[bambax]

> But they happen in most counties

If you meant "countries": no. No other country jails that many people, either compared to its population, or in absolute numbers. Not now, not ever.

The US is not "the land of the free", it's "the land of the jailed".

"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free"... and I will promplty put those bums in my private prisons where I'll watch them be raped to death.

That should be the quote on the so-called Statue of "Liberty".

We should ask for that statue back.

[mc32]

Oh, there is no question we jail too many people, and we jail rather than treat the mentally ill.

Reform is definitely needed, no question.

What I was saying is that other countries also disproportionately incarcerate their poor. It's not a uniquely American racist thing. Go to Angola, Nigeria, Russia, China, it's no different. Yes, we overdo the incarceration fixes all ills thing, we've got an unhealthy fetish for it, but my point was, the poor everywhere are disproportionately affected.

People seem to take it that I'm okay with that. I'm not, but its not uniquely American and its not a policy to target ethnicities. If America were all white or all black we'd still have a problem of overrepresentation of poor in the system. By overrepresentation I mean normalizing for crimes.

[bambax]

Yes, disproportionately incarcerating the poor is probably universal.

But incarceration-fetish is uniquely American. No other country has ever done that in all of history.

When it is done in such huge numbers it really isn't "law enforcement" anymore, it's just some form of apartheid.

The rest of the world should subject the US to the same kind of shaming that was used against South Africa. But of course, the rest of the world doesn't have the balls to do that, so here we go.