Open Thread WE 28 APR 21

Submitted by QMS on Wed, 04/28/2021 - 6:30am

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Incarceration has devastating effects on individuals and families. It should not be a business.

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Welcome to today's open thread. It is becoming more spring-like here, although it did sleet yesterday morning. Brrr chill.

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The criminal injustice system in this country could be improved immensely with a change in application and administration. There are so many ways to break some code in this country, it is a rare day most people do not stray outside of the strictly interpreted terms of what is considered legal. Seems the poor and especially folks of color are being caught and convicted at higher rates than most others. Why is 'white collar' crime not prosecuted more vigorously?

Since poverty is now another crime, the criminal justice system (CJS) has contrived a solution by locking people in cages for various lengths of time. This is deemed as repaying ones debt to society. The opportunities to actually work out this 'debt' are scarce indeed.

A proposed solution is to provide training for those in stir. Paying people the minimum wage would be incentive for many to learn and perform various services, if opportunities are provided. In this way, the prisoners could still help provide support for their families while developing skills applicable outside the prison walls. Being treated with some dignity and support are aspects of rehabilitation, which is sorely missing.

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Historically, prisoners were given useful work to do, manufacturing products and supporting the prisons themselves through industry. As laws were passed prohibiting transport of prison-made goods across state lines, most goods made in prisons today are for government use, and the practice itself has been in decline for decades, leaving offenders without any productive activities while serving their sentences.

Currently, prisons are overcrowded and underfunded. In 2008, 1 in 100 American adults were incarcerated. Estimates vary, but it can cost upwards of $30,000 per year to keep an inmate behind bars. The costs of healthcare for inmates, who often suffer mental health and addiction issues, grew at a rate of 10% per year according to a 2007 Pew study. Programs for the incarcerated are often non-existent or underfunded. Recidivism rates are through the roof, with one Bureau of Justice Statistics study finding that more than 75% of released inmates were arrested again within five years.

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Perhaps it would be in society's best interest to provide opportunities to perform needed services
such as farming, road maintenance, building maintenance, land management and the like.

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Some resources:

https://centerforprisonreform.org/history/

https://eddiemauro.com/issues/criminal-justice-reform/detail/the-restora...

https://www.cooperativeparty.com/criminal-justice-reform.html

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As always this is an open thread, so anything off topic is cool. Please share whatever is on your mind.

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Submitted by QMS on Wed, 04/28/2021 - 7:07am

A bit of a variance from the normal art, poetry and song today. I am celebrating my birthday, so am being dragged out of the house, kicking and screaming, to have lobster rolls and adult libations across the state. Life is good as long as it lasts Wink

post away...

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Submitted by NYCVG on Wed, 04/28/2021 - 7:21am

@QMS It is early. That's all I got.

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NYCVG

Submitted by QMS on Wed, 04/28/2021 - 7:35am

@NYCVG

If I add another 6, I'd be bedeviled.

Have a good one!

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Submitted by mimi on Wed, 04/28/2021 - 5:16pm
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@QMS @QMS
and tell us the one where getting a year older is counted backwards. I am getting younger each year, allows me to be even more childish than Ia m already.

Lobster? Wow, to eat a lobster in Germany is just a thing only millionaires can afford.
Drinks
Give rose
Have a happy birthday.

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Submitted by Raggedy Ann on Wed, 04/28/2021 - 10:06am
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@QMS
Enjoy your special day! Pleasantry

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"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

Submitted by Lookout on Wed, 04/28/2021 - 7:06am
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My first thought about prison reform is to decriminalize drugs and release all nonviolent drug prisoners. The war on drugs was designed to stifle the civil rights and anti-war movements....pretty effective too. Bail-bond reform is need too.

Portugal provides a good example.
https://drugpolicy.org/sites/default/files/DPA_Fact_Sheet_Portugal_Decri...

Have a great birthday QMS! We had a lovely party for my Mom's 89th last Sunday. Hope your celebration is equally fun. All the best!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Submitted by QMS on Wed, 04/28/2021 - 7:33am

@Lookout

Has been a spectacular failure. Declaring war on the portion of society who need 'illicit' medications to maintain some form of hope has always been a deflection of the reasons for said consumption. In a more just society, drug use could be treated as a biological / psychological issue. Some "more progressive" countries have figured this out. It is not a crime to mentally escape oppression if there are alternatives. That *just say no* palaver touted by Nancy Reagan was BS. Accepting the fact that the American dream is more of a hallucination would help. This is why pot is so popular. And states are accepting this reality.

Glad your mom's celebration went so well!

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Submitted by RantingRooster on Wed, 04/28/2021 - 8:53am
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

[video:https://youtu.be/Cs5vUfddkT8]

Be safe, but party on DUDE!

Profiting from prison is just as bad as profiting from human sickness and disease (healthcare). Both are a CRIME AGAINST HUAMNITY, imho.

I'm just saying...

Drinks

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C99, my refuge from an insane world. #ForceTheVote

Submitted by NYCVG on Wed, 04/28/2021 - 10:44am

@RantingRooster Profiting from Charter Schools and you will have hit the trifecta!

For those who may not know: Charter Schools are (falsely) promoted as Public Schools because the students do not pay tuition.

In the actual real world, Charter Schools take public school revenue, and funnel it into Charter School profiteers. They keep much of the money and economize by underpaying teachers and in every other way they can think of in order to cheat the system.

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NYCVG

Submitted by QMS on Wed, 04/28/2021 - 9:04am

no reason to not party!

Agree whole heartedly the CJS system is as derelict as the HCS (health care system) and the benevolent law enforcement system. If there is a buck to made .. shake down the rubes
Wink

ps: did you get my check?

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Submitted by enhydra lutris on Wed, 04/28/2021 - 11:37am
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Birfdai-2

be well and have a great one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Submitted by enhydra lutris on Wed, 04/28/2021 - 11:44am
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You say:

Seems the poor and especially folks of color are being caught and convicted at higher rates than most others.

The reality is that few are actually "convicted" of anything, because that requires a costly trial which also takes a lot of peoples' time. They are mostly conned, forced, tricked or trapped into some sort of plea bargain where a pile of piled on or falsely elevated charged are dropped and/or reduced and a guilty plea to the original actual offense or somewhat moderated version thereof is entered. This parctice needs to be curtailed or eliminated. A few weeks actually putting on trials for all those jaywalking level offences would shut the system down pronto.

OK, that said, got anything up for tomorrow, or should I jump in?

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Submitted by QMS on Wed, 04/28/2021 - 5:24pm

@enhydra lutris

is going to take tomorrow
will double check

thanks!

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Submitted by QMS on Wed, 04/28/2021 - 7:04pm

@QMS

thanks be to the powers of intranet communication devices
hee-hee

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Submitted by enhydra lutris on Wed, 04/28/2021 - 9:30pm
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@QMS

next thursday?

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Submitted by studentofearth on Wed, 04/28/2021 - 1:12pm
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Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.

Submitted by studentofearth on Wed, 04/28/2021 - 1:35pm
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population and not bring up eugenics.

Separating individuals from the general population might be part of why different segments of our population have different incarceration rates. This quote is from 1911, many aspects of our public policy whether unintended or deliberate move us in that direction.

The proper attitude to be taken toward the perpetuation of poor types is that which has been attributed to Huxley. “We are sorry for you,” he is reported to have said; “we will do our best for you (and in so doing we elevate ourselves, since mercy blesses him that gives and him that takes), but we deny you the right to parentage. You may live, but you must not propagate.”

from 2020 Not Just ICE: A California Prison Sterilized Her and Other Black Women

Dillon emphasized that those who support universal human rights cannot ignore incarcerated and detained populations. “In America—and I’m sure it can happen in other countries but I can only speak to America—they find ways to criminalize and villainize certain races of people and marginalized people to give themselves an excuse to incarcerate them, to lock them up, to detain them or to put them away. But once they have detained them and incarcerated them or whatever they’ve done, then they act out these dirty little practices in order to remove the unwanted, the outcast, the most vulnerable populations, to get them out the way.

“So it’s not so much that these things happen mostly in prison, but that it almost seems that prison and detention centers and even mental health facilities were actually created to make sure that these things happen, whether they’re slavery or forced labor or medical practices and experimentations like mass hysterectomies and forced sterilizations.”

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Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.

Submitted by janis b on Wed, 04/28/2021 - 1:45pm
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Submitted by QMS on Wed, 04/28/2021 - 5:26pm

@janis b

Thanks to everyone here sending well wishes.
Much appreciation
Smile

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