This Week in Google Alerts: Home Fires

António Marques · 12 Apr 2012, 20:46 · from 2012-April.txt.gz

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From: entonio at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?QW50w7NuaW8gTWFycXVlcw==?=)
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2012 21:46:35 +0100
Subject: (urth) This Week in Google Alerts: Home Fires
In-Reply-To: <4F873A41.4040700 at verizon.net>
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	<CAM0v-i5VqpS+P2FR-5dNUyFuoYM9aKQqsK0t6FvbhBELKfJw_g at mail.gmail.com>
	<4F8736E7.1030909 at gmail.com> <4F8737D3.5020805 at gmail.com>
	<4F873A41.4040700 at verizon.net>
Message-ID: <4F873F2B.4080309 at gmail.com>

David Stockhoff wrote:
> On 4/12/2012 4:15 PM, Ant?nio Marques wrote:
>> Ant?nio Marques wrote:
>>> Why think that how a society treats its prisoners will filter down to
>>> how people treat each other in general and not the reverse?
>>
>> (I'm ready to believe a harsh penal system will result in a more
>> violent society, but not necessarily that a milder one will result in
>> a less violent one.)
>
> So you see that a harsh penal system is a trap, since it can be
> ratcheted up but never down. Worse than harshness in its pernicious
> effect on society, however---and yet harshness always bubbles up in
> these discussions as though it were the only relevant dimension---is
> arbitrariness.
>
> So it's not just a side note that black/poor men get imprisoned and
> executed at a higher rate in the US compared with whites and the rich,
> guilty and innocent alike.

Is it really black/white or is poor/rich enough to describe it?

> It's the very core of how the system
> /actually/ /works/. It's a failure that stains every state and every
> branch of government.

How can you live in such a country?

> Fortunately, it's no longer "fashionable" to not care about that.

Was it ever?

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