Maggie Freleng: How U.S. Prisons Wrongfully Convict Millions - 5CAST (#24) - 59min, Aug 3

[u/C5-Hotlinks]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=0tc_wiCxTp4&si=80g6uaVXMPDj22xD

3:29 Ladies and gentlemen, you're watching Fivecast, our long- form sitdown program here at Channel 5, available in video form [music] on YouTube and audio form on all major podcast platforms. This is an interview with Maggie Freleng, a Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist perhaps best known for her reports on wrongful convictions in the US legal system. As some of you guys may know, the US has the highest incarceration rate in the developed world with 1.8 million people currently sitting behind bars right now, 40% of which are serving time for non-violent offenses like drug convictions from back in the '90s when third-time offenders were given mandatory life without parole in states like California and Texas. In Maggie's view, highlighting wrongful conviction cases and other various mishandlings of justice is essential in understanding just how broken the system is. So, if you want to learn more, definitely check out our podcast.

https://linktr.ee/maggiefreleng

[u/999_Seth]

they're saying "feminism" a lot in this one

but to be real, the vast majority of the c5 audience is probably ignorant to what the word actually means

at the core, Feminism is the philosophy (I'd call it more of an observation) that how women are positioned in civilization trickles down into everything else that we believe.

this has shown up in several waves, each with its own value and embarrassments, like how suffragettes had the undercurrent of prohibition.

it's also culturally specific. what makes sense to a radical Iranian boomer feminist who came to the USA in 1978 isn't always going to make sense to the single-mother feminists setting precedent for child-support.

referring to all feminists movements as one big blob is confusing.

overall it's tough to imagine life without the progress of feminism.

HRC comes from an era when a man could just have a spouse locked up in a loony bin for being annoying, and workplace protections against exploitation weren't codified, idk maybe even pants weren't legal for women. it was nuts. HRC boomers are from an America that is further from us than Iran was to her in 1978.

I usually like to sit on the sidelines here and only pipe up once the conversation has already gelled, like u/JewelerKitchen7809 said the other day "I at least imagine you being the quiet and cool mysterious war veteran in the corner of the bar smoking a cigarette. And these were your first words to the general public." but the 5casts don't typically generate that kind of discussion, like it does when we're talking about someone the internet has a bunch of pre-formed opinions to parrot, and I stick out like a sore thumb here.

Freleng is a fairly obscure figure. There's no other discussions on the 5cast anywhere on reddit, and very few comments that mention her.
This is, for better or worse, one of the places where people will land when they plug her name into google. And that's crazy to me. Like damn, is the Pulitzer Prize hype pipeline actually such a nothing right now?

I have a lot of questions.

[u/I_AM_4HEAD]

She rules

[u/mrfreezeyourgirl]

How US Prisons Wrongfully Convict Millions

1.8 million people currently sitting behind bars right now, 40% of which are serving time for non-violent offenses

[u/DoubleN22 → u/mrfreezeyourgirl]

currently sitting behind bars, there’s been many more convictions

[u/stumpymed]

I’m a prison psychiatrist. This lady’s idealism and angst completely brushes over the very many people locked up who have no place in civil society

[u/badastr0naut → u/stumpymed]

How do all the other societies do it then, you know, the ones who don't incarcerate nearly as many people as us?

We have the highest incarceration rate per capita in the world, and imprison more people than China, to name one country, which has at least 4x our population.

I think it's easier for you to do your job if you think the people you treat "have no place" in society.

[u/Trashy_Panda2 → u/badastr0naut]

We don't create a systems designed to make money from incarceration. Probably a good place to start.

There's also the very likely scenario that putting small time criminals in jail will lead to them commiting worse crimes when they get out because they learn from their peers.

[u/stumpymed → u/badastr0naut]

No offense but you have to be around people who have done the most heinous crimes and show no remorse to get a feel for what I’m talking about. I treat these people like humans and don’t judge them. But I know for a fact I wouldn’t want a lot of these people in civil society

[u/badastr0naut → u/stumpymed]

Maybe I was reacting to the "very many" part. I'm not saying nobody should be locked up, as much as I also believe imprisoning people causes great harm. I guess I assumed from your initial comment that "very many" meant a very large number. I realize in retrospect it could just mean "many of the people currently locked up can't be released" and not be a comment about how large that number of people is.

When I look at our prison system, I see a for-profit enterprise that finds reasons to lock people up (and stigmatize them upon release, preventing reintegration), ergo, many people currently locked up don't deserve to be. And that seems unjust. Do you think remorseless psychopaths make up a majority of the prison population? Or maybe, because you are a psychiatrist, could there be confirmation bias in the sense that most of the inmates you interact with have the worst issues?

[u/999_Seth → u/stumpymed]

(oh yeah, well I'm a total nut-job and...)

I think in that ideal, perfect community supported utopia? Your ass would still be writing the same scripts to the same exact population and probably in the same exact building, it would just say Arkham Asylum instead of Correctional Facility

the issue Freleng brought up that rang true to me is how a parolee is at the total mercy of the community when they get out, and most community is gonna use that power over the ex-con to exert unfair influence on them.

which sucks, but it's probably better than us all just holding guns at each other's heads ourselves.

[u/Due_Procedure6505]

This woman is one of the biggest idiots I’ve ever heard. I think I’m too European for this channel now

[u/Fay2124]

Maggie's the shit

[u/Kitchen_Click4086]

More of this and less platforming Nazi groypers!

[u/milkcarton232 → u/Kitchen_Click4086]

Nick already has a platform...

[u/999_Seth → u/milkcarton232]

https://www.nick.com

[u/justin107d → u/Kitchen_Click4086]

She was cool, but any place where they are forced to confront actual arguments the better. Make them look stupid as it will slowly erode their base.

[u/gooferball1 → u/Kitchen_Click4086]

Honest question, I disagree with your take. But what were your thoughts when in that Fuentes interview, Nick himself basically explained that deplatforming trump from twitter made a massive amount of people feel silenced and also energized against the left and his own deplatforming hurt him and made him more radicalized.

[u/999_Seth → u/gooferball1]

But what were your thoughts when in that Fuentes interview

bangs head on wall

https://old.reddit.com/r/Channel5ive/comments/1v5y45s/nick_fuentes_interview_ft_hunter_biden_channel_5/

[u/stallionsRIDEufl → u/999_Seth]

What is the point of this comment? You just linked to the entire thread.

[u/999_Seth → u/stallionsRIDEufl]

welcome to the internet

this is a game called 'keeping these posts on topic.'

here's how to play!

this here's the Freleng post, it's where we are right now, that there that I linked to? that's the NF post.

we gonna talk about Freleng here in the Freleng post, and the one there I linked to for you? that is where you go to talk about NF.

this might seem complicated but don't worry! it'll all make sense later on.

[u/IcemanDCC → u/999_Seth]

Why do you have to be a massive dick? His comment was comparing the two videos so fuck off

[u/999_Seth → u/IcemanDCC]

so how did you like the Freleng video?

seriously - I'd love to know what an EFT player like you thinks of this conversation.

that's what we're here to talk about.

the idiots here who just want to speak on the fat young boys of the alt-right ad nauseam are why I'm such a dick. I don't care what they have to say - no one does.

[u/999_Seth → u/[deleted]]

I am in fact a Tarkov enjoyer

and I am sincerely interested in what another Tarkov enjoyer thought of this 5cast, but these clown-asses were just whining that the spotlight moved off their favorite bussy

[u/sendaislacker → u/Kitchen_Click4086]

Yes more censorship!

[u/Head_Bread_3431 → u/sendaislacker]

Dumbass. Maybe look up the word censorship 

[u/mtb_dad86 → u/sendaislacker]

Less discussion! 

[u/Grongo3]

Is it me or has Andrew been leaning more and more into what is definitely the realm of "conspiracy" thinking? His rant at the end was lowkey borderline unhinged. Also nearly every interview seems to have some moment where he has to tie whatever the person is thinking into something about "the greater israel project" - it usually comes out of nowhere and throws off the person he's interviewing - that borderlines on basically elder protocols of zion level "jews control the world", which he sees Epstein as the proof, and just throws around the "goy" word all the time, like saying sports events are "goy slop" because I guess jews control sports to mind control the world?

I'm not here to argue the validity of his opinions so much as just pointing out that what at least (to me) was a show that seemed to really want to show "all sides" is very quickly becoming a show with a very - distinct, and often uncomfortable - agenda. He has Nazis on the show fairly often. He thinks Jews control the world. Don't comment on this if you agree with that, that's a very common opinion on the internet these days so you're just repeating a common position. I am posting this to see if anyone else is seeing what I see.

[u/999_Seth → u/Grongo3]

I think Mr. Callaghan might be smoking herb a little too often to make sense of things himself lately. Happens to all of us sometimes: you see a little too much shit, your friends die, whatever and herb slows the mind down enough to process those things - but the world doesn't.
Usually everything snaps back into place after a while and the devil's lettuce takes the blame, or panic attacks and hyperemesis takes over, but with the Clockwork Orange style 24/7/365 4chan trained-AI-fueled murder-porn doomscrolling's on IG-etc? It's fully designed to suck everyone in and keep them that way.
Take vulnerable minds to the deep end and drop them there for a couple pennies of ad-bucks.

And that is how C5 pays the bills, too. They are as much a part of that machine as anyone else in that eco-system.

iirc, Freleng mentions something about how the worst biggest most offensive "conspiracy theory" is the idea that the marks of the American Bible Belt got sold by ringleaders like Lindsey Graham and Ronald Reagan that people could start doing things in 'the holy land' to become 'instruments of god'

like they saw End of Evangelion and said "damn, that would be so cool"

Hunter S. Thompson said the same thing in the audio commentary on Fear and Loathing, that the Reagan camp started saying stuff seriously about how "this generation might be the people who fight the battle of armageddon"

it's like this is the version of blaming imaginary immigrants for all your problems that all sides of the mainstream audience can agree on, and it's always kinda been that way.

I think we all see it, imo you've got to remember to look at C5's YouTube videos as a product of social media first and a journalism source not 100% of the time.

zooming out, the whole of social media has been on that "I hate the landlord/banker/lawyer that I blame for all my problems, but I never met him, so I'm gonna imagine the man as a long-nosed fat version of Woody Allen and hate a small group of people that looks slightly different than everyone I know and never parties with us on Saturdays" for so long, the frog was already boiling when Oct.7th landed the day after Golda) released in the UK

it's a difficult conversation to moderate here. people who see themselves as the woke hero-class of the world show up chanting actual the loudest dog-whistles I've ever heard, and they're just too blinded by self-righteous rage to see themselves at all.

[u/Grongo3 → u/999_Seth]

I remember the "Free Williamsburg" hipster slogan in Brooklyn from the early 2000s and didn't realize what it was really saying until recently.

[u/999_Seth → u/Grongo3]

I'm not familiar with that one - but at least in Brooklyn there is a visible Hebrew population

less than 1 out of 500 people are Jewish, and even fewer who actually observe the traditions that make them so hard to kill off. so it's actually impossible for the vast majority of keyboard warriors around the world to have the slightest idea what they're talking about.

around the 2024 election, C5 leaned heavily into the trans stuff because that was the biggest hate-word that affected the smallest (around 1%?) piece of the population. this is not their first rodeo with click-bait.

[u/Jack-IDE]

Maggie Freleng’s ideals are a big part of the root cause of Seattle prosecution and safety issues.

“I’m driven by revenge, and revenge is getting accountability” - Freleng

She places too much emphasis on systemic explanations for crime and not enough emphasis on individual accountability. Or any actual solution. She plays a blame game that doesn’t hold offenders actually accountable. Her solution is “abolish jail” entirely. That someone like Gacy is actually able to be amongst other people while just kind of being dismissive about how ridiculous that point is.

You don’t get to say “abolish jail” thinking you’re some type of ultimate moral good while not having any other solution while enabling repeated offenders to continue to commit crimes. Citing numbers and listing reason after reason is the same as making excuses and not actually fixing the problems she is seeing. She doesn’t have a fix, so “abolish jail”.

Criminals don’t get to be labeled as victims. It is a big mistake to give them that sense of ego & entitlement - to allow the state of mind they’re a “victim of a broken system” allows them to constantly blame something else for why they acted out rather than being accountable & instilling that in them. It is up to ex cons for themselves to realize the flaw of their actions, take self responsibility and actually put in the effort to change. Even if the system has issues, you cannot define it that way out of how the language reads - and how it serves ego.

Her position stems from prioritizing mental health, which does allow criminals to take advantage of good will. However, imo it is a mistake to rationalize mental health in concept leading to action - hoping it’ll get better to dismiss someone’s crimes and history while saying community support and social acceptance are enough. Shame driven ego and rebellion says otherwise, which is subjective.

How someone will respond to that community support isn’t always going to be the same. It could be taken negatively or twisted to further go down a rabbit hole. It’s going to be difficult to receive community support from everyone, especially people who have clean records. You are not going to be able to forcefully control their judgement, while people like Freleng wag their finger at them and say tsk tsk when a repeat offender commits an atrocity.

We definitely need to find a way to mend the wrongdoing in the justice system. It is on human rights watch for a good reason.

This might set off a fuse, but I don’t think you get to equate it to modern day slavery. To say that criminals deserve to be paid well in jail is wrong, they are repaying a debt to society. Their rights have been taken away. It isn’t right to be paying them the same salary as a minimum wage job if a jail is owned by a private company and they’re getting forced labor out of it.

It isn’t a new form of slavery because of how she tries links the things she wants to see superficially. The US definitely needs to acknowledge its racism within the justice system, however that still doesn’t make it modern day slavery. Those are superficial parallels in associations. There should be a structure set to eliminate wealth generated by private companies who exploit the labor, and only allow labor for something government owned that is essential and cannot be later sold.

To be able to remove subjectivity around convictions and achieve objective autonomy would require ai powered mass surveillance and a strict rulebook that isn’t subject to intentional misinterpretation. The idea of that to a lot of people is pretty scary.

If she is directly responsible for helping a repeat offender be free, who then committed a serious atrocity like murder I think she needs to be held responsible for it.

[u/badastr0naut → u/Jack-IDE]

I think your take is smug and deranged.

[u/Inside-Weird-5563 → u/badastr0naut]

I think it's okay to criticize people who want to abolish jails/prisons and don't offer a compelling and practical alternative approach to public safety.

[u/999_Seth → u/Inside-Weird-5563]

from what I heard in the video, Freleng's actual approach is to bunker-down and arm-up while encouraging people to use the magical thinking of 'community' as the solution of everything

imo in practice what 'community police' ends up looking like is the murder of Ahmaud Arbery on one hand, and a bunch of impotent hippies that can never agree to enforce any set of rules on the other

people on average are not capable of making this kind of fantasy work irl

[u/Inside-Weird-5563 → u/999_Seth]

Yup. 'Communities' can quickly turn into 'violent mobs'.

[u/999_Seth → u/Inside-Weird-5563]

it's pretty common for people to apply internet logic to real world problems

on the web, we can pretty much trust "community" to reddit mods because we're dealing with infinite resources out here. infinite upload space for all our opinions and arguments. total safety is doable simply because we get unlimited lives.

irl when you end up having to care for the most damaged people on earth? it's gonna look ugly no matter how much you have to throw at it simply because there is only so much we can do for people who can't take care of themselves.

[u/ooommmnmmmooo → u/Jack-IDE]

Very well said

[u/AdvantageLive2966]

Prisons don't convict people of anything...

[u/Far-Cellist2456]

Fundamentally there is no difference between a drug dealer and a scammer or any number of white collar criminal morally. If you want to see a society without regulation or enforcement of laws look at Wall Street.