this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2024
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Reminds me of one time I discussed egg ethics and the number system in europe with my fellow german student flatmate.
Our other flatmate was a syrien refugie and when he came in and we translated the subject he laughed - a whole lot. When he was able to speak after that epic laughter he just said "in syria its people in cages and you fight about chicken."
Reality had been checked
Yeah, it's good that we think about solving these types of problems, but I think it's healthy to be reminded that it's a privilege to be in a position to spend mental energy on it.
Totally. I think it also shows that empathy is to some degree a subject to choice, which in turn is connected to one's scope of action
Plenty of people in cages in the US - I think we have the highest or one of the highest incarceration rates in the world? So that’s cool but not a situation unique to Syria or something.
We have the most overall, and are number six per capita (using wikipedia's numbers). I like to put it this way: China has three times our population, and they still have fewer prisoners that we do, so which one is truly the "police state"?
This site, fwiw, has the US at #1 per capita.
This one has the same info you supplied. Who knows, I guess. Either way, there really should be more political talk about this. What gets me is how uneven sentencing is - not just from state to state or judge to judge, but based on types of crime. A sex predator, for instance, should be way past someone selling small amounts of crack or whatever.
Overall I think that sentencing needs to come way, way down. Like if the crime you committed was non-violent, I don't even think prison should be on the table. Locking someone up should be considered the nuclear option that is only employed when the rest of the community is at risk, such as for a sexual predator.
We obviously need to re-think something. Prisons are not effective for rehabilitation and barely effective for threats of punishment. There are also way too many people who are threats released while people who aren't really are incacerated... like, someone who has been stealing cars, mugging people, attacking people at bus stops should be held vs. someone who say, did some financial fraud. It's all over the place though.