How poetically ironic that the land of the free steals the most freedom. Seriously though wtf is up with Louisiana? More than 1.4% of their entire population is in jail.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate
In October 2013, the incarceration rate of the United States of America was the highest in the world, at 716 per 100,000 of the national population. While the United States represents about 4.4 percent of the world's population, it houses around 22 percent of the world's prisoners.
Twenty Two percent!?~!??!11 This statistic is mind boggling. We are basically imprisoning five times more people than we should be. Even more than 5 times if you agree that on average the world locks away too many people.
To make things worse, we use our prisoners as slaves. They are expected to work for slave-wages. I have a friend who bragged about making $100 a month because other inmates were making $30. He was working in the boiler room (or something like that) alongside of non-prisoners that were making $80,000/year.
This same friend was put there on a bogus drug charge. They claimed to find methamphetamine traces on some random object in his car. It's entirely possible there were traces, because his dipshit step-father was an addict. Guilty by association. Oh, by the way, if you decide to allow their inept, lazy, and apathetic public defender represent you, you're going to jail. They don't care about you. They take the path of least resistance every time.
I had another friend that didn't want to take a deal but the public defender basically forced him to. He couldn't do anything about it and was almost arrested in contempt of court trying to avoid the "deal". The entire Judicial System is a sick joke that revolves around money.
Prison privatization
In the 1980s, the rising number of people incarcerated as a result of the War on Drugs and the wave of privatization that occurred under the Reagan Administration saw the emergence of the for-profit prison industry. Prior to the 1980s, private prisons did not exist in the US.
But wait! Haven't you heard? Prisons can't make a profit because it costs so much to incarcerate inmates!
The Vera Institute of Justice released a study in 2012 that found the aggregate cost of prisons in 2010 in the 40 states that participated was $39 billion. The annual average taxpayer cost in these states was $31,286 per inmate. New York State was the most expensive, with an average cost of $60,000 per prison inmate.
Well, actually, I have bad news. This is exactly how they make money. Private prisons cut costs where ever they can, giving inmates unacceptable living conditions, and then they siphon off all that excess taxpayer money for themselves. It's absolutely fucking disgusting. America uses inmates as cash-cows for funneling taxpayer money into the hands of the greedy. Combine this with the slave-labor and you can really make a pretty penny.
The War on Drugs didn't begin to help "the children". It exists to enslave and exploit. Not only that, the War on Drugs makes drugs even more valuable. Call it hazard pay if you will. The establishment is able to make backdoor deals to profit from the War on Drugs from many angles, including paying taxes on drug deals to launder profits into legitimate currency, but that's another topic.
System of Revenge
None of this would even be that bad if the Judicial System actually cared about Justice. At its core, justice is about preventing bad things from happening. Say you could reform a serial killer who murdered 100 people. After a two week program the murderer is "cured" and he will no longer kill people. You can now release him back as a productive member of society. True justice doesn't care about revenge. The past doesn't matter. The future is everything. Justice only cares about making the future better.
Now, what do we have here? We have a system of revenge where everyone knows, "don't drop the soap," because you'll get raped. Excuse me? How are people getting raped and committing crimes in prison and getting away with it? Because we allow it to happen on purpose. Prison guards are no better than the prisoners they're guarding. A lot of them are actually much worse. They just haven't been caught.
Only Poor Idiots get Caught
This brings me to my next point. It's very easy to get away with committing crime. The police departments of the world cast their nets and catch the bottom-feeders. Do you know how many people get strong armed into confessing to a crime? It's a lot, and many are false confessions. When the wife gets murdered, who is number one on the suspect list? The husband! The police are predictable as hell and it is so easy to commit a crime and then plant evidence to frame the first person the police will suspect.
Speaking of evidence, a smart criminal leaves none behind. Look at the serial killers that have been caught. They are all completely insane, highly emotional, sensationalist nutbags. Where are all the cold calculating killers who make very little, if any, mistakes? They're out there killing people and they're never going to get caught. Unsolved murders reported as murders (instead of missing persons) were done incorrectly. If they can destroy every last trace of a person's DNA they are almost guaranteed to get away with that crime, even if there is a mountain of other circumstantial evidence against them. No body no crime. They know all the loopholes. They know how the police operate. They don't do stupid shit like give police evidence on purpose just to taunt them in a show of superiority. This isn't Law & Order: SVU. Smart criminals win.
Rich criminals also win. Even if you get caught there is a good chance that money and social status can get you off the hook. Capitalism at it's finest. It's not hard to see why the world is so messed up. The ones who control it are the smartest and richest criminals of all time, and we idolize them for it. Why are shows like Scarface, The Godfather, Goodfellas, Pulp Fiction, The Sapranos, and Breaking Bad so popular? Deep down, we know that people with these mentalities are the ones that rule everything. You have to step on the backs of the lower tier to ascend the pyramid.
Shut Your Mouth
If you ever find yourself in a situation where you have to talk to the law, don't. There is a reason why the Miranda Rights exist and you should use those rights to your full advantage. Never speak to the law without a lawyer. That's why they exist.
You have nothing to hide? Oh you poor fool. If you tell them you don't like ice cream they are going to find evidence that you do like ice cream, and use it against you, to call you a lair and undermine your credibility. Police interrogators are professionals at getting you into trouble. You aren't going to pull one over on them. The best you can do is say nothing and call it a tie. A tie is a win for you. They will tell you it looks suspicious to do this. Are you going to believe them? You shouldn't believe anything that comes out of their forked tongues. They will strong-arm anyone who lets them.
Do you know why I pulled you over?
The answer is always no. He's fishing for you to incriminate yourself. In fact, answering no can also lead to trouble. This is why some people go with, "I do not recall," because it's impossible to prove that a suspect remembers something or not.
You can also answer a question with a question.
Why did you pull me over?
This is a super safe move because asking a question can never be interpreted as giving information in an official capacity.
Jurors
A "jury of peers" decides the fate of the accused when it comes to legal matters. This random lottery of people with collectively little knowledge of the law decide who does and does not go to prison. Can you see how absurd this is? Prosecuting and defense lawyers use every trick in the book to get a jury that will agree with them. The emotions of juries are constantly manipulated into picking a side. Sometimes, the evidence of the case is the least important part. It's ridiculous.
It seems like the whole jury by peers thing was the Founding Fathers' attempt at decentralization. A centralized knowledgeable jury could be theoretically superior, but at the same time is much more susceptible to corruption. I don't have a good answer for this problem but I hope that the decentralizing power of the blockchain will provide one in the future.
Recidivism
The easiest metric to gauge how badly the Judicial System has failed us are recidivism rates.
Within three years of release, about two-thirds (67.8 percent) of released prisoners were rearrested. Within five years of release, about three-quarters (76.6 percent) of released prisoners were rearrested. Of those prisoners who were rearrested, more than half (56.7 percent) were arrested by the end of the first year.
Our recidivism rates are downright embarrassing. It's absolutely pathetic how we send our citizens into these hell holes to be tortured and enslaved and then expect them to come out as productive members of society. The Judicial System makes people worse, not better. We live in a world of double standards and illusions.
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
Every day that this disgusting system is allowed to operate is an insult to humanity.
Death Penalty
Have you ever thought about the way we execute prisoners? Why do we do it that way? Back in the Wild-West you'd get publicly hanged or executed by firing squad. Now we have the electric chair, gas chamber, and lethal injections. Why do we need so much creativity when it come's to ending a convict's existence?
It's all part of our long and glorious history of revenge. These methods of killing put on a sick show for the ones who they wronged. None of these methods of execution are ethical, painless, or even make sense in terms of moral high ground. Does this death-table look like someone is going quietly into the night or being torturously murdered?
Lethal injection is a highly convoluted procedure that involves multiple injections. One injection will render the condemned unconscious while the others will stop the heart or breathing. It can take 7 minutes to two hours to kill someone this way. The claim is that the first injection nullifies the horrible torture of the other highly painful ones. I don't buy that shit because there is no reason to do it in this convoluted manner. If I was personally condemned to die I would kill myself first out of fear.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/capital-punishment-by-lethal-injection/
About two thirds of the states use a combination of barbituric, paralytic and toxic agents for executions, despite a lack of scientific evidence supporting their effectiveness. Although the procedure may be subject to FDA approval, the agency has avoided any ruling on the cocktail's efficacy in delivering a merciful death
it has been argued that the FDA should be required to certify the safety and effectiveness of drugs used to carry out executions (as it does for drugs used to euthanize animals)
Off the top of my head, I can think of two more ethical forms of capital punishment than what we have today. People receive a cleaner death from accidental auto-erotic asphyxiation than they get from the state. Just the other day I saw a suicide pod for assisted suicide. We give cleaner deaths to our pets than we do to convicts, and there is absolutely no excuse for it.
A recent study by Professor Michael Radelet and Traci Lacock of the University of Colorado found that 88% of the nation's leading criminologists do not believe the death penalty is an effective deterrent to crime.
Oh wow I'm so surprised by that... not. Revenge has never and will never be an effective way to make society a better place.
WWJD?
Instead of throwing convicts under the bus we should be throwing them a lifeline. Criminals will remain criminals if that remains the path of least resistance. We put convicts in prison because they can't be trusted to roam freely in society. They don't need to be punished, they need to be reformed.
Prison should resemble a quarantined community where inmates still have the opportunity to thrive if they make the right choices. Personally, I thought it would be super interesting if someone started up a blockchain based on this sub-community. Cryptocurrency is, after all, based almost solely on the community that backs it. The privatization of this space could be flipped on its ear by becoming actually productive instead of just a tool to channel tax dollars. This is one of the most under-utilized sectors of all time. There are a lot of talented individuals that get thrown into the meat-grinder with no escape. By providing a light at the end of the tunnel inmates would work hard to achieve goals that they never even thought possible. Desperate people are willing to try harder than anyone else to improve their situation if they think it's a possibility and the path is laid right at their feet. Unfortunately, these are just generic nothing words with no specific plan or finances to back it up.
You might be next.
Be careful about what you say. The thought police might be here sooner than you think. It may seem like nothing much has changed, but your rights have been liquidated by the Patriot Act. The government owns you. They have every right to black bag or drone strike anyone they want for any reason.
Don't be surprised if you or someone you know ends up being thrown into the meat grinder with the rest of the 80% of people who don't deserve to be there. Maybe some of us will be playing poker with UNO cards, and making toilet wine together, in the near future.