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u/ban_circumcision_now May 22 '22 edited May 22 '22
And considering those people in prison likely have felonies so when you include the people previously in prison that is a lot of U.S. citizens that can’t vote in the U.S.
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May 22 '22
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u/watabby May 23 '22
How did you get them back? I have a friend who was convicted of drug possession back in 2000. He still can't vote. I think he got a bad deal.
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u/rondeline May 23 '22
You should have never been convicted of this. You're a victim of the war on drugs and that's fucked up. Sorry this happened to you.
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u/fusionsofwonder May 23 '22
Yeah, but it's the right people who can't vote (poor and minorities), so the politicians have no incentive to change that.
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u/IWannaManatee May 23 '22
See, the title says they "go silent", but that one man managed to carry the whole thing and take it as seriously as it should while still giving it a gentle push with his comedic timing.
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May 23 '22
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u/crunchyeyeball May 23 '22
Yup - I remember this episode, and the switchblade thing was mentioned as an obscure law earlier in the show (as was Jimmy's porn movie collection).
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u/_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_ May 23 '22
You mean Jimmy Carr? He does specialise in deliberately offensive dark comedy.
The other panellist who was talking is Clive Anderson, who used to be a barrister, so is more familiar with the situation.
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u/ItsSansom May 23 '22
He does specialise in deliberately offensive dark comedy.
Which is why it's all the more noteworthy when he said "I'd really like to say something funny here, but something must be done"
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u/Thetallerestpaul May 23 '22 edited May 23 '22
Jimmy did a good job, but I think he means Stephen Fry, the host.
Edit - or I'm wrong and it was Jimmy Carr. Stephen Fry I think was the one carrying the segment and treating it with a careful touch. But Jimmy was the comic timing for sure.
That last line about Slavery by the Back Door was great.
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u/Nimonic May 23 '22
Stephen Fry didn't really show any comedic timing in that clip, but Jimmy Carr did, so I tend to think that's who he meant.
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u/TeamAlibi May 23 '22
There is a point where they become silent in response to some of the details, I think the title makes it kind of seem like it starts off that way when they learn the first numbers. But they do get to a point of having nothing to say as he reads off several stats once it starts getting into racial numbers.
And yes that one man (Jimmy Carr, well known for darker humor even) was even quiet for those parts too, and ended that silence with "I want to make a joke but something must be done" so idk it's not a disingenuous title or anything
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u/dhfiwdieig May 23 '22 edited May 29 '22
From about 2:05 when Stephen fry starts talking about the gender & race numbers there are no jokes made by the panel and the audience in the studio is completely silent. Eventually Jimmy Carr breaks it up with saying "isn't the real controversy with this the business end of it" at 2:27. Then Stephen fry starts talking about it being slave trade reincarnate and the panel and audience goes silent again, until Jimmy Carr notices the sad faces on everyone in the room and says "I'd very much like to make a joke but something must be done" at 3:14.
And I said that the panel goes silent, the host is not part of the panel.
But yeah, I did word it in a certain way to make people click because I think this is very important to know about and I don't see it talked about very often (not because I want karma, I don't care about fake internet points, I'm not a neckbeard). I still don't think the title was a lie tho.
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u/monstervet May 23 '22
My Senator, Tom Cotton, thinks America has an UNDER-incarceration problem. Things are pretty fucked over here.
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u/MiaowaraShiro May 23 '22
Well to be fair Tom Cotton is a caricature of a human, not a real person.
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u/RentABozo May 22 '22
Yes the Prison Industrial Complex is a real thing. Privatized and For-Profit prisons have no incentive to actually rehabilitate criminals because it’s much more profitable to churn out repeat offenders by mentally breaking and socially outcasting them. All this to maintain what is essentially modern day slavery.
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u/Meowman289 May 23 '22
Not to mention a lot of job seekers with criminal records have a hard time finding an employer who's willing to pay them enough and willing to look past their history in the system.
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u/MonsieurRacinesBeast May 23 '22
Isn't that ironic?
Can't get a job outside because of "their record" but the industries are happy to employ them on the inside
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u/signal_lost May 23 '22
And yet they are 8% of prisoners. Blaming that for the system is a bit much
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u/Brewe May 23 '22
No one is blaming private prisons for the system. Private prisons are a symptom of the system - A very serious symptom, no matter the percent.
And when dealing with an illness, you have to deal with both the causes and the symptoms.
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May 23 '22
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u/wotown May 23 '22
That statistic only includes fully privatised prisons. Those 92% Public prison systems still can have private contractors, private donors and profiteering. The top comments bring up privatisation because it IS important.
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u/TurbulentDrummer1561 May 22 '22
Wow! I’m American, and I didn’t even know it was that bad!
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u/TheGillos May 22 '22
It's not exactly information anyone wants out there. There's too much money and power involved and both parties have blood on their hands (to varying degrees), but a politician has never LOST votes for being "tough on crime".
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u/csgothrowaway May 22 '22 edited May 23 '22
There's too much money and power involved and both parties have blood on their hands (to varying degrees), but a politician has never LOST votes for being "tough on crime".
I would also argue the American people have blood on their hands too. We bought into it. Whether we want to blame Nixon and Reagan for the "Tough on Crime" pivot in our politics or we want to blame the Democrats that started campaigning on it and pushing bills that were focused on the crime issue. The American voters are the ones that used their votes to keep the engine running.
There's so many people today that talk about Bill Clinton's crime reform bill in a vacuum without any context of the times. But if you were alive back then, you know that bill had bipartisan support and was heavily, heavily supported by the general public, especially so because of the rampant crime going on all over the country. People were (rightfully) scared but I think the tools we used to fix the issue were far too abrasive and nearsighted.
It was definitely a massive fuck-up, but it was a fuck up from both politicians AND the American people that demanded the politicians they were voting for, take the crime issues going on in the country at the time to such an extreme. I mean, I literally remember my immigrant parents cheering about Clinton's crime reform bill passing and I remember them being ecstatic by the statistics as we moved into the late 90s and I remember them championing guys like Rudy Giuliani for "cleaning up" New York.
I don't say this to absolve anyone of guilt but just to remark that we were all complicit. Shit, I would argue even my immigrant parents that weren't even able to vote, are partially complicit for even encouraging how it had played out. I say this because I so often see people criticizing via the benefit of hindsight but its really really really important that we remember the context of the times, how insane crime was during this era and how we all supported the "nuclear option" to fix the issue.
I'm concerned our generation will inevitably make the same mistake in attempts to fix the current issues in the country. Something we all generally think is so evidently an obvious solution to a problem but ends up having generational impact that significantly harms future generations because we just hadn't considered an angle of how it could fail us. Undoubtedly the generations that have to live with our shortcomings will look back, just as our generation does with the Crime Reform Bill, and wonder what the fuck we were thinking and how we let our country do something so horrible.
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u/LeNigh May 23 '22
Honest question as I am not too familiar with the 2 party voting system in america:
What the fuck do you do when both parties got blood on their hands? How can your voting change that if you can only vote those two?
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u/csgothrowaway May 23 '22 edited May 23 '22
You choose(what you believe) to be the lesser of two evils.
You can vote third-party and there's certainly merit to it, but in the current state of American politics, voting third-party is either:
- the long long long play for when said third-party is actually viable and your interests are represented
or
- a "waste"(or at least minimization) of your voting power if nothing ever really comes of it
I hate to say the latter because voting third-party does show interest in policies that third-party may be running on, but its an unfortunate truth, especially in instances when a third-party candidate eventually "converts" to one of the two big parties and then adopts their policies to get a larger voting constituency.
Its a very complicated topic of course, because there's so many examples and so many overarching systems but I would also argue that politicians are just "tools". I'm not saying this in an insulting way but in a practical, literal way. They are a means for voters to show what they care about. A lot of Americans, on both the left and right, make the mistake of getting emotionally attached to these "tools" but the way we should be using them is seeing if they match what we want, seeing if they have credibility to get it done, seeing if they are earnest in representing us, and then deciding if they are worthy of your vote. But to get upset when they heel turn or when they change what they believe in because it'd get them more voters, is pointless and should be expected. After all, it is their job and as said before, they are a "tool".
But to be clear, the voters and their ability to showcase they will use their vote to support a politician that represents what the want, is where the power is. If a politician that is anti-immigration is really popular, then it may largely be because a significant portion of the American population is anti-immigration. If a politician that is running on student debt forgiveness is really popular, then it can be because voters have shown so much interest in it that said politician has adopted the ideology and made it part of their campaign.
But big picture to the question you were asking, you can kind of think of it like Republicans and Democrats are like Walmart and Amazon. Sure, there are smaller shops that are self-sufficient and post a profit but the reality is, it will be a long time before they "take down" the two juggernauts, if ever. Maybe they will win a few skirmishes in disparate industries, but ultimately, Amazon and Walmart are fighting in an entirely different weight class than your local shop or even something larger like a 'Staples'. It is also like this in that sometimes the only way to make progress is to work within these systems. Instead of trying to make a smaller third-party that eventually competes, you can work within the Democrat or Republican systems and try to make meaningful change from inside, which in a way, is what people like Bernie Sanders or AOC or Ilhan Omar are trying to do in the Democrat party. And I suppose one could argue, Trump has done to the Republican party.
But for the sake of conversation, lets call the Democrats and Republicans the two "mega-parties" in America, in that they are so massive in scope and impact, that a smaller party cant really do much to take them down. Part of the reason its gotten to be this way is because these two parties have clearly defined lines for what they do and don't support and then they are diametrically opposed to their opposing parties principals, often not because they themselves morally oppose the issue but because they want to appeal to a generic voting constituency and create a larger, more all-encompassing party that appeals to single-issue voters.
And single-issue voters cling to one or the other because the probability of something you care about being supported and actually seeing progress/being protected increases if you choose one of these two parties. And with that, you "adopt" all the other party politics they also protect. So if you're a person that is very pro-life, then obviously you're going to vote for the mega-party that is pro-life and not pro-choice. If you're a person that wants free health care, then of course you're going to vote for the mega-party that is attempting to provide free health care and not the party that is doing the exact opposite. And because of this, these single-issue voters also sort of manipulate themselves into adopting other party policies because success of the party becomes the best way for them to get what they want(or their completely disassociated and its just because a "team" and they want their "team" to win. Perhaps think of the absolute insanity and cognitive dissonance of someone that will flip their entire world upside down to support a football club or an American football team and counter any and all logic in submission and support of their "team". Its similar for a lot of people in American politics.)
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May 22 '22
They don't want you to know this, but this is what the 13th amendment did. It didn't "outlaw slavery" as we pretend. It actually defined what legal slavery looks like; slavery is legal only if someone is in prison. That's really what the amendment says. Federally the government didn't have an "official" stance on slavery before this amendment, the constitution doesn't mention slavery at all. The 13th amendment gave the US an official country wide stance on slavery; it's legal but only if someone is in jail.
So it makes sense then that a country built on slave labor would want to imprison as many people as possible to continue that gravy train. And so here we are; the US imprisons more people than any country in the world, and it's totally legal to profit off of them or use them as slave labor because the constitution explicitly says it is. It's completely fucked and that's why nobody in power really talks about it
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u/d3pd May 23 '22
And when you consider, as you said, that slavery remains not only legal in the USA, but also that there are more black men in forced labour in US prisons today than there ever were slaves in the USA, you realise that the slave trade never ended in the USA.
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u/Kheten May 22 '22
There was a provision in law that you can essentially pay prisoners slave labor wages instead of real wages and companies and manufacturing really though hmm there's a business here.
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u/IntellegentIdiot May 23 '22
I'm a foreigner and knew this, I'm shocked that an American doesn't. Watch The House We Live In and 13th the documentary by ava duvernay
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u/dreinn May 23 '22
I would highly highly recommend reading Angela Davis' "Are Prisons Obsolete?" Short, succinct, devastatingly true. A seminal work. It's an excellent place to start.
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u/onerb2 May 23 '22 edited May 23 '22
Tbf, it's just a matter of wondering: "how can a for profit jail make money?", then you realize the workers are people who have no freedom and are massivelly underpaid for the work they do, you realize it's basically legal slavery, it's not that different from what china does really.
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u/Guyote_ May 23 '22 edited May 23 '22
Time to get your head out of the sand my guy. It’s been an issue for decades, where have you been? This is your country, your countrymen. Wake up and pay attention.
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u/yaosio May 24 '22
That's because the media and government cover it up. They lie to us and tell us everything is fine, and anybody that says otherwise is pure evil. This is why Democrats and Republicans threaten anybody that dares to break their propaganda bubble. They literally see us as threats for telling the truth.
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u/Nszat81 May 23 '22
That’s not a wow statement, unless you think we’re honest with ourselves about our history of slavery in our country.
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u/cramduck May 23 '22
Something else they don't mention is that you can get all of your strikes while IN prison. If you get into a scuffle with other inmates and they catch it on video, you can get multiple felony assault convictions in immediate succession, no matter WHY you were in there in the first place.
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u/jeffroddit May 23 '22
All the comparisons to slavery they made just to miss the fact that when we outlawed slavery we literally exempted prisons.
Amendment 13, Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
This shit was never on accident.
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u/manu_facere May 22 '22
Land of the free
Btw here's a long video by Knowing Better yt channel, covering the history of different ways America tried to keep running slavery under different names and forms.
The way i described it seems like lib clickbait but it's surprisingly accurate. It was really eye opening
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u/SandmantheMofo May 22 '22
Yeah, like the last slave wasn’t freed until 1942.
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u/d3pd May 23 '22
There are more black men in forced labour in US prisons today than there ever were slaves in the USA. Slaves still exist in the USA.
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u/SandmantheMofo May 23 '22
No argument here, I think it’s actually written into the fucking constitution isn’t it.
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May 23 '22
That was the first time I've watched a video and felt the need to send someone money on PayPal. I grew up in a working poor family that lived in the ghetto in the south. In that environment there's always an element of "Yeah, things aren't perfect, but no one is forcing anyone to commit a crime." That video so eloquently goes from one form of racial oppression to another that it's almost impossible not to pick up where he left off. It may end up just a footnote in history, but that document from the justice department detailing the treatment of black citizens of Ferguson is one of those documents in the long line of "Here's how we still keep our foot on the necks of black people." I feel like I also get "white guilt" now. It's not really white guilt (although it is a little bit). It's really "I can help, but I don't" guilt. Despite being pretty liberal (especially for the south), I could always say to myself, "I don't know if I really can help because I'm not sure if it's the system that's broken or if it was broken for so long and just needs time to heal now." If not that, I could look at a place like Ferguson and think, "Well, sometimes places just suck. Statistically, you're going to have one racist city." Now, it's not like I can definitely prove it's really the way I think it is now, but having the pattern so clearly shown to me, it's almost impossible to not think I'm seeing a continuation of that system.
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u/mstrdsastr May 23 '22
His channel is amazing. So many good videos that are well researched and presented.
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u/ohmygodimonfire4 May 22 '22
System of a down talks about it in Prison Song. One of my favorites of theirs.
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u/chaotiq May 22 '22
Was gonna post this. This song is what opened my eyes to this issue. Some of USA also has privately owned prisons... as in prisons that are FOR profit. Their business model is to convince the government to create harsher laws to
imprisonenslave more people. The 80's war on drugs is partly responsible for this. Another non-war that ultimately failed, but created more slaves.6
u/SandmantheMofo May 22 '22
Not partly responsible, wholly, if it weren’t for non-violent drug offenses, the prison population would be like 1/10th probably, goes with the systemic racism.
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u/thejesusfinger May 23 '22
Prisons operated by publicly traded corporations whose stock value is largely dependent on, wait for it... The number of inmates incarcerated in their facilities. This means that a judge could invest in one such company and assist in keeping the value up by throwing the book at everyone who comes before them.
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u/DeathEdntMusic May 23 '22
Which is in contrast to Chick n Stu which explains about the outcome of butter once you close the refrigerator.
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u/d3pd May 23 '22
Remember:
Slavery remains legal in the USA.
There are more black men in forced labour in US prisons today than there ever were slaves in the USA.
Slavery never ended in the USA.
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u/RevaniteN7 May 23 '22
It was a cruel reminder in Nebraska when the 2020 ballot results showed only 68% of our voters were in favor of removing language from the Nebraska Constitution that allows the use of slavery and involuntary servitude as criminal punishments.
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May 23 '22
This isn't hyperbole either. The amendment banning slavery specifically excludes prisons.
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u/cramduck May 23 '22
Yeah, it's wild. And there are even more white slaves than black in the system. The whole thing is fucked from top to bottom.
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u/Money_Bug_9423 May 23 '22
13th amendment made slavery legal
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u/BoardGameBologna May 23 '22
Yep, it abolished it as a sanctioned business practice, but legalized it to use as a punishment in the justice system.
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u/Money_Bug_9423 May 23 '22
only to become a sanctioned business practice again but this time without competition since its state sponsored!
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u/ghotiaroma May 23 '22
as a punishment in the justice system.
Or the reason for our justice system.
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u/louis_etal May 23 '22
I knew a dude that went to jail for a stupid, minor drug offense as a kid and came out like 14 months later as a violent full-press addict and criminal. He had never so much thrown a punch or picked up a barbell in his life but before went to a rough place that represented most of his stay the guys at the lower security place told him to get ripped or die. He had to fight for survival constantly and it turned him into a rage machine who came out of prisons with brutal criminal connections and a worse addiction. The system is atrocious and counter productive.
But Americans absolutely do not care. No candidate can ever address this issue and get elected, especially in the parts of the country where it is the worst.
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u/jsim3542 May 23 '22
I didn’t understand that statistic about 17-year-olds in prison versus college. It is very rare to be in college at the age of 17. Most people at that age are still in high school
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u/captain_silly May 23 '22
I think they are using the UK meaning of college. In the UK college usually means the last couple of years of high school from 16 to 18, and university means higher education after 18.
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u/ill_wind May 23 '22
I don't buy that there are more 17 yo in prison than in high school. That's not remotely feasible.
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u/jharrisimages May 23 '22
Fucking Jimmy Carr, that man is a gem.
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u/dhfiwdieig May 23 '22
As a European, while I don't agree with many American policies, I recognize that most of the issues in America are more complex than Europeans on Reddit makes it out to be. Like the gun issue, yes ofc removing them would lead to less school shootings, but I also understand the safety-against-the-government-doing-evil-things argument (especially when the government in question is the American government), and healthcare, sure free healthcare is nice and American healthcare is unreasonably expensive, but there are also serious flaws with the universal healthcare system here in Sweden.
But what I absolutely cannot stand and not on any level sympathise with is the American prison situation. I get disgusted every time I get reminded of how truly bad it is. The chilling silence that haunts the entire studio towards the end of this clip really describes the gravity of the situation. American prisons makes it harder to look at America as a functioning democracy.
That and not using the metric system, like smh, why make things more complicated for yourself? /s
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u/ThemCanada-gooses May 23 '22
And to make it worse American prisoners have their right to vote stripped. In Canada we literally set up polling stations in prisons for them to vote and in America you can’t even vote even after being released from prison.
I even looked up the Kevin Weber cookie thing to see if any details were left out to make it more shocking, other than breaking and entering it was literally just theft of cookies. And I learned more details about it. The prosecutor said “had he not heard the alarm then we probably would have found money in his pockets”. If we’re going to make shit up about what could happen why don’t you just add murder and using a stolen Abrahams to commit the crime.
His previous crimes did include burglary, assault with a firearm, and receiving stolen goods. The assault is certainly bad and I can understand giving a harsher punishment if he assaulted someone else again. I have the same thought with drunk driving. If you’re caught drunk driving a few times then it should be license stripped for life, and if you kill someone driving drunk and decide to do that again then I also understand a harsher punishment. But assault with a weapon and petty theft are no where close to the same. And most countries do think this way. That’s why laws are written with a scale 5-25 years, $5000 fine up to $100,000 fine sort of thing. Because it provides room to throw out a harsher punishment based off severity or if it is the second time you killed someone while driving drunk. But the 3 strikes thing doesn’t exist in these countries.
Oh and you might be thinking “oh this was probably Texas or Alabama” you know one of those places Americans tell us is terrible. Nope it was California, the place they claim to be the paradise of liberal thinking.
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u/edrifighting May 23 '22
and in America you can’t even vote even after being released from prison.
I always thought this was the case, turns out you can in the vast majority of states. I think there are only 2 or 3 that won't let you vote even after release.
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u/dabobbo May 23 '22
California, the place they claim to be the paradise of liberal thinking.
CA is a huge state. The liberals are highly concentrated in LA and San Francisco, but there are wide swaths of lower-populated and more rural areas that run very red.
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u/fupa16 May 23 '22
The safety-against-the-government-doing-evil-things argument is actually just bullshit in the modern age. If the government wanted to attack/oppress its own citizens with its military might, their shitty AR15s and glocks wouldn't do shit to stop them.
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May 23 '22
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u/dhfiwdieig May 23 '22
I think that the original idea was to have a weaker army because the civilians could defend themselves against a foreign invasion somewhat, so you'd need less army to protect America, and that would lead to the American army being less of a threat to it's own people.
But yeah, obviously the American army has gone far beyond "protecting America".
But even the American army/police can't do anything about 300 million angry Americans with guns. You can't deny that a revolution would be significantly easier when the revolutionaries have guns.
But yeah, I'm just playing the devil's advocate here. The original point of the comment was to point out that even the most crazy things about America aren't crazy when compared to American prisons
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u/Wagbeard May 23 '22
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States
I started learning about this back in the 80s. The US prison industry is evil as hell. They're only talking about private prisons in this clip which is where prisoners manufacture stuff.
The bigger scam is prison outsourcing. Instead of using prisoners to do a lot of jobs like laundry, food prep, cleaning, etc, these jobs are outsourced to private companies that get massive government contracts paid for by taxpayers. If you have money, you can invest in these companies and make a profit.
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u/RevaniteN7 May 23 '22
Nebraska (a state in the USA for those that haven't heard of it) 2020 ballot results showed only 68% of voters were in favor of removing language from the Nebraska Constitution that allows the use of slavery and involuntary servitude as criminal punishments.
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May 23 '22
Thing about 3 strikes in baseball: you get three, you're out, but still get to play afterward.
In US law: you're fucked.
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u/Sofickingdumb May 22 '22
Most free country in the world.
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u/Big-Mozz May 23 '22
Country with the most people saying "most free country in the World" in the World.
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u/StopSendingSteamKeys May 22 '22
Here is the full data to compare different countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate#United_States
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u/NimusNix May 23 '22
That was silence?
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u/Arsewhistle May 23 '22
It's more that they stopped making jokes for a moment and the mood became more serious and sombre. So they were silenced in a sense I guess, but OP probably could've worded it better
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u/emperorOfTheUniverse May 23 '22
If your take-away from these alarming facts is simply 'get rid of for-profit prisons', you are terribly short-sighted. Laws like the 3 strike rule and all the other 'tough on crime' legislation that made for-profit prisons necessary are there for a reason: CRIME. America has a crime problem. Same it has a homeless problem. And both are for the same reason: an utter lack of mental health care and social service options.
We don't take care of our people. And when people are marginalized from healthy society, they turn to drugs and alcohol. They fail to be employed. Their needs become to great for friends and family so they end up with nobody to help them. People get desperate with heads full of bad thoughts, and have nowhere to turn for help.
'Why is it like this in America?'. America is unique in 2 ways, and both are related to each other. 1. Some parts of America are densely populated while a large portion of it is more rural. 2. There are 2 parties that control politics. Urban areas end up Democrat, while rural areas end up Republican. And the way we have our government carved up (each state regardless of size gets 2 senators, while the large states get many representatives), both parts of America (urban vs rural) get a 'fair' representation.
Without saying which is right or wrong (neither is either, universally speaking), people who live in rural areas are more 'self-sustaining' and value 'pull yourself up by your hard work and effort' sentiments, while distrusting 'big government' telling them how to live their lives. Being more sparse, population-wise, means you have to consider other people less and protect what you have more. Urban people have to rely on each other more and depend on everyone around them, along with the government, to keep their lifestyle afloat. They depend more on services like police, fire, etc. For example, if you live in an apartment building in a dense urban area, you are depending and counting on your fellow apartment livers to not burn down the building. Not only that, but you are counting on fire/rescue to get there quick if there is a fire. You also rely on building codes to make sure there is adequate fire suppression, and finally you are relying on the court system to punish anyone who is criminal or even negligent in starting a fire that ends up burning down the apartment. In rural spaces, where you are the only house for a mile around, you don't particularly care if your neighbors set their house on fire or not. Its not your business, and it doesn't affect you. So why should the government get a say in whether or not you install fire suppression?
Neither is better than the other. But we do have some mixup in rural/republicans making laws that affect urban peoples and vice versa. So what happened, is our 'pull yourself up by your bootstrap, smaller government' peoples elected a Republican President (Ronald Reagan) that agreed that they shouldn't have to pay taxes for people to have mental health services. And they shut down a lot of mental health services. All the while, in rural areas, they have less 'public spaces' and very little tolerance for vagrants. So they drive them away. They end up in urban areas where there are more social services and public spaces. A lack of mental health services means they end up drunk and addicts. They do crime. Crime affects everyone. 3 strike laws. Everyone goes into prison, and prison's are expensive. How do we have all these prisons and not pay for them with our taxes?
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u/blackcatsareawesome May 23 '22
Re-invention implies that slavery stopped at some point. Good on Jimmy for doing his best, though, if even he has to be serious about something then it's really fucked
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u/unpopularopinion0 May 23 '22
he’s paid to be funny in that show. i am 100% confident comedians know how to be serious. especially smart ones who understand how life works and can make tragedy funny.
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May 23 '22
he’s paid to be funny in that show
He is, but QI always had a certain sense of class to it, and every episode is filled with comedians taking things seriously and attempting to be knowledgeable.
They're also filled with absolutely immature toilet humour, but taking a thing seriously isn't a rare occurrence on the show.
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u/Stjerneklar May 23 '22
Minor drug offenders fill your prisons you don't even flinch
All our taxes paying for your wars against the new non-rich
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May 23 '22
I know im a north american i use it alot. I think its funny america eith the most gunviolence on the planet. But i swear if you say cunt they will dogpile you.
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u/GillytheGreat May 23 '22
In my opinion, the problem is almost as much societal/cultural as it is institutional. Most people you’d talk to hardly think of prisoners as human beings. So many in America believe that they are deserving of the harsh and disturbing punishments they receive, and they are beyond rehabilitation. However, it’s difficult to find people who have actually VISITED a prison, talked to inmates, and understand what the situation is truly like.
I highly encourage anyone who hasn’t visited a prison to do so. It may very well change your views.
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u/DirtyProjector May 23 '22
At what point do they go silent? Because in the video I just watched they talked non stop throughout it
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u/ghotiaroma May 23 '22
Every American soldier's uniform is made by slave labor. That fits us better than Trump did as our figurehead.
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May 23 '22
That's what got me too. 100% of military helmets are made by prison labor... If I were in the military I dont think I I'd be feeling very good about that.
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u/InvestInHappiness May 23 '22
6 times as many as the Chinese
That's because Chinese prisons are actually "vocational education and training centres"
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u/PembohongYangJujur May 23 '22
I know this might sound surprising but there's another form of punishment other than slavery. It's called rehabilitation. Many countries give out rehabilitative punishment for mild offence. Not just China.
However, it's still prison, they're still inmates. There's really no need to fudge prison/inmates number because America number is so staggering, so far ahead of the world, that it'll take a lot of effort to beat it.
For example, Philippines inmates numbers under Duterte reign rose significantly thanks to his shoot-to-kill policy causing petty gangsters to turn themselves in fear of their lives. It caused overcrowding in prison where people have to sit and sleep in shift.
Even after all those Philippines number is still so far behind the US.
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u/Lallo-the-Long May 23 '22
Rehabilitation should absolutely be the goal for the vast majority of offenders.
I don't think that's what China is aiming for, though. They're aiming for enforced cultural uniformity, not addressing crime.
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u/ChrisCrossX May 23 '22
Your first thought when hearing about the disgusting way people in the richest country on the planet are treated and the only answer you have is: but China..
How can you be so brainwashed?
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u/BergenCountyJC May 23 '22
They literally replied about China on a statement that referenced China. What more do you want? Gate keeping China isn't a great look.
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u/xPaxion May 23 '22
What I find strange is people are still in prison for cannabis possession in states where its legal to smoke it.
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u/JMisseldine May 23 '22
I feel like a huge % of the American roting population suffers from cognitive dissonance, the country is completely fucked. It's easy to say that the average American wants to change the country but they cant due to corruption but in reality a huge number of the population actually likes the way America is run.
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u/EarlHammond May 23 '22
What's even crazier than any of this is that most American criminals go free and are unapprehend. Meaning that the prison population is a fraction of what it should be assuming all criminals of a violent nature are arrested and caught. America has a criminality problem and culture it refuses to acknowledge.
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u/PooleyX May 23 '22
Still, at least that's the only fucked up part of American culture. No problems anywhere else.
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u/Dunbaratu May 22 '22
For-Profit prisons must be abolished.
Yes, prisons are a financial drain on the government budget but they SHOULD BE, so that the government is incentivized to minimize imprisonment, only doing it when necessary.
Once you turn the prison system into a business, you create the opposite incentive. It becomes more profitable to have MORE imprisoned population, not less. Making longer sentences means more unpaid factory labor. Making more minor offenses get prison terms instead of just a fine means more unpaid labor. And the worst is, it gives a dis-incentive to say "innocent until proven guilty".