Ponder this for a moment, if you will

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Ah, but crime rate and conviction rate are two differnet things.

The war on drugs may be a symptom of the high rates of violent crime, but US society could also be a factor, lax gun controls and poor censorship of violent media could also be a factor.

 

If we introduced American sentencing standards and drug laws, German statistics would inevitably record a stunning explosion in crime rates and prison population as well. That doesn't mean there would be more actual crime; essentially we would would have just chosen to change our viewing angle.

 

My venting seems to generate interesting discussion, so I don't see the harm.

Arrest quotas in minority areas? The higher ups have been recorded as saying 'Arrest everyone walking on the street', where the street is a minority area.

That's only one small part of it, but I suspect that would also help explain the stats Chandros posted.

And their laws on 'insulting a police officer'.

I've noticed that American police have a tendency to make frivolous arrests against anyone who happens to irritate them, intentionally or not.

 

Please mordea,
while there is such a phenomenon like 'disrespecting a cop' that doesn't account for America's prison population. Prosecutorial misconduct, as in 'winning at any price', is another issue. But these are separate and only distantly related problems, troubling in their own right, but, as I said, separate issues.

The incarceration problem arises from the law being applied as it is meant to be applied - which is a part of the problem. The root cause for America's immense incarceration rate is the war on drugs, period. You could do worse than informing yourself. Like by exposing yourself to that video.


Shosh, I recommend the video to you as well as it answers the question you raised.

 

Ive said exactly the same over here, the government decided to be lax with sentencing for drugs offences but it would be alot more worthwhile to legalise certain drugs for sale at legitimate shops, thus removing alot of black market illegal activity (and the other criminal elements associated), and of course they could tax the market.

 

There are lots of arbitrary, silly laws, in many countries other than the US.

Here are a few silly ones from England:

The only difference here is that most people aren't willing to kill and murder to attain mincemeat pies... and perhaps the fact that some humans would go to the length of murdering and stealing from innocent people to get money to buy drugs says something... but I don't want to derail into a legalization of drugs debate.

Point being: if you're in a country which cracks down on something. Don't do it. It's that simple. It may be completely stupid and inane, but most people know what they're doing is illegal when they get arrested. If they want it to be legal, they need to go through the proper venues to change it.
If we started executing people for drug use, maybe our prison population would be more akin to China's. I'm not saying that this is right or wrong (and I have no strong views regarding the war on drugs), but it's something to think about.


In response to Mordea, I don't think that people getting arrested because a cop shot their dog in the head is a very common occurrence. It's pretty insulting to all the good police out there; have you ever seen a drunk person talking to a cop? I've seen it quite a few times, and almost every time I've seen, the cop was calm and levelheaded. Gave the person many chances to calm down before arresting or restraining; and if the person does calm down and agrees to head home or keep it down, nothing normally happens. Even if they call the cop a name in their drunken state.

I'm talking real life here (even in Milwaukee, which is a pretty big city). Not TV shows or news articles titled "When Cops go Bad." It's a shame they don't have a show titled, "When Cops go Good" to illustrate that side of the police force as well.

 

Sorry, I can't agree...and I'm not a drug user at all. I'm just thinking of this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Disobedience_(Thoreau)

 

I disagree. The propensity of police to arrest and increase the number/severity of charges if they perceive any sort of antagonism is at least part of the problem. I've noticed an interesting phenomenom among Americans, where they pretty much feel that an individual receives abuse and false charges from the police if they had the wrong 'attitude' towards the police. This implies that the public at large considers the police to be corrupt, since it is not the role of law enforcement to f* you up just because you're being a prick.

By the way Rahkir, what can I say? You're completely clueless. Your country, which is supposedly the 'freest' nation in the world and believes that it is better to let 100 guilty men go free than imprison one guilty man, has the highest incarceration in the world. And you sit there trying to justify it, suggesting that Americans must just be more criminally inclined. 'Oh well, at least America doesn't execute as many people as China!' Yeah, at least America doesn't kill as many of its citizens, I'll give you that. But you still have the greatest incarceration rate, and that's f'ed up.

How on Earth can the 'freest' country in the world have the highest incarceration rate? Come on, please explain this to me. Explain to me how a country with *arrest quotas for minorities* is free. Explain to me how a federal court with a *90+% conviction rate* is free.

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By the way, I'd just like the address the comment that China has fewer prisoners because it kills a lot of them.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/law/research/icps/downloads/wppl-8th_41.pdf

United States: 2.29m prisoners
China: 1.57m prisoners

China performed the most executions in 2005, which numbered about 10,000. So if you do simple addition, you will realise that even if China had *not* executed these people, its prison population would still be far lower than that of the United States. And China is supposedly a less free nation than the US. LOL.

 

Mordea... you missed an important line at the very top of that article:

This added to the fact that china has a low crime rate, as opposed to the very high crime rate in the US - you get a higher crime rate, you get a higher prison population

 

I'm definitely not saying unjust acts should be ignored because they are called 'law.' But justice has a very lucid definition.

If there is no possible way to change something legally through peace, then yes, action may need to be taken. However, there are ways of changing laws in the USA. As I see it, no one has presented a good enough reason (for the government, not for me) to unban or stop cracking down on drug use. We can speak of all the hypothetical situations we want, even we don't know if legalizing drugs is going to help in any great way [in the US].

People will still need money to buy said drugs, even if they are legal; the addiction will not go away, simply the illegal status of the material addiction. People might still kill and murder to get drug money; crack addicts might still have lots of babies to try and make money; so on and so forth.

I'm not saying that going above the law is always wrong; however, with drugs it seemed like the first step was to go above the law. To use and sell and form under-ground markets before even trying to fight for their rights. For example, Martin Luther King Jr. If he were fighting for the legalization of drugs, leading rallies, speaking out (and he had good reasons), then I'm betting you the outlook on drugs in the US would be different.

But again, that's just a hypothetical.


@Mordea, until you can learn to talk without telling the other person they know nothing or are clueless simply because you say so, I will avoid debating with you.

It reminds me of Plato and the ancient Greek poets. Philosophy; the love of wisdom; Plato's love. Philosophy is based on analysis, questioning, reasoning: philosophers say we should believe "something" because [some set of research/reasoning]. Plato looked down upon Greek poets and thought they had no true wisdom. This is mainly because they proclaimed that their poems explained "something," but then they say we should believe in this simply because [the gods said so, or I said so, or someone said so].
Ask a philosopher to explain his point of view, and he will do so, he may not be correct, but he will do so. Ask a poet (at least an ancient poet) to explain his poems or his point of view, and he won't know how; he will generally become upset and demand that you believe what he says simply because he says so.

 

Interesting, what then is Australia?

 

I thought this was already addressed. The laws in different countries are well... different. The legal code in China is different from the legal code in the US. It's not a apples to apples comparison. For example, I'll bet there are a lot fewer people in prison on drug-related charges.

That's an easy one - I'll break it down into two parts:

In the US, in order to be indicted for a crime you must first go in front of a grand jury. (Granted, the only reason I'm aware of this is because I served on a grand jury for three months.) The purpose of the grand jury is not to determine guilt or innocence. It is to determine if there is enough evidence to support someone going to trial. If a jury of your peers feels the charges are trumped up, you'll never even have to go to trial. So the first mechanism in place for the high conviction rate is due ot cases where the evidence isn't particularly convincing. They never go to trial, and thus do not show up in the conviction percentage.

Secondly, federal prosecutors look good for having a high conviction rate. That means that they don't treat every crime the same way. There is definitely some cherry picking going on, where you only take the cases to court where you have the highest probability of winning. This, of course, is not unique to federal prosecutors but occurs at all levels.

If you want a recent example, look at the big stink caused this summer by the sexual assault charges on Ben Roethlisberger. (I'm assuming that at least everyone in the US is familiar with this case.) In the end, he wasn't even arrested (never mind having to stand trial) not because there was a complete lack of evidence of misconduct, but rather the prosecutor felt his chances of proving it wasn't consensual sex simply wasn't very good. This happens all the time. Prosecutors go after the slam dunk cases first.

 

I have always held an opinion that will not make anyone in the States happy, but I believe it is a possible explanation for the USA's high incarceration rate. Here it is:

The USA is a nation of rebels. It was formed via rebellion, and it is always talking about "rights". The individual's duty to society is often ignored in favor of the individual's right to self-expression and/or self advancement. I believe other cultures have more unwritten social rules that people follow. In such cultures, phrases like "don't do that, what would people think?" are much more commonly uttered. In the USa, the response to such a phrase would be "so what? Eff 'em!"

Now I'm a big fan of self expression and freedom, don't get me wrong. But people in the USA are so bombarded with images and ideas regarding "non-conformity" and "individualism" and "do your own thing" and such that a good number of them forget that individuals DO have a responsibility to their societies. These criminals focus on the self to the extent of becoming selfish and anti-social. They commit socially deviant behaviours because they have been lead to believe that society is irrelevant, domineering, or otherwise a totally negative influence. When the normal members of society react and say "we simply cannot have THAT kind of behaviour in the country, liberty and freedom or not!" they send the anti-social "individualists" to jail.

Look at the stories we tell our children in Western society. Most of them are about "rebels" who buck the system, disrespect authority at every turn, violate conventions and mores, and they are portrayed as heroes. Those who cooperate with just and reasonable authority, use reasonable etiquette/manners, and are otherwise decent people are mocked and teased. Are we really so surprised then that we have a disproportionate number of people then who follow suit and violate social norms? Who act with no respect toward anyone or anything? It's no surprise to me.

Now I'm not about repression. The Japanese saying "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down" pops into mind, and having lived there, while it had a lot going for it I wouldn't want to live there forever -- there's some seriously messed up people from all that repression. But there has to be a balance. People ahve to be taught that violating social norms for no other reason than self indulgence is going to be frowned upon and NOT get you any points, and that violating laws will get you punished. The US tries hard to get the second one down (hence the incarceration rate), but I humbly opine that its socialization of its young and immigrants is somewhat lacking.

 

LKD - Mrs Chandos lived in Japan as well and she said the difference is more than striking. But there, people actually look out for one another, which is wholly different than the "Every man for himself," motto we live by in the US. Being an upstanding member of society, counts for something in Japan; here it means someone will get to take advantage of you.

Case in point, when Mrs Chandos was in Japan, her brother left his expensive leather jacket in the park. When he went back the next day, it was still there, only someone had neatly folded it and placed on a bench for him. Would that happen here? Fat chance. But that is the norm there, and not the exception.

 

I wish that being an upstanding member of society counted for more here -- the idea of looking out for one another is not a bad one.

But Chandos has it right on the head -- so much individualism (every man for himself, as Chandos put it) that we forget that society has value too.

Striking the perfect balance, though? I don't know if any society ever has managed to do that.