive citizens that do not commit crimes?" America isn't asking anything it's just throwing anybody that does anything wrong in a hole filled with violence and horror and wondering why they come out damaged.
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Oct 21, 2014 14:48
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MechPlasma posted:“If i was homeless I would much rather be in that prison than sleeping on the streets.” The weird thing is much of Europe doesn't exactly have a homeless problem either because, well, they've also solved that by not treating the homeless like pariahs and giving them a hand. A while back I was reading that a journalist wanted to compare the homeless in America to the homeless in...Denmark, I think...but ended up not writing the article because he couldn't even find any homeless people in Denmark.
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Oct 22, 2014 11:09
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:No, America assumes they were inherently broken to begin with. There's a part of me that wonders how many people think we should just automatically imprison every convicted felon for life. I've met people that believe we should end food stamps and just lock up everybody that gets them currently into labor camps so yeah, there are people that believe that and worse. Seriously, gently caress this country.
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Oct 22, 2014 20:49
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Powercrazy posted:Prison sentences are both too long, and too common. I guess this is a controversial opinion for most of the US public. Much of the U.S. public believes that deterrence is the only thing that can possibly reduce crime so obviously if there are still people doing crimes we aren't deterring hard enough. This mixed with the fact that cities tend to have higher crime rates and a lot of conservatives are terrified of   URBAN FERALS you get them voting for whoever promises to punish criminals harder than the last guy.A lot of it stems from outright xenophobia really. Other snags we run into are the private prison industry creating pressure to generate more criminals. Economically depressed areas are pleased as peaches to have a prison built because HELL YEAH, JOBS!!! The fact that the prison is probably going to be crammed full of non-violent criminals convicted of petty crimes is irrelevant. Throw 'em in the can, obliterate the key. gently caress 'em. Prison sentences isn't even the whole of the problem. Some jurisdictions deliberately set up people leaving jail for failure. You're practically guaranteed to be in an out of jail for the rest of your life over a small baggie full of pot.
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Jan 5, 2015 22:16
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Shroom King posted:Can we agree that 66 years is too long and 30 days is too short of a sentence? No, we need to argue about it for at least 30 more pages.
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Jan 10, 2015 23:52
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the great deceiver posted:Yeah it does and I would love to hear more too. It seems very different from my prison experience. I was given no treatment for my drug addiction, just punishment. After I got out I was bitter and angry and honestly after you've been to prison once for a while you lose the fear of going back. I have enough going on in my life now that I am not going to go back but I can very, very easily see how someone could just say gently caress the system and reoffend constantly. It also doesn't help that some areas of the States set ex-cons up to fail deliberately. Sometimes it's literally impossible for people to not go back so some just go "whatever, this is my life now."
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Sep 7, 2015 03:43
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the great deceiver posted:Yes and there's a big overlap between the two. Once you have a felony and have done prison time you have stepped over an edge that you can't un-step. It's not even so much getting a job or housing or education because there are resources for that and a lot of probation/parole office can genuinely offer help with that although those are legitimate problems. It's more a mentality than anything; like I've been treated like chattel inside and am now a second-class citizen outside so why should I give a gently caress about your society. There is no rehabilitation going on although I imagine everyone in this thread is very aware of that. Some don't even have those resources and the probation officer is just there to hover until you inevitably hosed up. I remember reading about...ohhh, Colorado I think, that requires people on probation/recently released from jail to have a job, an apartment, and not move but literally zero help finding those things. If you're lucky you might get a part time work but housing is too expensive, you can't leave a certain area, and they won't let you take jobs outside of that area. The requirement is "get your poo poo together by X date" but a lot of people were pointing out how absolutely impossible it was for most. Then you end up back in jail with extra charges heaped on your record which makes it even more difficult to find a job and housing. Then you get into drug charges. My favorite "this is why America is loving awful" fact is that you can't get federal student loans (last I heard, anyway) if you have a drug charge on your record. Any drug charge at all. So you were caught with an ounce of weed when you were 18? Lol gently caress you bro, hope you didn't plan on going to college!
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Sep 7, 2015 17:11
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Orange Devil posted:What the gently caress is it with the US justice system and its obsession with lie-detector/polygraph tests which demonstrably don't loving work at all? The only thing the U.S. justice system cares about is putting as many people in jail as it possibly can. Lie detectors and drug sniffing dogs, despite being demonstrably not very accurate, have a reputation as being accurate so a lot of people don't challenge them. All you have to say is "he failed a polygraph test" and you'll suddenly have poo poo loads of people assuming he lies about literally everything and should be thrown in jail as he is obviously guilty.
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Sep 8, 2015 19:19
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Let's also not forget that "public urination" is also a sex offense in some places. So if you were homeless and got caught pissing in an alley California will treat you like a pedophile forever.
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Sep 9, 2015 01:07
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CellBlock posted:Most countries do refuse to extradite to the US for capital crimes unless there's an agreement to not seek the death penalty. Isn't part of this the case that literally every other first world nation has completely removed the death penalty? I know it's falling out of favor in the U.S. too but you have also have states that just really, really adore killing people. Yes I mean Texas.
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Nov 10, 2015 20:44
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Gorilla Salad posted:Also California: There are actually a fair number of states that have the death penalty as an option but don't use it anymore. If memory serves relatively few states have outright removed it from the books as an option; most of the rest just don't kill anybody.
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Nov 13, 2015 19:25
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the great deceiver posted:MA does not have the death penalty. To be fair while the Feds are absolutely draconian regarding sentencing for minor drug and financial crimes they are generally not very gung-ho as far as pursuing the death penalty in most cases. I dunno, I think Tsarnaev got the best possible outcome in his case. Give me 10 years and a quick death at Terre Haute than a lifetime in ADMAX in Florence. The question is, though, what percentage of prisoners are in fact irredeemable and more importantly...how do you tell? Locking somebody up forever is as good as killing them in some ways, especially with how awful our prison system is.
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Nov 14, 2015 20:06
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nm posted:I'm no fan of the death penalty, but it isn't like murders can't continue killing people in prison. Yeah well at least there they aren't killing people.
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Nov 14, 2015 21:35
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