> One of the problems with leftists and intellectuals in general is they
> don't usually come in contact with the brutal side of the prison
> industrial complex.
Isn't this rather a bait-and-switch? First you say you're specifically against changing or reforming prisons, they have to be completely abolished. Then you say the reason is the specifically brutal nature of the specific prison systems you've personally encountered. Maybe you'd say the same thing about Dutch prisons, but then you'd have to come up with a different set of reasons.
Below I've pasted a link to a long review of the following book, written by a legal historian at Yale:
> Harsh Justice: Criminal Punishment And the Widening Divide between
> America and Europe
> James Q. Whitman
>
> Criminal punishment in America is harsh and degrading--more so than
> anywhere else in the liberal west. Executions and long prison terms
> are commonplace in America. Countries like France and Germany, by
> contrast, are systematically mild. European offenders are rarely sent
> to prison, and when they are, they serve far shorter terms than their
> American counterparts. Why is America so comparatively harsh?
I'll leave this up until someone threatens to sue me:
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=F.5250ac20-13f0-4c98-9df6-cce8c7327471&hl=en
SA