USA: The Leader of the Unfree World

[CountDeMoney]

I really hate seeing this bullshit use of poor statistics constantly brought up over and over.

Agreed.  I read that as more likely that the same people received stop-and-frisk searches repeatedly, which is a whole other problem.

It's called "effective policing."

[OttoVonBismarck]

Like people who sell alcohol?

Or people who sell cigarettes, yes. You can victimize someone without it being a crime. There are probably ethical ways to sell intrinsically harmful substances but not many tobacco companies for example really seem to do that, and continue to do things like advertise to children, come up with new products they try to sneakily make people think are "less" harmful and etc. Likewise the street dealer who probably crushes his shit with various straight up industrial solvents / poisons and slings on the street, or even at best just slings a product he has no idea the provenance of falls into the unethical side of that sort of thing. Maybe a medical marijuana dispensary or a controlled compounding pharmacy that say, dispensed legalized heroin/methamphetamine would be an ethical model.

[MadImmortalMan]

Do convictions and prison terms ever disappear from your record in the U.S.?

In Germany, there's terms, depending on the severity of the crime for when items get wiped off your slate and you can go back to calling yourself "not previously convicted."

We really need this in north america. At least then our prosecutors can go to sleep at night without having lives ruined for eternity on their conscience.

[jimmy olsen]

Otto, it appears that violent crime is falling everywhere in the Western World.  It also seems that nobody has a particularly good explanation for why this is occuring across all Western societies.

This.

Someone made a case that the key was lower levels of lead ingested by kids. I'm not convinced, I think probably it is a number of different factors.

Me!

Science don't lie!

[Razgovory]

As far as correlation-explaining stories go, it sounds pretty convincing.

Yep.  Welcome to the world of science.

Well, non-climate science at least.

[dps]

Otto, it appears that violent crime is falling everywhere in the Western World.  It also seems that nobody has a particularly good explanation for why this is occuring across all Western societies.

Me!

Pretty sure you can't credibly take the credit here.