Go to a prison in the Midwest and ask prisoners about their human rights. The US is full of abuse, but the wealthy are really good at pretending it doesn't exist and the poor are so busy fighting with the middle class that they don't have the time or money to do anything about it.
The carceral state in the US is totally out of control. It is entirely common that people are denied human rights in jail/prison, even prior to trial.
Effectively no one holds prisons or guards or medical staff in the US to account for these incredibly common and widespread human rights abuses. The parallels with US policing are clear (as is the systemic racism: the system is working exactly as designed).
Innocent, accused, or even found guilty — the conditions in American jails and prisons are barbaric and anathema to the proclaimed values we claim to hold.
Our media and politicians are quick to portray deplorable conditions in Russia et al, but it happens right here all the time.
I've had a couple family members and friend experience such treatment, including losing employment while it was getting sorted out. It's awful and needs more attention to change this.
(Scandinavia is as close to an ideal that I can imagine, though I know American society is so focused on antiquated notions of revenge and punishment that it's going to be a long time coming to view these as places of rehabilitation and reintegration than of violent, dehumanizing retribution. The state has a duty to ensure humane and dignified treatment for everyone in its care.)
The US justice system is possibly the most cruel justice system in the West, and by quite a margin, too. It is one of a few aspects in which the US is far closer to today's developing and third world countries than to the Western average. Also over many decades many organizations have called out the conditions in parts of the US justice system as torture(-like).
Norway isn't a great example because Norway is also far, far more culturally and economically homogeneous than the US, though that is changing.
Bangladesh has an even lower incarceration rate, but its prisons are apparently horrifying places of routine human right abuse. Should that be the guide? Perhaps that can scale - half of the bottom 15 countries in terms of incarceration rate have histories of extreme human rights abuse but according to the crime information, their criminal justice system is doing something right - few citizens go to prison and most only go once.
There is a lot that I could talk about, but America's prison population comes to mind first. America has the largest prison population in the world, and they're essential a slave class. They get fewer rights and are forced to work for whatever company wants their labor.
Aaaaand your point? Humans are all of these things without being subject to such conditions as jails, war, or enslavement. And while US prisons have no shortage of terrible faults, most prisons around the world are far worse both in their living conditions and their treatment of prisoners, so no idea why you're choosing a single out US prisons specifically.
Economic apartheid. Justice isn't blind, some people only pretend it's a meritocracy. Just ask Chris Hedges about the students he teaches in prison who are mostly black and poor who will die there because they couldn't afford decent lawyers. The US, for example, has the highest incarceration rate in the world of every country except Seychelles and has for-profit prisons, immigration detention centers, and legal slavery of convicts working for corporations and as firefighters for slave wages.
Part of the issue is that the United States has 25% of the world's prison population and only 6% of Total population the world. When you are the jailingest country in the world per capita by a large margin - More than Russia, Saudi Arabia, iran - You got the question how flippantly we put people in a cage.
The USA imprisons more people than any other country on the planet.
Don’t generalize that no one wants no prisons. Our prisons should not operate like Abu Ghraib. Why are drugs, weapons, sexual assault and violence occurring in what is supposedly secure facilities? Why are prisons allowing/encouraging tribalism along racial/ethnic lines? Why is rape and sexual slavery permitted?
Our tax dollars fund all of this.
Other industrialized nations have better training for law enforcement and much better prison systems, which don’t operate like hellholes.
They don’t promote a private prison industry which lobbies for longer sentences so that their firms get to bill the state and enrich their owners.
The United States is a prison, the world's largest prison. You don't realize how quickly you can be accused of a crime you didn't commit, standing in front of a judge that doesn't care about truth or justice.
Most countries even emerging economies with poor human rights records have nowhere close to the insane incarceration rate that the U.S. has, so it is far lesser problem anywhere else.
Just because other places are worse doesn't mean the US is good. The US legal system enforces the law, not justice. It does a lot of work to make it more equitable but it's still obvious that if you have money you live by a different set of rules. The majority of the population couldn't pull off what the affluenza teen did, beat up their girlfriend publicly like Chris Brown with little to no affect on their career, or rape a kid and only serve 60 to 120 days in jail[1].
Every one of these instances of injustice degrade people's trust in the system
If I was an average person I'd rather be tried in the US, but if I was rich it seems like it doesn't matter. Our legal system seems pretty equivalent in outcome for the upper class. You only get more than a trivial punishment if you manage to upset someone with more money or power than you
Prison is far worse for the poor than it is for the rich. And the poor are far more likely to end up in prison over the most ridiculous crap in the US. In practice, the US's justice system is far worse for everybody but the rich.
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