I walked in to my local coffee shop this morning desperate for a cup of the old caffeine. My friends were with me and I noticed that one of the windows had been smashed.
"What's happened here, vandalism?" I asked the Barrista.
"Yeah." she replied, "They tried to get in last week" and she pointed to a crack in one of the other windows.
Then a guy who had come in before me chimed in with his two cents worth:
"They'll just get a slap on the wrist, that's all they do to these criminals around here."
That sort of nonsense really bugs me.
"I don't think so" I replied. "We have more people in prison in this country than anywhere else on earth, some two million; and it's not the people with money."
He wasn't quite sure what to say. He sort of shut up and after getting his coffee headed back to his SUV.
My friends and I talked of how there is this crazy notion in this country that they're soft on crime. The US is soft on crime when rich people commit crimes but the prisons are full of working people and the poor. African Americans, who are about 13% of the US population are about 48% of the prison population; that tells us something about the racist US judicial system.
According to the ACLU
The color of a defendant and victim's skin plays a crucial and unacceptable role in deciding who receives the death penalty in America. People of color have accounted for a disproportionate 43% of total executions since 1976 and 55% of those currently awaiting execution.
The jurisdictions with the highest percentages of minorities on its death row:
U.S. Military (86%)
Colorado (80%)
U.S. Government (77%)
Louisiana (72%)
Pennsylvania (70%)
"Race and the Death Penalty (2/26/2003)"
As he left the coffee shop my friends and I continued to discuss about the guy's stupid and ill informed remark. In this country, with the three strikes you're out rule, people have been sentenced to 25 years for stealing pizza.
"There should be a three stupid remarks and you're out law" my friend said. Third stupid remark and you get 25 years. We all had a laugh at that one.
This view, that the law is soft on criminals is propagated by the right wing and both political parties. It is also propagated by politicians like Arnold Schwarzenegger who says he is tough on violent crime yet made millions making films glorifying violence.
Most European countries and countries throughout the world consider the US judicial system barbaric and uncivilized.
Saudi Arabia has no problem with it though.
1 comment:
Yes, the land of the free alright. The USA has approximately 5% of the world's population and approximately 25% of the world's prison population. The prison industrial complex is a giant profit making monster which bribes the politicians and sees to it that laws are passed and conditions are such that keep their prisons full and their profits rolling in. These laws include ones on drugs that put people in prison for having drugs which if the same situation existed in many other countries would see the people involved get a small fine or no punishment at all because the drugs would have been decriminalized. There are so many prisons in California that pilots can fly their planes north from San Diego in the night time guiding them by flying from the lights of one giant prison to the other. US capitalism is a rotten and decayed system. It has forfeited the right to exist. The US capitalist class are degenerate and criminal. It has forfeited the right to rule. Sean.
Sean
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