The great Russian author Dostoevsky once wrote: “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons“. By that measure, the United States cannot be considered a civilized society.
Anyone doubting this should carefully remember following:
Dozens of 13 and 14 year old children have been sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole in this nation. In a new report called Cruel and Unusual, the Equal Justice Initiative has documented 73 such cases. The United States is the only country in the world where a 13-year-old is known to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In fact, over 2225 juveniles (age 17 or younger) have been sentenced to life imprisonment without parole in the US. Read the full report “Cruel and Unusual” just published by the Equal Justice Initiative.
You can also listen to the excellent interview of Equal Justice Initiative’s executive director Bryan Stevenson on Uprising Radio.
The USA has the highest incarceration rate on the planet. The USA employs 3.5 full-time law enforcement employees per 1’000 habitants (also one of the highest rates on the planet). These law enforcement employees are backed up by 16 (sixteen!) “intelligence” agencies which, in turn, are backed by a huge private intelligence network system.
Unsurprisingly, the Blacks are far more likely to be jailed than Whites. Equally predicable is the fact that most incarcerated inmates are nonviolent drug offenders.
The USA prison system also is unique among all the prison system in that is systematically uses rape (certainly a form of torture) as a form of punishment and coercion. The the full Human Rights Watch “No Escape: Male Rape in US Prisons“. Even worse is the fact that rapes are something which the US society not only accepts, but *expects* to take place in prisons.
Imagine being a 13 year old boy in such a prison system!
“Bubba is going to make you his girlfriend” is something which you can see in American movies, books, and conversations. Inmates are supposed to “stand up for themselves” and those who are raped are considered as unworthy of respect. Needless to say, the vast majority of Americans are absolutely convinced that the kids of things which happens in US jails and prisons also happen in the rest of the world, they are absolutely incredulous when they are told that this is not at all the case.
In every single one of its aspects, and I have touched upon only very few here, the US immense prison system is an obscene affront to civilized mankind and can only be compared to the Soviet Gulag in terms of cruelty, inhumanity and lack of civilized norms. The big difference is that, unlike its Soviet counterpart, the US “Gulag” is also immensely profitable as it provides the government with a slave force of 2’000’000 inmates who are totally deprived from even their basic human rights. Not only that, but an increasing part of the American Gulag is now being run by private companies who pocket billions of dollars of taxpayer money and who provide the US government a ‘cost-effective’ black hole in which all the undesirable elements of society can be thrown.
Take the example of Marijuana laws. I won’t even bother explaining that Marijuana is a totally harmless substance, or even that it is highly beneficial in many cases (if you do not understand that you are reading the wrong blog). I ask a simple question: is there a point in incarcerating millions of people solely because of their use of this substance? I believe that there very much is one: the point is to take those who are too critical of dumb laws, or those who do not unquestionably obey the government, off the streets while scaring all the others. This is just a social variation on the idea that the USA should bomb some small nations into smithereens every couple of years or so just to frighten everybody else. Add to this the ever present (and taser-carrying) cops and you will see why Americans are as passive as sheep and why they cannot even throw a decent riot when an arrogant dimwit steals the presidency.
Oscar Wilde famously said that “America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between“. Well, if “the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons ” then the US prison system is the best proof that the USA is a fundamentally uncivlized country, a country which is barbaric for its poor and decadent for its elites.
That a country which fancies itself the “leader of the free world” endowed with a “manifest destiny” to lead mankind to a better future can sentence a 13 year old child to life without possibility of parole would be laughable if it wasn’t so tragically sad. That this can happen in the quasi total indifference of everybody else is outrageous.
How can a presumably Christian society forget the warning of Christ “whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me, but whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matt. 18:5-6)?
Hear, Hear, VS!
I wish Foucault was still alive, he would have many many things to tell us about this subject and why we keep putting people in prison.
A true American should only judge people by their characters and not the color of their skin. But I think it’s impossible to do so… We edicted concepts, universal concepts and we can’t even use them.
The answer to all these problems should carefully examine the deviations of our own societies. It’s the only psychological fields to understand what’s really going on in a society, and trust me, until this day there are many things I did not fully understand yet.
I heard from french intellectuals the following quote: “the USA is the only country that went from decadence to barbarism” to paraphrase the sentence from Oscar Wild in a different fashion of re-interpreting the way we human beings envision life.
We often use this quote to emphasize the dramatization of the Abu Ghraib prison camp, giving a sort of electroshock to our brain, but we still function on the 10 WATTS without noticing how bad it got :S
Kind regards!
Steven
Check out this blog:
http://injusticeinseattle.blogspot.com/
Amazingly phreaky…
VS,
What you describe is not defensible, but the one thing I have noticed in my limited travels–and I am talking mostly Asia, and China more specifically, is that essentially there is no law and very limited law enforcement. Or at least not a very conspicuous uniformed police presence, the way there is in the States. I do not recall anyone obeying speed limits on highways or even respecting red lights much. My sense is that people get away with what they can all the time and the police are pretty much indifferent to all crime.
It may come down to cultural differences as much as anything else. that is differences in the role of the police and expectations of the public.
First, my article deals mainly with the US *prisons* issues. But, of course, I see your point and, in fact, I agree with it. I would say that the US has a generally decent police force, although it is definitely getting worse since this entire GWOT nonsense. It is also too big, too high-strung and has too many wannabe skinheads with IQs below 80. Still, compared to other countries were people are actually used to seeing cops as just another criminal gang the USA is still comparatively better off.
There is really chaos on many roads in Asia. I remember one highway in Jakarta were I thought everybody had gone nuts at the same time. In Taipei they even manage to drive recklessly in *trafic jams* (go figure?!). There is something to be said about what they call the “Chinese Air Force” in San Francisco :-)
Drivers in Europe and South America are definitely not as sleepy and painfully slow as in the USA, but I am not sure that this has anything to do with cops.
And then there is Russia were cops are rather vicious maniacs with AKSU-74 assult rifles and the Russians still drive like at the Daytona 500!
All this is to say that I am not sure we can peg dribing habits to police behavior.
Ditto for the respect – or lack thereof – for the law. In Russia they have a funny expression: “it is forbidden, but if you really want, you can”. I kind of like it. Its not as boring as, say, living in Karlsruhe or something.
Russian police carry AKSU-74’s? Really?
Russian police carry AKSU-74’s? Really?
Depends where and when, really. But yes, I have seen them with these in Moscow and I suppose its similar in other big cities or locations close to conflict areas. The thing is that they bad guys might well have AKM-74, so they need all the firepower they can in certain places.
But in rural areas all they have is the (bad) old Makarov (the only Russian weapon I truly hate).
When the OMON or, even more so, the SOBR show up they can have absolutely anything up to and including BTRs or even BMPs. I have yet to see an OMON tank though :-))
… and they go around assaulting, tasering, kneeling on necks, brutalising and shooting citizens with virtually consequence or accountability… why is that??
Because the US is a ‘police state’… it’s that simple, straightforward… obvious
I think our incarceration numbers are the highest in the world; most people in the USA know this. The problem is that what you write is true but the powerful citizens who can change things do not care; the powerful are controllers of the poor and small middle class. They enjoy control and power and there is nothing WE regulator citizens can do about it. The rich have been controlling the rest of us for many thousands of years. If this is a new concept to you it is not to the student of history. The USA treats mentally handicapped citizens like garbage. As long as people watch the sanctimonious bews and learn how to act…yes Disney even tells you how to live. Our information is garbage…half stories and most people are suggestableto the news…washed…they have few pepeople they know and they all regurgitate the same half stories…all ignorant to how it works…as long as they are not locked up or theirs…they think your nothing but evil villains in a Disney cartoon. There will be justice in this universe…u can bet on that.