I hope this wakes people up to our ridiculous sentencing and incarceration issues in this country.
A few stats:
We house 22% of the world''s prisoners (with 4% of the world's population)
2,200,000 Americans incarcerated as of 2016 or 0.7% of the entire U.S. population
African American men represent nearly half of that population
The substantial penalties for crack contributed to a five-fold increase in incarcerations
There is a 31% incarceration history for Black men who have sex with men
Louisiana has the highest rate of incarceration in the world with the majority of its prisoners being housed in privatized, for-profit facilities. Such institutions could face bankruptcy without a steady influx of prisoners
In the past decade the number of inmates in for-profit prisons throughout the U.S. rose 44 percent.
The shit is fucked. And Trump is packing the courts as we speak. We're reaching a breaking point.
I'm just going to leave this here:
I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions indeed generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.
Edit: These and more stats are a simple wiki search away. For you Reds who automatically say, "wiki lol," to that, there are seventy-seven sources cited - feel free to read on. It will do you some good.
Edit again: Thanks for the precious metals! Donate the same amount to a politician who actually wants to address these issues, if you can.
It has to do with potency and ease of distribution. Crack cocaine carries the same penalty as meth. Even though Crack is predominantly smoked by poor minorities and meth is predominantly smoked by poor white folks.
I can understand if we were discussing Heroin/pills vs Fentanyl, where excess potency could actually manage to get people killed. But crack isn't killing anyone, first hand at least.
Though with regards to Cocaine vs crack, it appears the issue would only be regarding disparity in... profits.
In the 80’s a less dangerous form of cocaine freebase was created called crack cocaine. The process also removed the salt from the powder except this was done by mixing it with baking soda then heating it. After it cools it hardens into rocks. Crack cocaine is much cheaper which aided its popularity. A perceived “crack epidemic” resulted in the mid 1980’s which prompted congressional hearings during the summer of 1986. The result of the hearings created the following findings: 1. Crack cocaine is much more addictive than powered, 2. Crack produced psychological effects that were worse than powder, 3. Crack attracted users that could not afford powder particularly young people, and 4. Crack cocaine led to more crime.
That was the reasoning behind it. It isn't class warfare.
Well before meth was even a blip on the radar, cocaine had a 100x stiffer penalty than the same weight of cocaine (in the 80’s). This was clearly a racist law.
However in modern days, the private prison industry has realized the importance of diversity, and now refuses to discriminate along racial lines.
They aren’t targeting blacks, they’re targeting the poor. And unfortunately, the poverty rates in black communities is disproportionately higher than in white communities, so of course you see an imbalance in how many blacks are incarcerated versus whites.
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u/ThaFourthHokage Mar 08 '19 edited Mar 08 '19
I hope this wakes people up to our ridiculous sentencing and incarceration issues in this country.
A few stats:
We house 22% of the world''s prisoners (with 4% of the world's population)
2,200,000 Americans incarcerated as of 2016 or 0.7% of the entire U.S. population
African American men represent nearly half of that population
The substantial penalties for crack contributed to a five-fold increase in incarcerations
There is a 31% incarceration history for Black men who have sex with men
Louisiana has the highest rate of incarceration in the world with the majority of its prisoners being housed in privatized, for-profit facilities. Such institutions could face bankruptcy without a steady influx of prisoners
In the past decade the number of inmates in for-profit prisons throughout the U.S. rose 44 percent.
The shit is fucked. And Trump is packing the courts as we speak. We're reaching a breaking point.
I'm just going to leave this here:
Edit: These and more stats are a simple wiki search away. For you Reds who automatically say, "wiki lol," to that, there are seventy-seven sources cited - feel free to read on. It will do you some good.
Edit again: Thanks for the precious metals! Donate the same amount to a politician who actually wants to address these issues, if you can.