• ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Largest prison population both in absolute size AND per capita. Also, random fact, their constitution allows prisoners to be forced into slave labour. Also, another random fact, their prisons are run for profit. None of these facts are related of course!

    • The Dark Lord ☑️@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Next you’re going to tell me that these for-profit prisons lobby the government for harsher prison sentences for things like cannabis possession.

    • httpjames
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      1 year ago

      And house arrest is being used for mass incarceration of people being ACCUSED before conviction. The punishment can be more severe before conviction.

          • PMmesexypajamas@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Uhh…nope.

            Also…about 25% of the people incarcerated in America aren’t even convicted of a crime yet.

            Even if they’re found innocent, it’s likely already cost them their job or made it so they are so far behind on bills from not working that it becomes next to impossible to climb out from under

    • cornbread@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Not to nitpick but not ALL prisons in the US are for-profit. They should be illegal though.

      Fun fact - other countries that have for-profit prisons include Australia, Canada, France, the UK, Israel, South Korea, and New Zealand.

      This won’t do much since most of these prisons operate under state jurisdiction, but in 2021, President Joe Biden issued an executive order to stop the United States Department of Justice from renewing further contracts with private prisons.

      • bdonvr@thelemmy.club
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        1 year ago

        And how many of these other prisons offer up their prisoners as extremely cheap labor to businesses that ARE for profit?

      • 🐱TheCat
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        1 year ago

        Listen I live in the USA, but if thats your best pushback to all those facts - should tell you what a dire state we are in. And prisons that aren’t for profit still send out prisoners to for-profit industries to work, so it’s kind of a moot point.

        • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          california spending 100k+ per prisoner but renting them out for pennies is one of the insane unsustainable aspects of the system and then going and saying “we can’t afford to let them out” is mind numbing.

          The whole circus is just to keep wages down and arrest anybody folks don’t want in their shitty suburb.

  • cheeseburgers@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    THEY’RE TRYING TO BUILD A PRISON THEY’RE TRYING TO BUILD A PRISON THEY’RE TRYING TO BUILD A PRISON FOR YOU AND ME

    • Hari Seldon@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Having to live in the US is already a punishment, being inmate is like being in a prison inside a prison.

        • Calzoner@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I’ve had a good, privileged life here in America. I got lucky as a white male in a middle class upbringing, but to complain about my life would be wrong. I am well educated with a solid career path, great benefits, and am doing well. Have always lived comfortably, but still work hard to get ahead. I can’t imagine there is much room for improvement anywhere else in the world for me.

        • boonhet@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          I’ve given the US tons of shit and have even done so in this thread, but I’ll be the first to admit there’s plenty of reason to migrate. Much of the country is an unwalkable hellhole with mediocre salaries, but there are still at least a few cities that are 1) walkable or have good public transit, 2) have salaries that even western Europe can only dream of 3) aren’t all that bad with crime either.

          It just sucks to be poor in the US. But if you’ve got a great career, it’s one of the few places where hard work CAN technically result in becoming a millionaire, as a software engineer or doctor for an example. The country has a working population for 167 million and somehow has over 20 million millionaires.

          Also there’s so much variety of nature for one country, it’s nuts.

          If H1Bs weren’t so hard to come by, I’d probably move and work for that sweet US software engineer salary for 5 years, then move back to my homeland that has much cheaper property lol

        • MBM@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          there are reasons why people are or are trying to immigrate here in droves

          If you compare yourself to third-world countries you always come out looking good. “America Bad” can definitely get circlejerky though, no denying that

  • S_H_K@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    They made it a business. How many places in the world have private incarceration facilities?

    • Riaz
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      1 year ago

      And yet still most Americans think everyone is trying to sneak into their country! You couldn’t pay me to live there.

      I’m surprised there is not more travel advisory warnings for travel to America 😮‍💨

      • evilspez@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The american continent is actually quite dangerous - if I remember right most of the top 10 dangerous cities are in south- or north america.

        Also I once heard that the US is the country with the highest death rate which isn’t in a (civil) war…

      • Crimesawastin@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        A lot of people try to get refugee status in the US, but the CBP puts them in open-air prisons in the desert. There are also are least 16 million undocumented immigrants living in the US. They don’t all have to “sneak”, they just overstay their visas.

        The CBP was commissioned explicitly to enforce racial “hygiene” in the US. I don’t understand how they weren’t disbanded decades ago.

      • jubilationtcornpone
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        1 year ago

        Listen, a lot of people don’t understand the key to the living well in the United States. It’s really very simple. Just be rich. You’ll have the best life ever.

        If you’re too stupid to be rich (or you didn’t inherit a billion dollars from your parents), blame some poor brown dude for “stealing” a shitty job that you didn’t actually want anyways because it’s worse and pays less than your shitty job. It won’t make anything better at all but at least you’ll feel like you understand why everything sucks (even though you actually don’t) and you’ll have the benefit of living in poverty AND feeling smugly superior to someone else who also lives in poverty for stupid (racist) reasons.

        And if you think about it, that sense of superiority is nearly as good (it definitely isn’t) as being rich.

    • BurtsBS@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Would you be surprised to hear that nobody forces you to break the law and go to prison in the US?

      • dragonflyteaparty@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Would you be surprised to hear that some people are desperate and resort to gangs and theft because other opportunities have been closed off? How about that we have mass untreated mental illness and people resort to drugs to self medicate? How about that mental illness is still misunderstood even now, leaving people to commit “crimes” such as loitering and being threatening even though what they just need is healthcare? How about that the war on drugs is really what made our prison population sky rocket and the massive increase started in the 1980’s? How about that mass incarceration does nothing to affect violent or property crime?

        • BurtsBS@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Awful large wall of text stating exactly what I said.

          Nobody forces you to commit crime. You make your own choices.

          You want to self medicate with drugs and can’t handle your shit, you belong in prison or in the ground. You have a mental illness that you decide you don’t want to treat and threaten someone, you belong in prison or in the ground.

          There is no lack of opportunity in the US, no matter your upbringing or where you’re from. You wanna keep that victim mentality, go for it, but nobody gives a fuck.

  • Hikiru@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’ve heard some prisons have minimum prisoner requirements, which is incredibly fucked up

  • geissi@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    Reminder that the US have never abolished slavery for prisoners and have one of the largest slave population in the world.

    • Zithero@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yep… And every time there’s an employment issue for the agricultural industry, they whip out the prisoners…

      However to the prisoner’s credit: They do an absolutely terrible job at whatever it is they’re doing.

      Why? What are they going to do… Fire you? Jail you? You have no incentive at all to do the job well as a prisoner.

      Bonus is by doing a horrific job it makes employers less likely to actually request prison workforces.

    • ilikekeyboards@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      -be the “first in the world” -everywhere you go yell “USA! USA! USA!” -sparking people’s curiosity and they look into your garden -they find a dystopian horror show, a land where billionaires are kings, millions deprived of liberty, hundred millions depraved of healthcare, an ever increasing tumour of fascists group that wish for some women and minorities to have fewer rights

      -ohshit.jpg

      You can’t have the biggest running circus without everyone starring and complaining and debating.

      • BurtsBS@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Tell me you’ve learned everything you know about the US from 13 year olds online without telling me you learned everything you know from 13 year olds online.

        • pizzatime@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          he’s not wrong though. like, the mass shooting yesterday was something like the 340th so far this year? the place is fucking nuts

            • pizzatime@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              hmmm so what, only like 20 then? you’re right, that’s absolutely an acceptable amount of mass shootings in the first half of the year.

              totally normal and something every country experiences. my bad.

              • BurtsBS@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                And of those remaining “only like 20”, how many were random acts of violence?

                We’re so close to getting to the infinitesimally small statistical likelihood of this happening.

  • Rayquetzalcoatl@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Nice to see that even here - a shitposting forum - whenever anybody posts anything negative about America, yanks can’t handle it.

    • Trek@union.place
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      1 year ago

      I love how it’s full of people whining about having left reddit to escape this shit like bruh this is the fediverse

  • eltimablo@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    How can America have 25% of the world’s prison population of the entire country doesn’t make up even 10% of the world’s population?

    • pancakes
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      1 year ago

      Ah yes, Germany and Sweden. The last bastions for criminals all around the world. Oh wait, I’m 6-7 times as likely to be murdered in the US then those two places (Source).

      • JakeHimself@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I don’t agree with this person, but I also feel like I’m missing something in particular if you’re asking whether this person is stupid for having that take. Am I? Is there something about those county’s prison systems that is important here?

    • boonhet@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Sure. Definitely nothing to do with the fact that in your country, locking people up is SUPER profitable for prisons and a few other industries so certain institutions lobby to make sure more people keep getting locked up.

    • spicy_biscuits@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      And I left reddit to escape idiots like you. If I can handle being disappointed, so can you. Shut the fuck up.

        • spicy_biscuits@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Gee, I wonder why you expected people to react badly to you 🤔🤔🤔

          Guess we’ll never know! You have yourself a good one. And if you’re American, don’t forget to wave your flag today! 😘

    • ElRompeCulo@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Me too. The “America bad” thing got old on Reddit. I Hope it doesn’t take off here too.

      • MostlyBirds@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        If you don’t want to hear about America being bad, don’t go to the same places as people who live in reality.

        • ElRompeCulo@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I don’t deny the problems with this country. I vote to try and make this country better. Seeing the same posts about how horrible this country is gets old after a while. A majority of Reddit and this site would agree with the flaws of the US. The people who really need to hear this stuff aren’t on here.

          • Machinist3359@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            Pointing out flaws in the country shouldn’t be seen as a personal attack or critique. Many of the victims of America are it’s citizens (e.g., the incarcerated).

            Nationalism just twists the government into our personal identity to manipulate us. Making fun of the government/system is healthy.

            This isn’t “Americans dumb” content, which attacks the actual citizens and understandably may weigh on someone.

            • magnetosphere@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              I’m extremely happy to see a real conversation happening. This is actually worth reading, and not just another idiotic shouting match.

            • DreamerOfImprobableDreams@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              There’s a difference between “America has serious problems,let’s get to work fixing them” and “America is inherently evil and can’t be saved (and you’re an idiot at best, a right-wing plant at worst for thinking otherwise)”. The former fires people up to start making progess, the latter shuts people down or causes them to tune out of politics altogether.

              And to be blunt, this particular meme feels like it’s falling more in the second category than the first, at least to me.

          • DreamerofDays@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            I take it as “America has good ideals that it should live up to.”

            Might be pollyanna-ing… almost certainly am, but I’m trying to take this Independence Day to appreciate what we’ve got, what my ancestors came to this country for, and that the maintenance of it, and the realization of its ideals, is a lot of work we’ve got to do yet, and will always be with us.

          • Yendor@reddthat.com
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            1 year ago

            The thing is, America (many Americans anyway) are continually screaming at everyone online about how America is the best country in the world and everywhere else is a shithole - despite very few measures supporting that.

            If you insist on telling everyone you’re the best, when you have so many serious flaws, people are going to mock you for it.

        • BurtsBS@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          You mean don’t go to places where children spew nonsense their loser parents tell them because they also made the choice to be degenerate fucking bums their entire lives?

          Then when they’re middle age and still have nothing to show for it they attempt to influence the entire system to change despite not even being able to improve their own position in life?

          • MostlyBirds@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Tell us more about how 60% of the population lives paycheck to paycheck because they’re just lazy, and not because they were born to the wrong parents in a shitty system that only rewards worthless cunts who succeed by stepping on the throats of the people who do all the work.

            • BurtsBS@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Wait do you think people that do the work never receive the benefit and become wealthy?

              Are you completely unfamiliar with how most millionaires are made?

              Or are you just a useless communists that think capitalism is bad and this conversation just ends here.

      • ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        Hi. As a not American, I can say Americans get made fun of a lot by not Americans. We like to share these jokes with each other online, as not Americans also use the internet.

      • thisbenzingring@wirebase.org
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        1 year ago

        See most places are bad but America should be better. It presents itself as the better. It does not always live up to that better and so those people who want us to be better keep reminding us we have a lot of work to do. I can tell you personally how horrible America can be but I don’t think you want to hear that from a Lakota.