[ExI] The Total State

[Stathis Papaioannou]

2008/6/1 Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com>:

>> "The Best Prisons that Money Can Buy"
>> http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2006/02/index.html
>
> The U.S. is such an incredible outlier on that graph!
>
> But there is a simple explanation. Now, since we are
> talking about the prospect of becoming a police state,
> let me indulge in (and exult in) a little bit of hate speech
> and thought crime (while I still can get away with it).
> I hope that no one on this list gets too upset.
>
> Consider that in California prisons, the highest representative
> ethnic group is Hispanic. And blacks are nearly a third also.
> In order of size, are Hispanics, whites, and blacks.
> (Where is the Asian contingent, one wonders.  Maybe
> they're in charge, and everyone else is being discriminated
> against?)
>
> Also, as everyone knows, half of those incarcerated in
> American prisons are there for drug possession.
>
> So, if you subtract half the inmate population who're
> there on drug charges, and then subtract the minorities,
> the U.S. stats resemble the stats for the enlightened
> northern European countries exceedingly well. Which
> is true simply because that's where they came from.

But note the considerably lower incarceration rates in most of Latin
America and Africa compared to the US. Does this mean the US turns
people into criminals or selectively attracts people with criminal
tendencies?




-- 
Stathis Papaioannou