Why does America have the highest incarceration rate...
 

in the world? Try and keep this out of Parf.

Because we have a lot of crime?

Or the perps get caught more than in less policed countries?

We're a bunch of stoopid criminals breaking (sometimes stoopid) laws? Some get caught .... but most don't.

So far, so good ;)

....and follow the $$$.

Do you have the answer and you're just testing us?

Uhm, how to talk about this without bringing up any matter of policy or anything anyone considers religion.

Hmmm.

I'll give it a go:

Slave labour...the US has lots of privatly run prisons as in for profit. Where they have prison factories that use convict labour.

Because of guns, drugs, and 'the war on drugs'. Beyond that it's parf...

Our Freedom.

We are free to make a lot of decisions in life. You are in life right now where you decided to be. Every single decision added together is why you are where you are. Decide to not brush your teeth, and now you have bad teeth, that is all on you. Decide to drive drunk, and get caught, that is on you. Decide going to not work on Monday morning because you have a hangover, that is your fault.

Lots of little decisions all through life take you down a path to where you are. Bad choices through life leads to prison.

Back in the early 1970s the Alabama prison system was taken over by the feds because of the horrid conditions. I was on a press team that toured the prison and I was shooting for Time Magazine. The sound of the large gate slamming shut with us on the inside of that place was enough to keep me on the honest side of the law. I was standing next to a State Trooper, and a prison guard and the rest of the press. The smells, and noise was bad enough, and the dining area smelled even worse. It was a place I never wanted to see again.

I still think they should put troubled teenagers in a cell by themselves in the middle of the place, and let them see hear and smell what prison is really like. Keep them safe form the inmates, but let them experience 24 hours of a real prison. Any sane person would want to avoid ever returning.

1 Because you cannot win a war on drugs, repression of something in high demand will only serve to make it more profitable and as profitability goes up, so does the incentive to smuggle and the corruption goes up with it.

Portugal had a drug endemic, when they came out of their dictatorship...and it remained problematic till they decided to change it up and stop treating users as criminals but as patients..
The right wing balked at the idea , but when it was implemented , Portugal got it it under control, drug usage dropped, they have low Overdose death rates and drug related crime.
They have had several right wing governments since, but none of them even thought about overturning the socialist idea of helping the addicts instead of repressing and jailing them. That should tell you something.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/05/portugals-radical-drugs-policy-is-working-why-hasnt-the-world-copied-it

It does not work to work on the supply side if there's an endless demand.
Low Supply/ High Demand = High profit

Clearly the only way to deal with it, is to work on reducing the demand.

Listing drug busts in a monetary value also doesn't help, because it simply advertises "hey, this is good business"
The drug lords giggle a bit when they hear so much value was destroyed. because to them it means the stuff that DID get through became more valuable.

If anything the supply that got busted should be tested, certified, and sold for cheap on the street instead.
Now THAT would piss off the cartels big style
They would send their hitman over the border to shoot your politicians, and that's the obvious reason nobody does it.

2 If you make the incarceration a profitable business, then that as well opens up the way to corruption because well, those who make profit see no benefit in fixing the problem.
And obviously nobody has figured out to make a buck off social work, else that would be a way to fix the problem, but plenty people are making profit off incarceration, either through running the prisons or by providing related services.

Clearly that's part of the problem, because where you have profit, you will have lobbyists to sway politicians in sustaining that business.
I'm sure if the incarceration biz stands to be wiped out due to a change in policy.. the Capitalists behind it would probably help the Sicario's sent by the Cartel to help em schwack the politicians responsible

They both have a vested interest in keeping things running as they are.

I'm sure they,Cartel bosses and prison bosses a like, all vacation in the same resorts over in Europe, hang out with the Oligarchs and other big money scum


1&2 : Get the profit out of the equation and it goes away.

It would be curious to have more information/data on laws, crimes, reporting of crimes, arrests per crime, convictions per arrest, and percentage of convictions that result in prison vs other punishments in places like the UK, France, Germany, etc...

And then the other question is how thoroughly are stats reported from other countries.

I see lots of places for issues in these stats.

Sorry, 'freedom' is not a compelling argument. There are a myriad of countries with all the freedoms you list that do not have incarceration rates anywhere close to America.

Look at the 'reasons' people are in jail.

Hmmm.... Just thinking out loud....

I wonder if there is an element that the USA is such a melting pot of different cultures.
Humans are naturally somewhat tribal. We're proud of our heritage.

In France, almost everybody is French.
In Japan, nearly all are Japanese.
Yada, yada....

Yet here in America, everybody is kinda a minority. While the vast majority are Caucasian, there are differences between the Scandinavians, the British, the German, Russian, Italian, and other backgrounds.

Does this lead to more of an underlying "us vs. them" subconscious attitude?

Instead of a homogeneous culture where most simply get along and respect each other, do our different backgrounds create a subconscious mistrust of one another?

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1625751050.jpg

That is the case in a LOT of big cities outside the USA.

Bingo

Drugs are a big profitable business, for the sellers, and for the police.

Well, not quite nobody ...


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1625752929.jpg

If we were so free to make decisions there wouldn't be so many of our decisions getting us thrown in prison. We aren't free to make decisions, that's why we get thrown in jail.

Because most crimes seem to allow early release, time served is half or less, so its worth it. Even those in long term lock up for horrendous crimes are allowed to access internet or write their memoirs etc.

But not to worry. Laws are soon to be illegal/racist/inconvenient. In some areas they already are.

Baloney.

Just learn right from wrong, and don't make bad decisions. Certainly drugs are a major cause of the prison population. If people decided NOT to take that first hit of crack or meth there would be no addicts. That first hit is a bad decision and the start of the path to being homeless or in prison.

Simply buying illicit drugs of any sort is the reason there is a long list of people willing to break the laws to sell the drugs. No laws will ever change the demand, but the decision to take drugs is the root of most of the prison population. If all prisoners told the truth, I bet very few as in virtually none, have never used illicit drugs, or over used legal drugs like alcohol. Alcohol is certainly a gateway drug to the illicit stuff.

I'm a proponent of private prisons. Unfortunately the ones we have now are run just like government prisons and that doesn't solve any problems.
Remuneration to private prisons should be paid on the basis of recidivism. If your recidivism rate is 80% you should get paid X per inmate. Get the 5 year recidivism rate down to 50% you get X+20%. This would give private prisons a greater incentive to release inmates who are educated, trained, reprogrammed - whatever the hell it takes to keep them from committing more crimes on the citizenry. Government run prisons just warehouse inmates until they set them free to prey on the public again. It's a stupid waste of money.

"Right from wrong," in the context of law is simply what the government deems allowable and what it has determined is punishable by prison. So we are free to act in a way that is permitted by the government or get thrown in prison. That's not freedom.

Really?

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1625755092.jpg

The caricatures in this are of people who claim to push their agendas for the sake of humanity and society yet somehow have become very wealthy in the process.

The legal system and Constitutional Righrs are are the primary things that make the USA different from other countries. I think the incarceration rate reflects that.

This is of course changing across the country. If you want to know which direction look to the West. Property crimes are essentially no longer enforced, no bail for a lot of stuff and they let a ton of criminals out of prison, so the incarceration rate is fixing to drop

Patrick, you are being ridiculous

Yes, our prisons are loaded with nice, rational people who otherwise got framed.

Seriously, fine with me. Build more prisons for all I care. We have too much leniency as far as I'm concerned. Sick and tired of everyone blaming 'the system!'

- whatever the hell that means.

rjp

Rehabilitation is a recent fad in modern prison history. An idea from the French as I recall. We should return to yesteryear and incarcerate all criminals to mandatory sentences befitting the crime. What worked once can work again....

Foreigners who believe our media are really led to some crazy conclusions.

I remember one idiot Londoner I encountered (friend of a friend) who insisted we were running internment camps on our borders to MX.

LOL- what kind of 'internment camp' gives you medical treatment and food and then releases you a few days later?

Makes me doubt the future of this planet...

rjp

cant really keep this out of parf, but the reason for americas incarceration rate mostly has to do with two things:

1. the school to prison pipeline, the war on drugs etc.
2. the broken windows crime fighting fallacy.

Only violent people should be incarcerated. There has to be a better alternative for others.

OK, so just what do we do with burglars, car thieves, unarmed bank robbers, and computer criminals that steal your identity and rack up tens of thousands of dollars on your credit?

Personally I would put them all in a prison like Sheriff Joe in Arizona did. All wearing pink, no other clothing allowed, baloney sandwiches every singe lunch meal for the entire sentence. Outside with just tents to sleep in, no AC and a full blown cell phone blocking signal to eliminate any possibility of a cell phone call.

And serve the full sentence no early release.

Constant and pervasive video surveillance, and any violation of the rules or violence of any sort gets you shipped to the real prison.

I think this is one aspect of the issue. We have more freedom than some countries and if you look as some of the others (say Singapore), if you were seen spitting out gum on the street, the police would publicly beat you. The population knows this and so they behave. How does Saudi Arabia keep their crime down?

Other reasons:

Our Wealth. Turn on the TV and you can see shows that are dedicated to showing off wealth. This has got to have an effect on someone who has very little and doesn't see a way to get stuff without doing a crime. How many times do you hear the salaries of actors, CEO's, sports players, etc..? There was a time when it was rude to discuss your pay with others.

Our Laws. Maybe we have laws that other countries don't or don't enforce. I know that I personally feel safe knowing that many criminals get put away. I don't think I would feel the same if I were to take a road trip thru Mexico because I know that there's a strong chance I would get killed.

Our Leaders. Seems like our political environment focuses on "smearing" the other side vs. solving problems. Even problem solving seems to turn into a never-ending debate on how the other side is wrong and so nothing gets settled.

Our lack of term limits. With politics being a long-term career, the focus is on getting re-elected vs implementing solutions.

Our open borders. Where I live, I see gang members on a daily basis and there are constant news stories on new gangs moving into the area and killing off the existing gangs. Most are from the south - show me some graffiti in English and maybe I'd see this differently.

Drugs. Spend a week in California and observe the homeless situation. I probably see 25 homeless tents per day and that's just on my commute. Most of these people have become addicts and resort to robberies to feed their habits.

School Uniforms (or lack of). When I grew up I had to wear uniforms and all of the kids were equal. Now days, we've got competition for wealth at a very young age (just gotta have those Jordans). We also have a total lack of discipline in our schools. I had 40 kids in my classes (kindergarten thru 8th grade). Today, a teacher has trouble controlling 20 kids and that's with an aid helping. We used to teach our kids how to behave but today, anything goes.

The Internet. Although I don't think I could do without it, it is definitely contributing to societies downfall. Where else can you get upset about things that didn't bug you until you clicked on it. Seems like everyone is fighting with everyone. Negative news is constant and frequently not accurate.

The list could go on and on.

Totally agree. The recent news story of the guy in San Francisco drug store, filling a black garbage bag with stuff and then riding off on his bike......The recent news story of the gang of thieves doing a major grab-and-run at Nieman Marcus...

It the two cases I've listed, I would not put them in jail. BUT, I would cut their hands off. Euthanasia would also work well for repeat offenders.

NGL. Didn't see that one coming.

The gentleman from Flanders has it nailed. The machine must be fed. Jobs are depending on it!

"Vast majority" in the U.S. are Caucasian? :confused:

Within 20 years or so, white people will officially be a minority in the USA, as in less than 50%.

Since this is OT, I'll not point it out directly.
But look at a graph of per capita incarceration over the last several decades.
You'll see a signicant upward trend arrive at a certain period in time.
Certain ideas also gained power during that certain period in time.
Ideas that shifted power away from an existing set of structures.
A faux argument being made made now, and then, is an axis for this idea's popularity.
To detail that argument, or the structures, would be better done if this thread were moved to a less restricted section of the forum.

Slightly too many things are crimes.

Mostly too many boys growing up without fathers.

no other country has a state called "Florida"

The sentences are too long !