Senate "Race" Relations (was "U.S. Society and Black Men")

You miss the point. People see crime as an "alternative" because there's at least more of a prospect for advancement/success than they can imagine through more conventional routes. Yes, most of them fail. Because most people fail at most of their ambitions in life. That's not the same as aiming for mediocrity at the outset, which is what you are proposing on the basis of absolutely nothing.

 

Well it was a suggestion by LOH initially that people set out for a career in prison before and then once incarcerated, not just pursuing a life of crime at the outset.

There is no evidence beyond some really bad 80s and 90s movies that prison is seen as a desirable, legitimate, career path.

I've met my share of excons(handful of people,drug offenses all). Never, ever met one who looked forward to being locked up so he could excel.

Thinking that makes me laugh because most of these guy were like most criminals: so self interested they thought they would never be caught. Thinking you would never be caught suggests wanting to never be caught and locked up in the brig.

Doesn't sound like a bunch of people running out seeking Lockup101 in order to get their PHD in Prisonomics.

 

It couldn't have been. That doesn't make any sense. He initially attributed the high levels of incarceration in the US to people who "treated it like university" and went on ot explain that they want to be their because it is helpful to their criminal careers. If they don't decide on this until after incarceration, though, it can't very well be the cause for high incarceration rates in the first place. It would definitionally be a consequence of them.

 

I edited my comment to say "before" as an incentive. Saying prison is looked at on the outside like university by criminals…I have seen no evidence of that at all….not in the U.S. context anyways.

 

It was an LoH comment, though?

 

Yes, LOH said criminals treated it like University, implying being locked up was a career path for criminals.

 

Ah I see why you have jumped on this. You think I'm attributing the high rates of incarceration in the US solely to career criminals who want to be in prison. I think there is a huge number of people who fall into this category but they are insignificant as a proportion to all prisoners as a whole. My comment was made in the context of "for profit" prisons where people who either want to go to prison or are indifferent to it are all serving to maximise the prison incorporated business plan and profit forecast.

My comment that prison is a path to credibility within criminal social structures is something I studied at University when I did my sociology degree and later when I studied law and criminology. That was nearly 20 years ago so I won't be able to cite sources I'm afraid.

 

Yeah that is an entirely different context than I think what your original post suggested. I understand it was part of an ongoing conversation about for profit prisons but your post didn't specifically address that.

But it does now and it makes sense. I'm still not sure there are a certain amount of people who want to be in prison though and for what purpose but whatever. No biggie.

 

Well people want to go to prison because prison offers networking opportunities and it establishes a pedigree when back on the street. Prison tattoos, like gang tattoos, are symbols of status and belonging. If your livelihood depends on the ability to intimidate then having spent time in prison is good stuff.

 

So you are saying having spent time in prison is a badge of honor or rite of passage for some of these people,whose own upbringing might have lacked fathers and other more traditional rites?

 

I don't want to go to prison. Why? Because I follow the law. I don't want to be poor, which is a statistic leads to crime so I don't choose to have children.

If most people follow these simple steps things will be so much better.

 

What? I don't understand what you just said there.

 

Yes, sometimes my hands don't transfer what my brain said. Ok let me rephrase......

Ok most criminals are poor right? If they don't have children then they can keep more $ for themselves. And what you said earlier about me wanting public executions. Uhmmmm. Is it bloodlustfull? I guess so but it's still justice to me. And like I said before it should be used for the worst of the worst like Ted Bundy.

 

The chief causes of poverty are not "too many children." Poverty has more robust linkages to limited access to healthcare resources, and more limited secondary education, resulting an increased number of unintentional pregnancies and subsequent live births.

 

Darth Basin
We shouldn't publicly execute people because it doesn't have anything to do with extracting justice from the offenders. They are dying regardless. It says more about us, as a people, to desire to see people die, even the worst sort.

We shouldn't even execute people anyway but that's another issue. If we do execute them, it should not be publicly. A degenerative, declining society does that, not a enlightened one. Besides, many of these reprehensible people like the worst sort desire a perverse form of notoriety. What better sort of terrible notoriety than to give them a public forum to die upon?

It's wrong.

 

Then should we still allow witnesses to executions?

 

We do that as a form of transparency between the state and the public. It is a compromise for limited media attendance and reporting on these matters. But we should not cater to some degraded appetite to see offenders die.

A civilized society feeds the better part of our nature not the sordid ones.

 

I saw my father die in front of me. I know death. Death is a very real thing to me. I also almost drowned. If life is so great it would never end but does.

As I said before. Just for the worst of the worst.

 

Couldn't agree more! Well said!

 

Melfa, a small town in Accomack county on Virginia's Eastern Shore

 

The borders of some states just don't make sense to me.

West Virginia is another one.

 

West Viriginia is actually one of the easier states to explain. Its borders constitute the pro-Union counties over which the U.S. was able to exert control at the beginning of the Civil War.

 

Yes but it's weird that "original Virginia" even had that sliver between Ohio and Pennsylvania, or the weird western border with Maryland.