Land Of The Free

This is a reply to jihadcomplex, whose arguments can be found here.

You certainly make a valid point with your assessment that minorities living in impoverished areas idolizing “gangsta” rap and “gangsta” movies is a problem, but it’s not a problem for the reasons you seem to think. The problem is that these are stupid people whose schools have been underfunded and whose parents (or, more commonly, parent) fail to instill within them any sort of work ethic. Often, the only way to be somewhat insulated from the affects of gang violence is to actually belong to a gang, and since the crime rate is so catastrophically high, there are few small businesses operating in these areas, and therefore few jobs. Often times, the only means of making money is to sell drugs or steal.

The whole thing forms a vicious cycle that is incapable of endings without the intervention of an outside force of some kind. Violence and theft begets poverty and poverty begets violence and theft.

Now, you can play your little tough guy routine and give us all that slow-clap speech about personal responsibility and some crowd-pleasing snide and sarcastic “boo-hoos” that mock rather than address the problem—but that is beneath you and if you do it again, I will call you on it in a big way.

The fact of the matter is that I don’t give a fuck about you, let alone a bunch of criminal scum infesting our prisons. What I am interested in is a logical and ethical solution to a very real set of problems that I will now outline:

1. Prisons are horrifically over-crowded.
2. Recidivism rates are abysmally high.
3. People like you are behaving as a detriment to any sort of actionable solution with your stubborn revenge-obsessed bullshit.

In order to solve these problems, we must ask why they exist in the first place.

So, why are prisons over-crowded. Let us examine that question with the following statistics:

As you can see in the chart above, the United States (laaaaand of the freeeee) has less than 5 percent of the world's population, but it accounts for nearly 25% of the world’s prison population. If you’re reading that and you’re not outraged, then your sole focus in life should be to avoid breeding at all costs, because the world doesn’t need more idiots like you.

Was it always like this? Were we always so fond of our "lock 'em up and throw away the key" philosophy of crime and punishment? The simple answer to that question is a resounding "NO".

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A record 7 million people - or one in every 32 American adults - were behind bars, on probation or on parole by the end of last year, according to the Justice Department. Of those, 2.2 million were in prison or jail, an increase of 2.7 percent over the previous year, according to a report released Wednesday.

More than 4.1 million people were on probation and 784,208 were on parole at the end of 2005. Prison releases are increasing, but admissions are increasing more.

What are these people going to prison for? Let's find out!

since 1970, our prison population has increased by 700%. You're not reading that wrong. It has literally become 8 times larger in just 38 years. (HINT: The US Population has only grown by about 30-40% in that time--statistically negligible in the face of our previous number.)

YOU: Hey, TJ, what year was the war on drugs instituted again?

I'm glad you ask, my child. It was instituted in 1972.

YOU: But, TJ, now that we've put these violent criminals in prison, crime in this country has gone down! So the war on drugs is working! Yay!

WRONG. According to a report released by the JFA Institute (http://www.jfa-associates.com/)

Proponents of prison expansion have heralded this growth as a smashing success. But a large number of studies contradict that claim. Most scientific evidence suggests that there is little if any relationship between fluctuations in crime rates and incarceration rates. In many cases, crime rates have risen or declined independent of imprisonment rates. New York City, for example, has produced one of the nation’s largest declines in crime in the nation while significantly reducing its jail and prison populations. Connecticut, New Jersey, Ohio, and Massachusetts have also reduced their prison populations during the same time that crime rates were declining.

So, goddamn, it just doesn't seem to be working.

The next question on our agenda is why are recidivism rates so abysmally and staggeringly high? First of all, let's take a look at exactly how high these rates are:

Of the 272,111 persons released from prisons in 15 States in 1994, an estimated 67.5% were rearrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within 3 years, 46.9% were reconvicted, and 25.4% resentenced to prison for a new crime.

These are inexcusably bad results and when compared to the recidivism rates of most countries, like Sweden below, spell it out loud and clear: THIS SHIT AIN'T FUCKING WORKING. Check it out:

An average of 22 per cent of those convicted of offences between 1991 and 2001 reoffended within a year of the initial conviction. The proportion reoffending within a three year follow-up period was approximately one-third (an average of 35 per cent). This means that in slightly over half of the cases of recidivism noted within a three-year period, the first reoffence occurs within a year of the initial conviction.

67.5% Recidivism in America vs. 22% Recidivism in Sweden. Could it be that they're doing something right and that we're doing something wrong?

Could fucking be:

How could this be? Surely this is not a typical Swedish prison? Sorry, but is surely is. And it's a prison that manages to reform more criminals than it's dirtier, danker, more insidious American equivalent.

How? Because instead of seeking to punish, these prisons seek to reform. Psychologists have told us for years that punishment is ineffective as a deterrent, but we as a nation continue to think we know better than what mere scientists have to say! We've got something better than science--we've got a gut instinct, a whole lot of hatred and a serious lack of empathy for our fellow man. We don't care that punishment is ineffective, because it feels so goddamn good.

And why are we this way? Why are we such vile, contemptuous pieces of amoral shit who don't care about whether or not our fellow human beings succeed or fail? Why are we so callous that we stand idily by while our government imprisons more people per capita than any other country on the face of this entire planet by a significant margin?

Those questions, you'll have to answer for yourself.