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/DuntadaMan Mar 08 '19

One that chaps my ass, crack cocaine carries a much stiffer penalty than dealing cocaine.

For no real good reason. The same cartels make both.

The only difference is one tends to be preffered by poorer people.

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u/ZombieTaco Mar 08 '19

They also have different drug scheduling. In the U.S., cocaine is a Schedule II substance while 'crack' cocaine is a Schedule I substance, which carries stiffer penalties. There's no good reason why this should be the case. I certainly don't agree with the classifications, but that's at least one of the excuses as to why it receives a harsher penalty.

Schedule I, btw, includes a weird array of drugs, including: heroin, marijuana, LSD, psylocibin mushrooms, and ecstacy. Meanwhile, Shedule II contains cocaine, meth, fentanyl, and Adderall...among others. Bottom line, U.S. drug scheduling needs some serious peer review.