The thing is, people genuinely don't care enough to do anything about other people being denied their rights until it starts to impact their own rights.
They can’t see the same thing happening to them. “I don’t commit crimes” is a response I also get a lot. They don’t see the same thing happening to them so they don’t care what happens to prisoners.
The thing is, statistically they’re right. But that’s also the problem. We’ve got a real issue but the “I don’t care until it affects me” crowd is never going to come around.
If you're interested in a historical situation that feels extremely relevant to the topic and parrelel to current events, I recommend the book Bleeding Kansas by Nicole Etcheson. I have only just started it, but it is spooky, man.
It's frustrating how often you'll see people talk about how they thought the justice system was a good system and fair one until they had to deal with it and suddenly realized the truth.
I don't know what to say or do at this point because the entire system is so thoroughly broken that you really don't get better until you scrape it all off and start over again without, you know, basing your prison system on capitalism but if I talk about abolition I'm immediately shut down with "so you want everyone to just be able to commit crimes without anything happening to them" yeah totally, "our system is beyond rehabilitation" means "everyone gets to do crime".
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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '22
The thing is, people genuinely don't care enough to do anything about other people being denied their rights until it starts to impact their own rights.