We put people in prison because of race, because we choose to enforce some laws on people of certain races and not on others. Slavery is allowed as punishment for a crime (see the text of the amendment) and that's exactly what we do with prisoners. When people of certain races are executed by police, the officer(s) do not usually face consequences or punishment.
We're the world's biggest glass house, maybe we shouldn't throw so many stones. We can set a better example by changing how our society operates, we only need to choose to do so.
I'm saying we shouldn't have unjust laws. But since we do, we shouldn't treat them all as slaves. I'm saying we shouldn't have innocent people in prison, but that's impossible to prevent. And since we do, again, we shouldn't treat them all as slaves.
I'm more interested in prison for rehabilitation than I am as punishment. I'd rather we reduce the recidivism rate than bask in schadenfreude. I'm more interested in addressing why we have the highest per capita incarceration rate of any first world nation.
Despite black Americans being incarcerated at greater rates than white Americans, there are far more white Americans incarcerated than there are black Americans.
So if the objective was to re-create slavery, they did a very poor job out of it.
No, our prison system hurts all races: white, black, Asian, native, etc. And sadly -- because of the racism prevalent in US society -- if we want true prison reform, we have to educate people that prison affects all communities, and not just communities of color.
Because there will never be reform as long as around 30% of America's white population believes that prison mainly hurts black people.
Just like it took heroin to finally wake white Americans up to the fact that the drug war is hurting us all, so we must find a way to wake people up to the fact that the prison system is terrible burden to us all. Repeating the false claim that prison is primarily a black problem only prolongs the problem.
If we cannot punish prisoners for their crimes by being required to do even a modicum of labor (it's certainly not brutal anymore), why even put them in jail in the first place? We're restricting their right to free movement, which is de-facto slavery. If we want to abolish slavery fully, prisons themselves cannot exist.
That exception literally exists to provide a means to cheap labor... It's not accidental. Notice how many laws disproportionately target black people (always in their enforcement and effect, it would be illegal if it were in the text of the law), like drug prohibition, and you start to see a pattern that looks a whole lot like intent. We abolished slavery but we weren't ready to end white supremacy and our laws reflect that. The Civil Rights act was followed closely by the War on Drugs. We deny voting rights and job prospects to felons, enslave them while they're incarcerated, and keep them in an underclass that has few opportunities specifically to ensure they can re-enter the criminal justice system. Is it any wonder that we have the highest per-capita rates of imprisonment?
It's horrifying when you start to see the whole process in its entirety and doubly so when you realize how much money is generated through the system. Criminal justice reform is incredibly difficult to actually pass as a result.
You're missing the point. Prison, in the U.S., is a place to keep people that a certain segment of society doesn't like and would prefer to keep oppressed.
That's a good point I think- we put people in jail because a) we've always put people in jail and b) we still can't think of anything better to do. As justifications for screwing peoples' lives up go, this one's pretty weak.
Oh and, er- please don't misunderstand me. I'm not accusing you of trying to excuse anything.
I completely agree that we overcriminalize things and imprison far too many people in the U.S. I'm 100% on-board with this. It's our shame the way we treat non-violent offenders. A disgrace.
But guys, nothing is ever 100% one way or the other, no matter how much you support it. So you have to look at differing points of view -- unless the objective is just to have a good rant.
Here are the things that come to mind reading this:
- Yep, highest incarceration rates ever. Also violent crime has been dropping to unheard-of lows and the country is safer than it ever has been
- Prisons are not about justice or reform. [insert really long discussion here]. Political systems exist and function for political reasons. Therefore the prison system is made and maintained to keep society together. They don't put the guy who killed you friend in the electric chair because of justice. They do it so you don't kill him yourself, or have a lifelong vendetta against both him and the system.
- This piece is written by a lawyer. Do not expect it to fairly talk about all of the options. It's invective; well-written, emotional, powerful invective. The goal is to make you turn off your brain and feel a certain way. Treat it as such.
- Although this is targeted at lawyers, whatever failings there are? Most likely a result of judges and elected officials -- in other words, the public. If the public wants something, and it wanted harsher sentencing, it gets it. That means changes need to occur with the electorate, not elite legal minds
- If the system is broken, it's broken. Toss out all of that racism stuff, it's a red herring. People shouldn't have their civil rights abused because it's the wrong way to run a country, not because they're a member of an oppressed minority. If you want to win this fight and fix things, toss out every other issue aside from fixing the system. Sure, use various things like incarceration rates among blacks as an argument, but only very carefully. If this is a true problem affecting everybody (and I believe it is), then don't attach yourself to one particular cause or the other. That's just an easy way to lose the discussion.
We desperately need to fix things, but that's only going to happen if we make both impassioned and dispassionate arguments -- and only if we understand the terms at stake. I'm not sure this article helped any, but it damned sure made me angry at how broken things are.
First, I agree that the US has an incarceration problem. We're certainly not perfect, and I think much of the problem is due to the US's drug problem. Regardless, comparing incarceration to slavery is disingenuous as slavery requires no wrongdoing whereas incarceration should require wrongdoing.
As for my comparison of disallowing hate speech to slavery, it is a very valid comparison. The two are morally reprehensible for similar reasons; one is slavery of the body, the other is slavery of the mind. History has shown time and again that what is en vogue today may be hate speech tomorrow.
Bear in mind that the criminal incarceration system in this country in its founding documents is constructed to create an involuntary labor force.
> 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.
It's pretty sad when you really think about it and exposes how racist our prison system tends to be. You've got a white judge sent to a bougie prison despite having ruined the lives of thousands of kids. Then you have a mixture of black and poor people sent to prison for shoplifting or getting caught with weed being forced into chain gangs and dangerous labor for pennies.
From my strict reading of the amendment, persons convicted of crimes are not automatically slaves, but could become such if the judge saw fit to include that in sentencing.
That's why the Hollywood version sometimes has the judge say, "I sentence you to ten years hard labor at Camp Rockcrusher." If they just said "ten years confinement in Oubliette Prison," then the prisoner would not be compelled to do anything against their will.
Instead, we oversentence criminals, and use the low-wage prison jobs as a carrot to reduce their prison time. You can work for peanuts and get out early, or you can serve your entire sentence.
The net effect is the same. The rent-seeking profit motive makes the criminal justice system more cruel and exploitative.
There are a lot of other reasons why prisons exist (safety, money, jobs, etc.). One big one: applying power, usually to an weaker group. Cause, that's just what Homo Sapiens do.
It seems your fundamental premise that is that since a few prisoners are very risky, we should impose extremely harsh measures on all of them regardless of what got them in there the first place. Is that right?
That's a problematic viewpoint because the same argument can apply to any free person today: "some people in this neighborhood committed some crimes a while ago so let's keep an extra eye on those in the zipcode. Maybe wiretap their houses and restrict communication."
Will that sit well with you?
Those who profit off the prison industrial complex and those who simply hate certain populations want you to believe that our prisons are full of extremely violent people who should be dehumanizing and taken from society as punishment. A lot of people are there because they had the wrong skin color, got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, are truly innocent, got thrown in jail for a harmless "crime" like having weed, etc.
Putting aside innocent people in jail, what about the people in for drug crimes, immigration issues, and non-violent offenses? Actually putting that aside, what exactly does someone need to do to “deserve” slavery? What’s the bar? I also don’t see any reformstive power to slavery, and the penal system is supposed to be at least partly about reform.
Prisons are a for-profit industry, and filling prisons with people gets votes. There is absolutely no way that the DOJ is thinking, “I’d like to send these people to jail, but alas, there are aren’t enough jail cells.”
The sad answer is simply that prisons are a kind of security theatre. For that theatre to work, you have to appear to be imprisoning people that voters emotionally identify as threats,
Locking up street criminals, people of colour, and so forth fits in a world where the media and ruling politicians demonize them at every turn.
The original intent of incarceration was to remove those from society who we could not trust to peacefully participate in it.
That intent is naturally lost today - the mass incarceration of drug users being only a portion of a larger pie of injustice and horror committed on a daily basis in the US that includes other atrocities such as police brutality and civil asset forfeiture.
Obviously in cases where prisoners kill one another, in a sane world, the constable and other administration of the prison would be held accountable, as would any officers who betrayed their duty to let it happen. It is always someones fault you put individuals who we deemed untrustable in the presence of others to be placed in circumstances to harm others again.
Unsurprisingly, the reality is that locking people up is incredibly expensive. We spend more per prisoner than we do per dozen students in public schools each year. The practical costs of incarceration are huge, let alone the social and economic ones. It should be unsurprising the people are less receptive to tremendous taxes to pay for, by far, the highest incarceration rates in the world.
That misses the mark.. prisons are expensive. We'd be better off paying people $8/hr to make that stuff and not paying to house and guard them.
The real reason is because you immediately lose a political argument if you're accused of being soft on crime. So there's absolutely no reasoned debate on the topic, the only time it comes up is when every so often a pol comes up with some dumbass punitive and counter-productive measure to get a headline. Additionally, most prisoners are black, and everyone knows this, while 80% of voters in most districts are white.
So basically, the way we're acting is both short-term stupid (could just pay day laborers and save money) and long-term stupid (creating lifetime criminals by destroying other options for them).
We're the world's biggest glass house, maybe we shouldn't throw so many stones. We can set a better example by changing how our society operates, we only need to choose to do so.
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