"Two men were released after The Times asked about them, half a year after their sentences had been completed."
Horrific. This egregious human rights violation is something you'd think you read about in a developing nation, not a developed nation.
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I think at this point the general consensus of most Europeans is that the US has more in common with a developing nation than with a developed nation when it comes to equality in the eye of justice, equal access to health care, support for the downtrodden and freedoms...
It is easy to under-estimate the diversity across US States. I don't think many Europeans look at Hungary, Poland, or Bulgaria's justice systems and extend that to an opinion on EU justice in aggregate.
This isn't to excuse the abysmal state of affairs in large swathes of the US. Just to say that the US is rarely sufficiently uniform to summarize as a single entity, especially in topics like justice systems where States have significant sovereign power.
I've heard the US described as a third world country wearing a Gucci belt.
I personally still call the USA "the most advanced 3rd world country posing as a 1st world country"
This general consensus is part of why Trump gets support for his recent trade and defense comments and actions. Also, from an economic perspective the US has been successful and has poured that success into different buckets than Europe would prefer but that's fine, let the US be the US and let Europe be Europe.
Numbers for anyone curious US gdp per capita ~$82.7k EU gdp per capita ~$41.1k
GDP of Mississippi and Bavaria, Germany are about the same.
You would be simply insane to think that Bavaria wasn't far far wealthier than Mississippi though.
This doesn't show the limits of either the US or European ways of life but rather GDP itself as a figure. It has it's uses but that's it. Lay people are far too dependent on GDP as a meaningful indicator of wealth. Professional economists use a variety of metrics to compare and contrast different areas and systems.
All that GDP per capita and there are still hungry children in West Virginia and single mothers that can't afford to eat healthy food because of their medical debt.
Shame.
People posting GDP figures in a thread about jail injustice are why the US has jail injustice.
This comment also illustrates why many have an issue with Americans.
“We’re rich” is not a reasonable defense against hurting people, yet it is consistently what Americans choose as their defense.
GDP per capita doesn’t mean much when people are slaving away / need 2-3 jobs to survive / are starving / can't feed children.
All evidence shows the US is a failed democracy.
Sounds really expensive for the municipality.
The local jailers are probably doing well, though sticking it to the local rubes who support them.
If you or I did the same thing, we'd be in jail shortly for kidnapping and false imprisonment. Here, at best, it just means the local taxpayers pay a settlement.
Many people are happy to spend money to hurt members of out-groups.
And they don't even care if it hurts them too, as long as the out-group suffers more.
> This egregious human rights violation is something you'd think you read about in a developing nation, not a developed nation.
Yes, but a note of hope. "The future is unevenly distributed" cuts both ways, the good and the bad. At least we know about some of the atrocities happening here, and good that we haven't been warn down and we still recognize them as such. One tip to deal with a firehose of bad news: rank it based on physical proximity. That way you won't be overwhelmed and lose perspective. "Life is suffering" as the Buddhists say. I believe that if you could empathize with even 1% of the suffering of humans this moment you would be overwhelmed. Egregious failures of the state, like in the OP's piece, must ultimately be solved by those that caused it. Our desire to swoop in and fix other people's problems needs appropriate caution. Consider the lessons of US intervention in the Somali Civil War in the 90's.
something you'd think you read about in a developing nation, not a developed nation.
Sadly, we have become one of the shit-hole nations Trump loves to rant about. And we (the voting public) have been 100% complicit.
> Horrific. This egregious human rights violation is something you'd think you read about in a developing nation, not a developed nation.
bruh you have no idea. seriously. the "justice system" in the US should not be called a justice system, but a slavery and penal system:
> Thirteenth Amendment, Section 1:
> Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
the US also has private prisons. do you understand? e.g., there are about 1000 prisoners in california that are also firefighters getting paid $10 a day. do you think they cost $10 a day to california?
EDIT: I was possibly mistaken about this example specifically (see below) but only as of 2022-2023 (the fire fighters program has been around for much longer than 2022-2023). there are many other examples; if you've ever seen prisoners stamping license plates in a movie, the allusion is exactly to this kind of "work":
https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/national-veri...
damning pull quote:
> Two out of three people incarcerated in state and federal prisons are also workers, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) estimated in a June 2022 report.
It's also a "wealth transfer from people not part of the system to people who are" system.
it's lots of gross things that many educated americans refuse to engage with/consider and rather deny as "behind us".
> the US also has private prisons. do you understand? e.g., there are about 1000 prisoners in california that are also firefighters getting paid $10 a day.
“E.g.” is is misused here: California prison firefighters are not an example of private prisons (California does not employ private prisons.)
> do you think they cost $10 a day to california?
Well, yeah, they are state prisoners in state prisons, whos do you think is paying the $10/day to the prisoners?
you're partially right (i was mistaken) and only as of very very recently:
https://www.thepomonan.com/news/2023/10/2/7investigative-cal...
> AB32 included exemptions which allowed private prisons to focus on other profitable "community corrections" programs, such as day reporting centers, counseling facilities, halfway houses, rehabilitation centers, medical offices, and mental health facilities. Currently, these exemptions are worth around $200 million a year. Included are locations that mimic detention facilities and are run by organizations that also run private prisons in California.
https://www.ilrc.org/biden-administration-partners-private-p...
> 09/26/2022
> Pasadena, CA - Today, an en banc 11-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that GEO could block California’s AB 32 (People not Profit, Bonta) from going into effect for the duration of the lawsuit, pending further review from District Court. AB 32 is a state law signed in 2019 which banned private prisons and private immigration detention centers in the state.
I do not know if this applies to the Conservation (Fire) Camp Program
The previous poster's point is, I presume, that the upkeep of a prisoner costs a hell of a lot more than $10/day. Specifically, the California Dept of Corrections quotes $133,000/year.
I'd have less of a problem with prisoners being paid a pittance for helping out if it weren't for how the spending-side of prison commissaries [0] and phone calls [1] are often unconscionably overpriced.
[0] https://theappeal.org/locked-in-priced-out-how-much-prison-c...
[1] https://www.vera.org/news/the-fcc-is-capping-outrageous-pris...
In a lot of states, inmates are required to reimburse the state for some portion of the cost of their incarceration. Oddly, the commissary issue strikes me as perverse, but the requirement to cover incarceration costs didn’t, at least once I had thought about it some more. While I am cautious to endorse El Salvador, I think their model is the one to beat: Prisoners are either working or in school, but the goods produced by the prisoners are used by the government to offset costs in other departments, rather than being sold on an open market. For example, they have the prisoners sewing uniforms for public officials, repairing fleets of public vehicles, and building desks for schools. This nominally solves the issue of prison labor being exploited (at least so long as the program remains revenue negative or revenue neutral) without burdening the general public with the cost of incarceration.
Another reason why "the richest third-world nation" monicker holds.