2y ago

Happy Freedom Day...I guess.

203 comments

Largest prison population both in absolute size AND per capita. Also, random fact, their constitution allows prisoners to be forced into slave labour. Also, another random fact, their prisons are run for profit. None of these facts are related of course!
- Not to nitpick but not ALL prisons in the US are for-profit. They should be illegal though.
  Fun fact - other countries that have for-profit prisons include Australia, Canada, France, the UK, Israel, South Korea, and New Zealand.
  This won’t do much since most of these prisons operate under state jurisdiction, but in 2021, President Joe Biden issued an executive order to stop the United States Department of Justice from renewing further contracts with private prisons.
  
  True, however there are bs for-profit elements to even the non-for-profit prisons. Predatory costs to calling / commissary / etc. that still benefit companies when the US imprisons more people.
  
  Even "not for profit" prisons are lining millionaires pockets with infrastructure and maintenance contracts.
  
  Yeah but, america bad right? How dare you point out that other countries do fucked up shit as well
  
  Yeah but, america bad right? How dare you point out that other countries do fucked up shit as well
- Next you’re going to tell me that these for-profit prisons lobby the government for harsher prison sentences for things like cannabis possession.
  
  Only for people that are black or poor.
- And house arrest is being used for mass incarceration of people being ACCUSED before conviction. The punishment can be more severe before conviction.
  
  And many states let private companies charge accused people up to $40 a day for the ankle bracelets.
- Only about 8% of the US prison population is in for-profit prisons.
  
  Listen I live in the USA, but if thats your best pushback to all those facts - should tell you what a dire state we are in. And prisons that aren't for profit still send out prisoners to for-profit industries to work, so it's kind of a moot point.
  
  And how many of these other prisons offer up their prisoners as extremely cheap labor to businesses that ARE for profit?
  
  That's still about 96,344 people. Which is nearly double the total prison population of Spain.

Ah yes, https://mkorostoff.github.io/incarceration-in-real-numbers/
- And yet still most Americans think everyone is trying to sneak into their country! You couldn't pay me to live there.
  I'm surprised there is not more travel advisory warnings for travel to America 😮‍💨
  
  The american continent is actually quite dangerous - if I remember right most of the top 10 dangerous cities are in south- or north america.
  Also I once heard that the US is the country with the highest death rate which isn't in a (civil) war...
  
  A lot of people try to get refugee status in the US, but the CBP puts them in open-air prisons in the desert. There are also are least 16 million undocumented immigrants living in the US. They don't all have to "sneak", they just overstay their visas.
  The CBP was commissioned explicitly to enforce racial "hygiene" in the US. I don't understand how they weren't disbanded decades ago.
- Fuck man...
  
  Listen, a lot of people don't understand the key to the living well in the United States. It's really very simple. Just be rich. You'll have the best life ever.
  If you're too stupid to be rich (or you didn't inherit a billion dollars from your parents), blame some poor brown dude for "stealing" a shitty job that you didn't actually want anyways because it's worse and pays less than your shitty job. It won't make anything better at all but at least you'll feel like you understand why everything sucks (even though you actually don't) and you'll have the benefit of living in poverty AND feeling smugly superior to someone else who also lives in poverty for stupid (racist) reasons.
  And if you think about it, that sense of superiority is nearly as good (it definitely isn't) as being rich.
  
  Appropriate reaction. I never did the whole thing, because i'm not US and suddenly had enough.
- Wow.
- This was incredible. Thanks for sharing.
- Holy shit....
- Damn, that's a powerful message.

Reminder that the US have never abolished slavery for prisoners and have one of the largest slave population in the world.
- Yep... And every time there's an employment issue for the agricultural industry, they whip out the prisoners...
  However to the prisoner's credit: They do an absolutely terrible job at whatever it is they're doing.
  Why? What are they going to do... Fire you? Jail you? You have no incentive at all to do the job well as a prisoner.
  Bonus is by doing a horrific job it makes employers less likely to actually request prison workforces.
  
  well the prison can not pay you and then you dont have the money for soap or tampon and get sick and literally in some cases die
- Tha fuck are you talking about?
  
  AMENDMENT XIII
  Section 1. 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.
  Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
  If you're convicted in the US you become a slave in waiting. Ever wonder why reds Love superfluous policing of certain communities and broken window policing? Because it's a direct pipeline to private prisons profit from legal slaves.

THEY'RE TRYING TO BUILD A PRISON THEY'RE TRYING TO BUILD A PRISON THEY'RE TRYING TO BUILD A PRISON FOR YOU AND ME
- All research and successful drug policy SHOOOWS that treatment should be increased
  
  Law enforcement decreased while abolishing. mandatory. minimum. sentences.
- Having to live in the US is already a punishment, being inmate is like being in a prison inside a prison.
- Classic song

Nice to see that even here - a shitposting forum - whenever anybody posts anything negative about America, yanks can't handle it.
- Must be nice not getting dronestrikes by some distant nation that is full of psychos
- I love how it's full of people whining about having left reddit to escape this shit like bruh this is the fediverse
  
  It would be more accurate to say that people are people wherever you go.
- As we have all learned from Jack Nicholson, the truth is hard to handle.

They made it a business. How many places in the world have private incarceration facilities?
- Many countries have private prisons.
  
  And in how many of those is it legal for prison corporations to buy laws?
  
  Oh! Many countries do it, so it's fine! Noted.

I’ve heard some prisons have minimum prisoner requirements, which is incredibly fucked up
- How does that play out? Do they try to extend sentences? Can they try to influence intake?
  
  I remember there was a scandal in Pennsylvania where a judge was paid to funnel juveniles into a private detention center
  https://www.npr.org/2022/08/18/1118108084/michael-conahan-mark-ciavarella-kids-for-cash

Is there a community that exclusively shits on the US on the threadiverse?
- -be the "first in the world" -everywhere you go yell "USA! USA! USA!" -sparking people's curiosity and they look into your garden -they find a dystopian horror show, a land where billionaires are kings, millions deprived of liberty, hundred millions depraved of healthcare, an ever increasing tumour of fascists group that wish for some women and minorities to have fewer rights
  -ohshit.jpg
  You can't have the biggest running circus without everyone starring and complaining and debating.
  
  Tell me you've learned everything you know about the US from 13 year olds online without telling me you learned everything you know from 13 year olds online.
- Lemmygrad as a whole enjoys it
  
  Is that in between trips to the gulag or starving or?
- I wonder how high these kinds of posts spiked during the migration

And potentially somewhere around half of that population is in there for non-violent crimes, with alot of inmates in for drug offenses, it's absolutely ridiculous. Focus on the people that need to be in prisons, the violent sociopaths, stop trying to turn more people into criminals.
- 46% at state level are for violent crimes, at the federal it is 8% for violent crimes
  
  Jesus fucking christ, but... I'm not even surprised.

There's a few things missing from behind the mask

And an huge colonial empire ( europe/japan/korea )
- The US isn't a colonial empire.
  
  The US is one of the biggest colonial empires in history.
  
  You wut mate?
  Look up, hmmm what's a good one... Oh oh, Northern Marianas Islands. Go go go
  
  Lmao what

@Mr_Bott@lemmy.world

Then join them in 'solidarity'.

How can America have 25% of the world's prison population of the entire country doesn't make up even 10% of the world's population?
- Other countries don't hold as many people in jail?
  
  Damn u onto something
- Well see, that's kinda the point of the post.
  We're "the land of the free" but also the land of the most non-free people.
  
  Non free people with the best Free speach laws
- I have a bag and in it are 100 coloured tokens. 90 are black and 10 are red. What percentage of tokens are red? 10 out of 100, which is 10%.
  Now I pull two tokens at random. In my hand is 1 red token and 1 black token. I can say red tokens make up 50% of the tokens in my hand. But wait? How can the red tokens make up 50% of the tokens in my hand if they only make up 10% of all the tokens in the bag?

I left Reddit to escape bullshit like this
- You came to the wrong fucking place then.
  
  Reddit moment
- I don't think this is exclusively a reddit thing
- And I left reddit to escape idiots like you. If I can handle being disappointed, so can you. Shut the fuck up.
  
  Ahh there it is
- You came to the wrong fucking place then.
- Me too. The “America bad” thing got old on Reddit. I Hope it doesn’t take off here too.
  
  If you don't want to hear about America being bad, don't go to the same places as people who live in reality.
  
  I hate to break it to you but most of the fediverse skews even more left than Reddit did.
  
  See most places are bad but America should be better. It presents itself as the better. It does not always live up to that better and so those people who want us to be better keep reminding us we have a lot of work to do. I can tell you personally how horrible America can be but I don't think you want to hear that from a Lakota.
  
  Hi. As a not American, I can say Americans get made fun of a lot by not Americans. We like to share these jokes with each other online, as not Americans also use the internet.
  
  It will, because leftists love to cry and moan on the internet.

We have that percentage because we actually lock up our criminals, unlike Sweden or Germany.
- Ah yes, Germany and Sweden. The last bastions for criminals all around the world. Oh wait, I'm 6-7 times as likely to be murdered in the US then those two places (Source).
- Are you stupid?
  
  You didn't have to ask
  
  I don't agree with this person, but I also feel like I'm missing something in particular if you're asking whether this person is stupid for having that take. Am I? Is there something about those county's prison systems that is important here?
- Sure. Definitely nothing to do with the fact that in your country, locking people up is SUPER profitable for prisons and a few other industries so certain institutions lobby to make sure more people keep getting locked up.

203 comments