Do Jails Kill People? (opens in new tab)

It's definitely reaks of 90s Clinton triangulation.

Get yourself a paid for lawyer, make sure the lawyer shows up to the jail when you are arrested, you will have a much better time dealing with the criminal justice system.

Public facility ostensibly, but essentially privately owned because the mayor's son is the district prosecutor, the (at the time) county's only judge, mayor and sheriff are political best buds, and the mayor is the bail bondsman for the county.

To give you a better idea: Someone I know tried running against the district prosecutor last year, and ended up getting thrown in jail for made-up charges which magically appeared citing a rape of a woman 15 years ago. The district prosecutor was assigned to the case and this person has simply been fighting to have another prosecutor assigned to the case because obviously if the DA tries him he will put him away as long as he can as an example to others. These people get away with everything up to and including murder.

"Guilty pleas have replaced trials for a very simple reason: individuals who choose to exercise their Sixth Amendment right to trial face exponentially higher sentences if they invoke the right to trial and lose. Faced with this choice, individuals almost uniformly surrender the right to trial rather than insist on proof beyond a reasonable doubt, defense lawyers spend most of their time negotiating guilty pleas rather than ensuring that police and the government respect the boundaries of the law including the proof beyond a reasonable doubt standard, and judges dedicate their time to administering plea allocutions rather than evaluating the constitutional and legal aspects of the government’s case and police conduct. Equally important, the public rarely exercises the oversight function envisioned by the Framers and inherent in jury service."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/walterpavlo/2018/07/31/are-inno...

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/plea-ba...

Why do people awaiting trial for petty crimes need to go to jail? Rich people don't have to go to jail. Give them an ankle monitor and a court date.

If you don't want to keep hearing the slogan, find a different way to fix the underlying problem.

Great points, thanks for the reference to that book. I follow Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner[0] and I think he's headed in the right direction. I'm not in Philadelphia but reports of his efforts are very positive.

The reason for me knocking privatization is corruption. Kickbacks/lobbying[1] and nepotism[2]. While most of these actions are legal I don't think it is ethical.

I'll do some more reading before commenting further.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Krasner

[1] https://outline.com/MzTc9f

[2] George W. Bush & Gus Puryear https://medium.com/@pavelsokolov_56935/private-prisons-in-am...

"apathy" is an understatement. Surveys show clearly that many people in the US, compared to other cultures, firmly believe in punitive justice.

People who broke the law are seen as "deserving" to suffer in order to restore a "just" world.

Even if the suffering is not effective as a deterrent or as part of a healing process, it's expected for a philosophical (or religious) reason.

Everyone commits around three federal felonies a day, according to the premise of the book "Theee Felonies a Day" that I read a long time ago.

We are all criminals and all do something "wrong" legally, all the time. The only difference is that the justice system focuses on some of us and not others, and the plea system harms most of those who are focused on, because any scrutiny at all can virtually always lead to an indictment.

Just check the Skrelli incident for an example, or the whole Muller investigation. Virtually all those people would have escaped indictment had they just kept their heads down and avoided notice by justice officials.

I think we can move towards less punitive measures. In Europe there are far fewer jail sentences, I agree about violent offenders. The fact is most people are in jail for non-violent offenses.

Even in the case of violent crime, the necessity of imprisoning them for as long as the US does, is questionable. Again in Europe jail sentences tend to be much shorter.

The issue is that most people in prison aren't "hyper aggressive". We incarcerate way more people than other places so your argument seems predicated on there being a lot more "hyper aggressive" people in the US than other places and I can't think of why that's the case.

Genuine question: do you believe laziness exists?

“We Americans stubbornly resist the possibility that what we do is profoundly shaped by policies, norms, systems, and other structural realities. We prefer to believe that people who commit crimes are morally deficient, that the have-nots in our midst are lazy (or at least insufficiently resourceful), that overweight people simply lack the willpower to stop eating, and so on. If only those folks would just exercise a little personal responsibility, a bit more self-control!” — Alfie Kahn

I think it's presumptuous to say that all violence is the result of a person's neurology, and not someone being in a desperate position because a number of their human needs not being met. Do you ever get angry or regret things?

When you talk about 'cognitive reforming abilities’, to me it sounds as if you are saying that human beings are like machines to be tweaked, which is rather indicative of technocratic solutionism. Do you think you are connected to a compassionate, nonjudgmental view of humanity or life itself?

In my experience, a lot of other men I’ve had around me tend to shy away from sharing what is going on inside of them, not sharing and describing what they feel in their body and how this relates to their unmet needs.

"The reality is that men are hurting and that the whole culture responds to them by saying, 'Please do not tell us what you feel.' ... If we cannot heal what we cannot feel, by supporting patriarchal culture that socializes men to deny feelings, we doom them to live in states of emotional numbness. We construct a culture where male pain can have no voice, where male hurt cannot be named or healed." — bell hooks

When I first read this, it resonated with me a lot. Does it resonate with you?

I think American society has evolved into a culture that glorifies violence, turns young girls into sex objects, sends young men to their deaths to ‘defend America’, and indoctrinates it's citizens with bizarre nationalistic views and a sense superiority that to me is completely removed from a compassionate view of life.

I recently learned that that there is not just one type of abuse, ‘disempowering abuse’ - which is shaming, and making someone consider themselves ‘less than’ others, but two types. The second type of abuse, which I think American culture suffers from, is what Pia Mellody calls: ‘false empowerment’. It leads to codependent individuals, on both sides. Here is a description by psychologist Terrence Real, from his book ‘How Can I Get Through to You’:

“What Pia has called “disempowering abuse” is the one we can all readily identify. It is made up of transactions that shame a child, hurt him, physically or psychologically, make him feel unwanted, helpless, unworthy. What Pia has called “false empowerment,” by contrast, is comprised of transactions that pump up a child’s grandiosity, or at the least, that do not actively hold it in check. Pia’s genius was in understanding that falsely empowering a child is also a form of abuse.”

I think this artistic video, by Lubomir Arsov, sums up the Global North’s collective unconscious: https://vimeo.com/242569435

I think we need to move away from punitive justice as practiced in America today, and move to restorative justice. Re-humanizing and de-labeling people.

After doing deep soul searching, at this point I just can’t say that if I were in someone else’s shoes - that I would do ‘better’ than them. Listening to people’s stories and exploring their motivations with them has led me to some beautiful experiences and connections, including a more compassionate connection and relationship with myself.

To be honest, at the same time as I am getting very stirred up inside from the viewpoint you shared, I somehow don’t think the world could be any better than it is today. Tracing our collective behavior to the roots, I think a lot comes from our money system. Bernard Lietaer helped me see that money is a human invention.

Charles Eisenstein on Sacred Economics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEZkQv25uEs