USA: The Leader of the Unfree World

[DontSayBanana]

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.

[Ed Anger]

It's all about the War on Drugs.

Illicit drugs kill people.  From production to trafficking to use.

Yeah the streets around here are covered with the rotting corpses of dead stoners.

I wish. 

[DontSayBanana]

That said, we really do have a problem, and to an extent it perpetuates itself because there are so few prohibitions on treating ex-cons as pariahs in the economy.  Well, what alternatives does that leave them?  It's hard to see how we find a solution, though.  It's hard enough these days to find a politician that will be soft on crime;  it's even harder to find his replacement once he's voted out of office because some cute white girl got kidnapped and murdered by the guy that was released due to his policies.

So much this.  At our local college, business law and business management classes are heavily stocked by inmates taking classes toward setting up (I know I'm going to catch a raft of shit for generalizing here) landscaping businesses.  Parolees in NJ generally have to have employment prospects as a condition for parole, but employers won't touch them, so they usually form a micro-corporation for landscaping with family members to satisfy the requirement.

Inmates are also heavily taken advantage of when it comes to the workplace.  When I was working telemarketing, we found out after a while that my employer was running what bordered on an employment scam.  While the products and sales techniques were in grey enough areas to be considered legal for general purposes, what they were doing was deliberately hiring inmates and firing them a few weeks later to claim an exorbitant amount of tax credits offered by the state.  So employers will take inmates/parolees for the money, but there's very little incentive to actually give them meaningful employment.

[Syt]

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."

[crazy canuck]

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.

[Malthus]

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.

[DontSayBanana]

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."

Nothing centralized.  There are regulations on how long an applicant can be required to self-report certain types of convictions, but I'm not even sure if those are codified in law or just de facto HR standards.  There is always the option of expungement, which is not necessarily guaranteed and not automatic (the convict has to request the expungement), but I have no idea what judges' criteria are on granting or denying expungement or how centralized those criteria may be.

[DontSayBanana]

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.

Agreed.  There are many ways in which quality of life has improved across the board within the past 100 years or so.  A general decrease in lead and other pollutants, a crackdown on child labor, increased availability of public education, etc.

[Zanza]

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.

The "Freakonomics" book made a case that it is due to the legalization of abortions, which I guess is not a popular position for US republicans... 

[Ed Anger]

I'd like to beat people with a tire iron who post "this".

[Malthus]

I'd like to beat people with a tire iron who post "this".

This.




Someone was going to do it ...

[Zanza]

I'd like to beat people with a tire iron who post "this".

+1

[frunk]

I'd like to beat people with a tire iron who post "this".

ditto.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

It's all about the War on Drugs.

Illicit drugs kill people.  From production to trafficking to use.

The first two only because they are illicit.  The third, the government should not be concerned about people who want to slowly poison themselves.

[derspiess]

I'd like to beat people with a tire iron who post "this".

No shit.