America's overcrowded prison system - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

Wandering the information superhighway, he came upon the last refuge of civilization, PoFo, the only forum on the internet ...

Crime and prevention thereof. Loopholes, grey areas and the letter of the law.
Forum rules: No one line posts please.
#14091281
Bursting at the seams: Uncompromising pictures from inside America's overcrowded prison system show the cramped and impersonal lives lived by more than two million inmates

Astonishing pictures show American prison system at breaking point with more than two million citizens behind bars
The most overcrowded state, California, has 140,000 inmates when its 33 prisons are only designed to hold 80,000
Overcapacity is expected to soar to 45 per cent above its maximum limit by 2018


These astonishing pictures show America's prison system at breaking point - with overcrowding in the nation's jails at its highest for eight years.

Correctional institutions across the U.S are bursting at the seams with more than two million Americans behind bars with the worst hit state, California, housing 140,000 inmates when its 33 adult prisons are only designed to hold a maximum of 80,000.

Overall, the Bureau of Prisons Network is around 39 per cent over 'rated capacity' - their highest level since 2004 - with that figure expected to soar to 45 per cent above its limit by 2018.


So bad is the situation in California that the Supreme Court has slapped an order on the state ruling that 30,000 prisoners must be released by the middle of next year, labelling overcrowded conditions in its jails as 'unconstitutional'.

The prison system has seen a stream of new offenders in the past five years and is still massively overstretched despite extra space being added.

Wardens and experts now fear that increased overcrowding and an increasing lack of privacy for inmates will see them more prone to lashing out and causing trouble.

Many prisons have had to create makeshift living quarters for detainees in public spaces such as gymnasiums, with some inmates having to sleep in bunks of three, while some cells which are only designed to house one person are home to up to three.

Inmates are being allowed less time in communal areas such as the cafeteria, TV rooms and recreation yards.

The country is streets ahead of the rest of the world in terms of the number of prisoners per 100,000 population, with Russia the second highest and South Africa in third. The European average took fourth place.


ImageImage

ImageImage

(Not going to post all the photos as there are too many, so please visit website below.)

For full story visit daily mail.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -citizens-

------------

The data is pretty shocking. What is going on in the US? What do you feel is the root cause of this problem? Clearly European countries are able to control their citizens and the US is made up largely of Europeans? Therefore "race" cannot be an issue.

Are people watching too many violent Hollywood movies?
Playing too many violent video games?
Relaxed gun laws?
Police not doing enough to fight drug dealers?
Education getting dumber?
Too many immigrants?
Huge divisions between rich and poor?
Economic inequality?
Bad Governance?
Bin-Ladens fault (joke)

Seriously, I would not like to live in the States. Americans please explain.
#14091505
Why so many people in prison? Two reasons:

1) Drug laws that incarcerate people for non-violent drug-related offenses.
2) Prisons as a private business.

And the two are related, in fact, although there are more interests behind the drug laws than just the prison industry.

Having prisons run by for-profit companies creates a lobby for putting people in prison. This, plus some other factors, means that we imprison people here for things that wouldn't receive prison time in other countries.
#14091508
Liberal-Capitalism has to find some way to deal with excess population that doesn't contribute to profit creation, stuff them in prisons is the a good way, and you can make a profit while you are at it.

And if the Centre-Right gets their way and abortion is banned even in case of rape the prison business is going to boom even more.


But I am in favour of the death penalty in case of murder, rape or treason without a doubt.
#14091627
Care_Bear wrote:Liberal-Capitalism has to find some way to deal with excess population that doesn't contribute to profit creation, stuff them in prisons is the a good way, and you can make a profit while you are at it.


Setting aside the utter inanity of the compound term "liberal-capitalism," it's not liberal DEMOCRACIES in general doing this, it's just the United States.
#14091785
Drug laws!
legalize all drugs and the prison problem dissapears

These "private" prisons are not really private though are they?
The government is really just subcontracting out the prison business. It would be wrong to call them truly private.
#14091828
Malatant of Shadow wrote:Setting aside the utter inanity of the compound term "liberal-capitalism," it's not liberal DEMOCRACIES in general doing this, it's just the United States.

It's a perfectly valid term outside the United States. Only Americans for some bizarre reason believe that liberalism and capitalism are polar opposites, when the rest of the world recongises that they complement each other.
Last edited by Quantum on 27 Oct 2012 13:24, edited 1 time in total.
#14091835
Indeed. It's like the Americans are on a crusade to abolish the English language or something.

I can't even count the number of times that Americans have tried to claim that liberal-capitalism "doesn't exist". What else would they like to call it?
#14091838
can someone fill me in, what does it mean ?
#14091839
wiki: Liberal Capitalism wrote:
Image
Economic liberalism is the ideological belief in organizing the economy on individualist lines, such that the greatest possible number of economic decisions are made by private individuals and not by collective institutions.[1]. It includes a spectrum of different economic policies, but it is always based on strong support for a market economy and private property in the means of production. Although economic liberalism can also be supportive of government regulation to a certain degree, it tends to oppose government intervention in the free market when it inhibits free trade and open competition. However, economic liberalism may accept government intervention in order to remove private monopoly, as this is considered to limit the decision power of some individuals (most often the poor). Economic liberalism emphasizes that individuals should make their own choices with their money, so long as it does not infringe on the liberty of others.

Economic liberalism opposes economic planning as an alternative to the market mechanism, and also generally opposes mixed economies. Economic liberalism contrasts with social liberalism as well as other economic orders such as socialism, market socialism, the social market economy, mercantilism and state capitalism. [2]

Economic liberalism opposes government intervention on the grounds that the state often serves dominant business interests, distorting the market to their favor and thus leading to inefficient outcomes. Ordoliberalism and various schools of social liberalism based on classical liberalism include a broader role for the state, but do not seek to replace private enterprise and the free-market with public enterprise and economic planning.

[...]

Today, economic liberalism is associated with social liberalism, classical liberalism, "neoliberalism", "propertarian" libertarianism, and some schools of conservatism.


Basically.
#14091875
Quantum wrote:It's a perfectly valid term outside the United States.


It's not a "perfectly valid term" anywhere. If it's a term in common use among some people outside the U.S., that merely proves that stupidity is not an exclusively American commodity.

Unlike putting huge percentages of the population in prison. That does appear to be something exclusive to us.
#14091883
Malatant of Shadow wrote:It's not a "perfectly valid term" anywhere. If it's a term in common use among some people outside the U.S., that merely proves that stupidity is not an exclusively American commodity.

Before we can discuss this matter further, please provide me your definition of 'liberalism' so I can gain a better understanding of your position.
#14091887
Yeah this is one of the great evils of the U.S. today. Or, put another way, it's simply the updating of slavery and segregation. This is how the U.S. system has always dealt with racial minorities and capitalism's inevitable lumpen elements.
#14091888
Quantum wrote:Before we can discuss this matter further, please provide me your definition of 'liberalism' so I can gain a better understanding of your position.


Actually, since it has nothing to do with the thread topic I suggest we just drop it.

The main point I was making was that what we see here w/r/t prisons isn't Western/liberal/democratic in general, it's exclusively American.
#14091894
wiki: Liberal Capitalism wrote:
Image
Economic liberalism is the ideological belief in organizing the economy on individualist lines, such that the greatest possible number of economic decisions are made by private individuals and not by collective institutions.[1]. It includes a spectrum of different economic policies, but it is always based on strong support for a market economy and private property in the means of production. Although economic liberalism can also be supportive of government regulation to a certain degree, it tends to oppose government intervention in the free market when it inhibits free trade and open competition. However, economic liberalism may accept government intervention in order to remove private monopoly, as this is considered to limit the decision power of some individuals (most often the poor). Economic liberalism emphasizes that individuals should make their own choices with their money, so long as it does not infringe on the liberty of others.

Economic liberalism opposes economic planning as an alternative to the market mechanism, and also generally opposes mixed economies. Economic liberalism contrasts with social liberalism as well as other economic orders such as socialism, market socialism, the social market economy, mercantilism and state capitalism. [2]

Economic liberalism opposes government intervention on the grounds that the state often serves dominant business interests, distorting the market to their favor and thus leading to inefficient outcomes. Ordoliberalism and various schools of social liberalism based on classical liberalism include a broader role for the state, but do not seek to replace private enterprise and the free-market with public enterprise and economic planning.

[...]

Today, economic liberalism is associated with social liberalism, classical liberalism, "neoliberalism", "propertarian" libertarianism, and some schools of conservatism.


so basically, it is a web of what if scenarios where those that agree pay those they agreed with while those agreed with make up more rules to be paid for in separating social narratives to regulated societal evolution living within the same moment.

To the victor goes the spoils. Work smarter not harder. Use other people's efforts to capitalize off chaos in metaphors defining the real functions of natural balancing presently taking place.

Perfect templet that will work every time as long as ancestry sells their ancestors into playing social narrative character roles of a lifetime serving humanity's greater good what if scenarios politically, spirtually, and economically accepting symbolic values to replace understanding the moment they each survive in equally.

Being human is now anti-social behavior as defined by experts of humanity. How does a person fight ideas without physical force?
Before the internet, destroy the genders acting the roles. Now with cyberspace one can argue without face to face confrontations over the ideas that make laws that demand humans forget being human and act as society's children.

I found in discovering the real moment cannot be physically escaped humbling to the idea my intellect lives without my body being present because it cannot physically do that being the balance of everything I am doing.

My point to this pointless post is, to create an atmosphere where less lifetimes are going against reality to be imprisoned for anti-social behaviors, teach comprehending what real is all the time making every body equally aware of this adapt o0r become extinct moment.

Most civil people do not try to rule everyone else's lifetimes, but civic minded malcontents of being limited to a lifetime of being themselves will do anything to avoid facing their own true selves. Thus creating the reality of ruling class and ruled classification in societal evolution called humanity's greater good scenarios.

Center point of all ruling theories and theologies regulating church, state, and economic means to reward lifetimes symbolically with rank has its privileges when deliving ancestors into following collective consciousnesses and a system where those that don't agree go to jail.

Moving on to the next misuse of language that sho[…]

@JohnRawls What if your assumption is wrong??? […]

Israel-Palestinian War 2023

Only Zionists believe that bollocks and you lot ar[…]

There is no reason to have a state at all unless w[…]