On Apr 6, 2009, at 3:44 PM, ravi wrote:
> Ah, dismissal with scorn. The prerogative of authors of great
> books! ;-)
No, the prerogative of people who've spent years studying something and therefore know what they're talking about, as opposed to your random audience member at the Brecht Forum (where this happened), who just pulls stuff out of the air, or some less fragrant locale.
> For the rest of us, though, there is work ahead:
>
> (http://drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q=node/62)
>
> =====
> State prisons held a total of 1,296,700 inmates on all charges at
> yearend 2005. In absolute numbers an estimated 687,700 inmates in
> State prison at yearend 2005 (the latest year for which offense data
> is available) were held for violent offenses: 166,700 for murder,
> 177,900 for robbery, 129,200 for assault, and 164,600 for rape and
> other sexual assaults. In addition, 248,900 inmates were held for
> property offenses, 253,300 for drug offenses, and 98,700 for public-
> order offenses.
> =====
The original source of this data, by the way:
<http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/sheets/p07.zip>.
> Let's head over to the self-service ;-) calculator:
>
> Total for violent offences (murder, assault, rape) = 460500
> Total for ambiguous category (robbery) = 177900
> Total for arguable non-crimes (drug, property, public offences) =
> 600900
What's ambiguous about robbery. The dictionary definition: "Law: the felonious taking of personal property from someone using force or the threat of force." If someone robbed me at gunpoint, I'd want to see the guy go to jail. Sorry if that sounds indelicate.
And I wouldn't mind seeing the guy who stole my father's car go to jail, either. We had to spend a few thousand bucks to replace it, and that fucker is still walking the streets. I'm sure he faced challenging circumstances, etc., but you steal a car, you should go to jail. And what about someone who breaks into your house and steals stuff? Most poor people don't break into houses or steal cars. In fact, poor people are more likely to be victimized than nonpoor people. How about fraud? That's a property offense too. Shed a tear for Bernie Madoff, do you?
> We can look at it another way: unless you are given to some sort of
> crude biologism or equivalent over-simplification, you are
> confronted by the paradox of US incarceration rates which match some
> of the most repressive regimes in the world -- the very regimes
> w.r.t which we, including writers of great books, would quickly
> proclaim innocence for a good number of those it imprisons. Yes?
No. Most of the people behind bars committed the crimes of which they were convicted. That makes them not "innocent." But like I said a little while ago, American society produces such people in very large numbers, through poverty, racism, and violence. They're not intrinsically bad, though there are almost certain to be violent and otherwise nasty people even in the best possible society. If you run around demanding the abolition of prisons, most people will think you're either risible or dangerous. That's ok, I suppose, if your approach to politics is that you keep struggling on in the hope that something, someday is going to turn up, and persuasion has nothing to do with it. If you don't think that, you want to worry about sounding risible or dangerous.
> --ravi, way over quota
You won't go to jail. This time.
Doug