As any criminal defense lawyer will tell you (and I'm one at least part time), most prisoners are guilty as charged, and not of political offenses. (Of course not all the things they are charged with should be offenses -- like nonviolent drug crimes.)
[WS:] Hi Justin, nice to hear from you again. As to the above, I am in full agreement and stated so time and again, so I am not sure what the bone of contention is.
Regarding your comments about the 1970s style radicalism - I think you are really downplaying it. The trend of glamorizing crime is well and alive in the US popular culture (not just on the left as you aptly observe) - as evidenced for example by the brouhaha about the execution of the convicted celebrity gangster Tookie Williams, while the non-celebrity capital cases that raise considerable reasonable doubt went unnoticed - as aptly pointed out by Max Sawicki.
As I tried to explain in my reply to Dennis C., my objection does not really pertain to the US criminal justice system, but to certain cultural trope that image it. To make a long story short, there are millions of groups in the world worthy our empathy in one way or another. Why then I should empathize with the US drug dealers, thieves or gangsters (whether they got their just desert or not)? Quite frankly, I am not particularly concerned about this population group, just as I am not very much concerned about, say, farmers in Anatolia, or Siberian deer hunters. This is not to say that I do not care about fellow human beings, but that it is not humanly possible to empathize with everyone and every cause.
So why, then, I should emphasize with US criminals (again regardless if they deserve their sentence or not)? Just because the thought police in the intellectual commodity market niche that I happen to occupy have decided that this is the party line, and will chastise everyone who does not follow it with proper zeal and indignation or dares to question it?
And one more thing. There was a long discussion on this list about the Tony Soprano show (which I do not watch, so I did not chip in), in which numerous contributors professed having "bad feelings and thoughts" about certain characters in that show, including wishing them "just deserts" in the form of inflicting extra-judicial bodily harm. There were also numerous postings disparaging yuppies, that is to say, professional people like myself (less "y" ;)) and many others on this list, or Disneyland goers (which means every parent that goes there with the kids), or Whole Foods shoppers (again that means urban dwellers who may not have many other options). All that is fine and cool. But every time that I speak unfavorably about criminals or lumpen - not even disparagingly, but just confessing that I do not really give a flying fuck about these people and do not see any reasons why I should, I am being called a whole bunch of nasty names on this list and even considered a disgrace to humanity.
In other words, it is OK to denigrate professional people or parents who take their children on what they consider nice vacations, but it is not OK to - no, not even denigrate, but not properly empathize with criminals and lumpen. If that is what the left, progressive, radical, socialist or whatever you want to call line is nowadays, I simply pass. Again, this is not to say that I do not care about fellow human beings (in fact, I do quite a bit), but that it is not humanly possible to be really connected to- and feel special about, the great majority of human groups. That includes groups considered "special" or "deserving" by some US lefties. I simply do not appreciate being reproached for saying that I do not care for these groups and see no reason why I should. I never followed any party line or yielded to thought police, including my previous life on the other side of the iron curtain, and I am certainly not going to change that now.
Perhaps Dennis C was the wrong person for me to bitch about it, as he later explained that his interest in criminal justice and penitentiary is professional - which is quite legit. Sorry, Dennis, if you feel offended. But one cannot deny that the "he may be a thug, but he is our thug" philosophy is well and alive, including this list.
I may also add that as most of you know, I grew up outside the US and thus I do not have any particular emotional attachment to the US popular culture and its various tropes. In itself, I neither like it or dislike it, just as I have no particular attachment to- or interest in-, say, Bolywood cinematography, Mariachi bands, of Peruvian flute players. It is just not my cup of tea. I do not appreciate, however, when those cultural tropes are being thrown "in my face," and if that sufficiently pisses me off, I may as well throw something back.
Wojtek