1 in 100 American adults is in jail

[Detroit City]

or the new factories (minus those pesky unions...)

good point

 

[Aldebaran]

I read on this very board that prisons are recruiting ground for US Army Heroes. Could be a reason why they are filling them up.
Not with the greatest criminal mass murderers of all though. They are "free" to run both country and army.

salaam.

 

[gorski]

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/rel/icps/world-prison-population-list-2005.pdf

Nils Christie, Oslo University, was the Professor's name, I think...

 

[Aldebaran]

Such statistics are of course fatally flawed. If State allows or participates in the killing of citizens before they can ever reach the stage of being at risk for being arrested, and in addition let the killers run free to kill more, that brings automatically the amount of prisoners down. In the same manner can be argued that you also first need prisons to be able to fill them.

salaam.

 

[ymu]

editor / the rest (especially 8ball),



It is worth pointing out that over that same period of time mentioned in the Guardian article the US crime rate (for almost every category of offence) has markedly decreased, as this Wikipedia article demonstrates.

Of course, there are other reasons why their crime rate has fallen (an increase in "legal" gun ownership via the CCW system, improved Police and community relations, new technologies etc) but its surely the case that a more strict sentencing policy is behind at least part of the fall.

Crime has fallen dramatically across the US, whether conservative or liberal policies have been in force.

While there is no evidence supporting the claims that the number of officers and arrests per capita affects the crime rate, public perception seems to accept this premise. San Francisco on the other hand utilized an alternative approach to crime that stresses alternative sentences and community involvement. Conservative critics like Guiliani have labeled this approach as "soft on crime" and continuously claim that they do not work.

Despite popular assumptions, San Francisco experienced a larger decline in reported crime than most comparable national cities while enforcing these alternative policies. As Table I illustrates, San Francisco's decline in Part I offenses exceeded the average of the 10 comparison cities in almost all categories and time periods. Violent crime rates exceeded the average of the ten national comparison cities chosen over the three time periods. In fact, San Francisco's decreases far surpassed the average of the national comparison cities in all categories except for burglary in two time periods.

Since 1992, San Francisco has outperformed New York City in violent crime rate declines and has received virtually no media attention. For example, in reported violent crime between 1992 and 1998 San Francisco's rates decreased 47% while New York's rate declined 46% (see Table 2 below). Since 1995, one year after Guiliani was elected, San Francisco recorded a 33% decrease in reported violent crime compared to only 26% in New York City (see Table 3 below). These declines were occurring at a time when New York City was vigorously pursuing "broken windows" policy and being cited by commentators as a national model.

http://www.cjcj.org/pubs/windows/windows.html

 

[gorski]

I read on this very board that prisons are recruiting ground for US Army Heroes. Could be a reason why they are filling them up.
Not with the greatest criminal mass murderers of all though. They are "free" to run both country and army.

salaam.

As per usual, you're wrong.

In the US the way to get off the military duty, i.e. being trained into an efficient killing machine, was to have a criminal record.

So, if you were already a killer you were not suitable to be trained by the US Army to kill... [I suppose "in a controlled and efficient manner"... or some such "pearl"...]

That's how people managed not to go to Vietnam etc. - commit an offence and you're off the US Army's list or potential "valuable assets"...

Why not take peaceful students and make a sociopath out of them, eh? Such a great idea!

 

[Detroit City]

That's how people managed not to go to Vietnam etc. - commit an offence and you're off the US Army's list or potential "valuable assets"...

the smart ones just ran off to Canada

 

[ymu]

As per usual, you're wrong.

In the US the way to get off the military duty, i.e. being trained into an efficient killing machine, was to have a criminal record.

So, if you were already a killer you were not suitable to be trained by the US Army to kill... [I suppose "in a controlled and efficient manner"... or some such "pearl"...]

That's how people managed not to go to Vietnam etc. - commit an offence and you're off the US Army's list or potential "valuable assets"...

Why not take peaceful students and make a sociopath out of them, eh? Such a great idea!

It has been proposed, it's not actually happening (yet?).

 

[agricola]

Crime has fallen dramatically across the US, whether conservative or liberal policies have been in force.

Thats why I said "Of course, there are other reasons why their crime rate has fallen"... but when you have the big stick of prison and a willingness to use it in the background it will have an effect.

 

[gorski]

He said prisoners were not servants of prison or government officials.

Brill! And what are soldiers, if not "Gov officials"?

Koch for a prisoner!!!

 

[Yossarian]

Huh?




Woof

Looks like there's a couple more China experts around!

 

[Citizen66]

Looks like there's a couple more China experts around!

Erm, It was like a joke if you're referring to me....

Still, don't let that stop you from airing your own credentials

 

[Aldebaran]

As per usual, you're wrong.

No I'm not (and "usually" I'm not wrong about what I say, let alone when it is about things I read myself).
What you make of it is your choice but take notice that I didn't say:
I posted it.
So if you think it was wrong tell the poster he is wrong.

salaam.

 

[ymu]

Thats why I said "Of course, there are other reasons why their crime rate has fallen"... but when you have the big stick of prison and a willingness to use it in the background it will have an effect.

But that's the point - it doesn't appear to have an effect.

In the link I gave before, there was evidence that San Francisco's crime rate had fallen more with liberalisation of policy than New York's had by becoming more conservative. Here's another link showing the same effect, but for an earlier period where California was being harsher than New York.

The connection between incarceration and crime rates appears as elusive at the end of the 90s as it has been in previous decades. There is little correlation between states with skyrocketing incarceration rates and the recent crime declines witnessed across the country. The "New York Miracle" - the sharp drops in homicides and violent crime rates experienced by America's largest city between 1992 and 1997 - have occurred at the same time that New York State had the second slowest growing prison system in the country, and at a time when the city's jail system downsized.8

New York's modest prison growth provides a solid contrast to the explosive use of incarceration in other states. During the same 1992-97 period, California's prison population grew by 30%, or about 270 inmates per week, compared to New York State's more modest 30 inmates a week. Between 1992 and 1997, New York State's violent crime rate fell by 38.6%, and its murder rate by 54.5%. By contrast, California's violent crime rate fell by a more modest 23%, and its murder rate fell by 28%.9 Put another way, New York experienced a percentage drop in homicides which was half again as great as the percentage drop in California's homicide rate, despite the fact that California added 9 times as many inmates per week to its prisons as New York.

http://www.cjcj.org/pubs/punishing/punishing.html

It might seem like "common sense" to you, but there is no evidence to back up your assertion.

 

[Yossarian]

Erm, It was like a joke if you're referring to me....

Still, don't let that stop you from airing your own credentials

Nah, in a strange "world doesn't revolve around Citizen66" shocker, I was referring to earlier posts - but don't let that stop you from going to fuck yourself!

 

[Citizen66]

Nah, in a strange "world doesn't revolve around Citizen66" shocker, I was referring to earlier posts - but don't let that stop you from going to fuck yourself!

I just wanted to exonerate myself from any accusations from self-proclaimed experts is all, you know what they can be like once they get started

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

Can't read this thread as cooking, but would the high numbers imprisoned have anything to do with the 3 strikes and you're out rule? Or was it just as high before that?

 

[gorski]

No I'm not (and "usually" I'm not wrong about what I say, let alone when it is about things I read myself).
What you make of it is your choice but take notice that I didn't say:
I posted it.
So if you think it was wrong tell the poster he is wrong.

salaam.

Sissy...

 

[agricola]

But that's the point - it doesn't appear to have an effect.

In the link I gave before, there was evidence that San Francisco's crime rate had fallen more with liberalisation of policy than New York's had by becoming more conservative. Here's another link showing the same effect, but for an earlier period where California was being harsher than New York.

It might seem like "common sense" to you, but there is no evidence to back up your assertion.

You are basing your claims on cherrypicked data from one or two states - the point is that no "one system" or reason is responsible for this fall. Prison will be a part of the reason, as will increased numbers of Police, restorative justice, effective parole supervision etc etc

 

[Yossarian]

I just wanted to exonerate myself from any accusations from self-proclaimed experts is all, you know what they can be like once they get started

To save yourself from any further accusations of not knowing what you're talking about, or being unable to write a coherent sentence, or just being an annoying twat in general, I guess I'll just use the ignore function to avoid your 'interesting' take on modern life and ill-informed opinions - first time I've used it since the days of Jonny Reb, count yourself in good company!

 

[Citizen66]

To save yourself from any further accusations of not knowing what you're talking about, or being unable to write a coherent sentence, or just being an annoying twat in general, I guess I'll just use the ignore function to avoid your 'interesting' take on modern life and ill-informed opinions - first time I've used it since the days of Jonny Reb, count yourself in good company!

That was quite a bit of mud to throw at me in one fell swoop there! I see those particular talents of yours are still being put to good use... Ignore away

 

[gorski]

http://facta.junis.ni.ac.yu/pas/pas2005/pas2005-05.pdf - this is good...

And while the classical liberalism, liberal-democratic project and order took care of
human rights and liberties, neoliberalism is, according to Bourdieu, an ideology of the
forces of historical restoration, a form of conservative revolution whose actors want to
sink and dissolve, in a cold water of calculation, all relationships and institutions of solidarity
among people. This ideology declaratively refers to human rights and liberties
while, in truth, it foregrounds the interests of the mega capital forces, of transnational
corporations; besides, it is in function of their domination and hegemony at present. The
neoliberal ideology, with its monetary strategy of economic development, has led to the
destruction of the institutions of solidarity in the world as well as to the destruction of not
only socialist states but also of the social-democratic model of capitalism in the world. It
has led to mass unemployment, enormous uncontrolled exploitation, the destruction of the
standards in the domain of labor and welfare legislature and social-darwinization of the
relationships at national and international levels.
The neoliberal philosophy of development is an expression of the interests of the neoconservative
restoration forces in the world, the forces of mega capital that promote ultraright
utopia, the utopia (being realized) as exploitation sans rivages10 that is, new social
Darwinism in the national development and at the international level. The neoliberal discourse
and program tend, at the global level, to induce a breech between economic logic
(based upon competition and which brings efficiency) and social logic (subjected to the
principle of justice) and then to instrumentalize the latter and subdue it to the former so
that, through privatization, liberalization, deregulation, all collective institutions (of legal
and welfare state and solidarity) will disintegrate; thus, there will be no active intermediary
between individuals and social groups, owners and producers, the subordinated and
the dominated, namely, there will be nothing except for the power of the market or a mere
interest in profit and economic efficiency. The neoliberal philosophy of development is an
expression of the conservative revolution that appeals to progress, reason, science, and
the like in order to justify the restoration and thus it tries to classify as outdated every single
progressivist thought and action.11 It rests upon competition and the right of the stronger. It introduces structural inequalities as genuine social violence, as a peculiar infernal
machine, as stressed by Pierre Bourdieu, that destroys and grinds everything thus
setting up a Darwinist struggle of all against all and cynicism as a norm of all practices.
The effects of such a logic of the social development in the modern world are: an
enormous exploitation of the world of labor, considerable social-class stratification, job
dismissals, unemployment, precarity, temporary jobs, privatization of public services, destruction
of all collective institutions of the welfare state, destruction of the achieved
standards in the domain of labor and welfare legislature (codified by the International Labor
Organization), decline of the life quality for most of the population on the planet,
suppression of the forms of participation democracy, marginalization of the role of unions
and the left, submission of the national states to the requirements of economic freedom
and interests of translational companies, that is, globalization processes. That is why this
type of capitalism is referred to by some analysts as a killer capitalism.

Table 1. Poverty in the world
Poverty in the world
2,5 billion people or 40% of the world population Lives with less than 2 dollars per day
10% of the richest people Controls 54% of the world capital
110 million children Not going to school
Half of them in Africa, south of Sahara
1 billion people No access to potable water

Source: Pnud, according to the Social Watch report for 2005,
Politika, Belgrade, 8 November 2005, p. 4

This social development which is in function of megacapital and transnational global
corporations has been destroying the Euro-model of capitalism, institutions of the social
welfare state; it has devastated the solidarity among social groups, classes and peoples. In
addition to the severe disproportions in the development in the relation North-South, there
is a more and more pronounced global controversy as a new type of relation between the
center and the world system periphery, between the rich minority, the club of rich countries
of G-7 capitalism and the rest of the world that some people call a lumpen planet.14
While the developing states of the world are moving towards the postindustrial civilization,
the rest of the world is being de-industrialized and regressing, suffering in the
forms of the technological and economic debt slavery. Unfortunately, though the beginning
of the century was in the sign of the struggle against colonialism and people's emancipation,
the end of the 20th century was characterized by new forms of enslavement and
world re-colonization.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

That's scary.

It's true in this country. Those who would have been in a mental institution, are now largely in prison, or living in the streets.

 

[gentlegreen]

I just did a little calculation based on a table here for predictors for the UK prison population.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/06/uk_prisons_in_the_uk/html/4.stm

 

[nino_savatte]

Where's brucepig with his big oar?

 

[ViolentPanda]

charles murray is a nasty, racist cunt.

You forgot "ignorant", "academically incompetent", "over-imaginative" and "masturbatory", froggie.

 

[frogwoman]

You forgot "ignorant", "academically incompetent", "over-imaginative" and "masturbatory", froggie.

It amazes me that this guy is taken seriously by anyone.

 

[gorski]

Seconded... and thirded... and forthed...

 

[frogwoman]

Where's brucepig with his big oar?

WHY DO YOU HATE FREEDOM

 

[agricola]

WHY DO YOU HATE FREEDOM

*puts down the "french" fries*
*cries the bitter tears of a traitor*