• @Addfwyn@lemmygrad.ml
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    205 months ago

    Any country that doesn’t actively WANT to have empty prisons has a fucked up prison system. America relies on the prison labour for so many goods, they don’t want people to escape the system. The rotating door of “prison->can’t get job because you were in prison->turn to crime->prison” is very intentional.

    They have festivals in my country right outside the prisons to try to sway public opinion. You get to “try prison food” (it is way better than what prisoners actually get), take photos dressed up with fake handcuffs, and buy cheap goods made by pirsoners. We aspire to be as much of a police state as the US, worse in some ways.

    Prisoners can literally see the festivals from the prison, it’s crazy.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆OP
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      115 months ago

      Exactly, the incentives in any sane system should be creating a situation where there is very little crime. And of course, meeting people’s basic needs is the best way to do that. Parenti does a great job detailing this in Blackshirts and Reds where he shows how crime shot through the roof after collapse of USSR, and policing increased massively in former Soviet republics.

      Meanwhile, US has perverse incentives in place because there is actual profit being made from imprisoning people while there is no incentive to actually provide for people’s needs. This results in US having the highest incarceration rate per capita in the world. US is the very definition of a prison state.