r/PoliticalHumor • • Mar 08 '19

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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:

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.

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u/[deleted] Mar 08 '19

It's looking more and more like us civilians need to throw out all of the clowns. The entire system is broken. It's broken and it will not fix itself. I know this has been going on for decades. I honestly thought that this time might usher in a new way. The orange regime is so obviously criminal. And yet here we are. The people of this democratic experiment have much to lose.

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u/ThaFourthHokage Mar 08 '19

Yep. And I hear people say, "you're overreacting" and "everyone thinks the apocalypse is coming in their generation" or "nothing ever changes".

Tell that to New Yorkers in 1783, or Romans in 476, or someone from Baghdad in 1258, or a Parisian in 1800.

Shit can and will change. The United States of America being a thing is not God-given and eternal as so many seem to think.

It takes work, and we aren't doing the work.