(urth) This Week in Google Alerts: Home Fires

[David Stockhoff]

On 4/12/2012 4:46 PM, António Marques wrote:
> David Stockhoff wrote:
>> On 4/12/2012 4:15 PM, António Marques wrote:
>>> António Marques wrote:
>>>> Why think that how a society treats its prisoners will filter down to
>>>> how people treat each other in general and not the reverse?
>>>
>>> (I'm ready to believe a harsh penal system will result in a more
>>> violent society, but not necessarily that a milder one will result in
>>> a less violent one.)
>>
>> So you see that a harsh penal system is a trap, since it can be
>> ratcheted up but never down. Worse than harshness in its pernicious
>> effect on society, however---and yet harshness always bubbles up in
>> these discussions as though it were the only relevant dimension---is
>> arbitrariness.
>>
>> So it's not just a side note that black/poor men get imprisoned and
>> executed at a higher rate in the US compared with whites and the rich,
>> guilty and innocent alike.
>
> Is it really black/white or is poor/rich enough to describe it?

No, it's not.
>
>> It's the very core of how the system
>> /actually/ /works/. It's a failure that stains every state and every
>> branch of government.
>
> How can you live in such a country?

It's quite difficult sometimes.
>
>> Fortunately, it's no longer "fashionable" to not care about that.
>
> Was it ever?

Yes, obviously. Black slavery functioned well into the 1930s in the 
state of Georgia. Lynchings occurred throughout the US until the 1970s.