Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/01/26/this-is-america.html
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The USA is leading the way, where that way is going however is not clear.
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The cruelty is the point.
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Facts (I know they are irrelevant in the US these days, but still…)
The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world: 724 per 100,000.
The US has about the highest recidivism rate too: 76.6% of prisoners are re-arrested within 5 years.
Y’all lock a lot of people up, but it doesn’t seem to be doing much good. I can think of two (non conflicting) explanations:
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Perhaps cruelty and abuse turns people into even worse criminals?
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Perhaps the WRONG people are being locked up?
Just sayin…
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Solzhenitsyn wrote the “Gulag Archipelago” about the USSR’s penal system. Someone should write “The Carceral State”-- if all the prisoners in the US were assessed as being a state, it would be the 37th most populous state, right behind Kansas, with 4 congressional seats (& two senators of course). They’d probably vote more sanely than Kansas voters typically do.
It would also be the only African American majority state…
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This is happening everywhere in the US. Unfortunately, in my town also
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With doctors, nurses, and human rights organizations taking a stance against this for so long, why doesn’t the Fed expand the law? Race? Gender? What!?
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Yes, what could it possibly be? Race? Gender? Whatever could it be? /s
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That is downright medieval, and my apology to any medievalist complaining that they didn’t actually do this back then. I’m talking metaphorically.
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You seem to rather overestimate the representation of the ruling classes among our American community members. Unless you’re conflating approximately 330 million people with the government that rules them on behalf of the investor classes. But I’m sure you wouldn’t do that.
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nothing says, “you are an animal” quite like being in 4 point restraint. For these goons to do this during what should be a peak experience - It’s a crime against motherhood.
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To these two I’d add obsession with punishment, which seems to be significant part of morality in the US, especially on the religious right.
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The USA is the country where the ritualized humiliation of shackling everyone arrested is considered “normal.” (Spoiler alert: it isn’t normal).
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Are you kidding? Recidivism is what we in the Capitalist business call recursive recurring revenue. Every time they come back, they stay is longer. Profits, baby.
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