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[–] Asinus 0 points 12 points (+12|-0) ago 

While I agree with the overall premise that the police have become overly aggressive and number of people in prison is way too much, I would disagree as to the reason why. The article is claiming that it seems that it is racially motivated in nature to keep African-Americans in the inner city. I would say it has everything to do with drugs.For example, over half the population in federal prisons are there due to a drug charge. Crimes associated with drugs tend to spike whenever a new drug is introduced into the market. You had heroin in the 60's, cocaine during the 70's, crack during the 80's, and meth during the 90's. All of these are highly addictive in nature and will bring out the worst in people. It will make anyone go from model citizen to someone who will commit murder to get their next high. It seems the common denominator in this equation is the War on Drugs.

When it comes to police militarization, I would say that has to do with cheap or free equipment from the military. This all started in 1990 with the 1033 program. This allowed any police force in the nation to gain access to the latest military hardware. It was/is highly successful and has only recently starting to be scaled back. Who wouldn't want an APC if they could buy one. I believe this hardware changed the police mindset from defense to offense. When all you have in your toolbox is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.

Another major item would be the introduction of the Tazer. This allowed the police to become lazy. Before the Tazer, you could only physically restrain the person. This is highly dangerous, so you had an incentive to try to talk the perpetrator down. The Tazer removes this as you can just stun the guy and go on about your day. You can see this mentality in almost every single Tazer video that is out there. In very few cases do you see the police doing it the old fashioned way.

Just my thoughts.

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[–] totes-mah-voats 1 point 0 points (+1|-1) ago 

Yep, this is more like it. The article was pretty much big box of race bait.

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[–] epsilona01 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

The War on Drugs and the problem of poverty are very intertwined. This is an economic problem perpetuated by laws that are harsher on and mostly imposed on the poor. Just happens that blacks have been economically disadvantaged (for some unknown reason cause according to new history books) so statistically if someone is black they're far more likely to be poor than someone that's white.

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[–] LemurLicker 0 points 9 points (+9|-0) ago 

When there's a shitload of money to be made by putting people in jail, people will be put in jail. When there's a shitload of money to be made by arming police, police will be armed. Welcome to America where almost everything is about money.

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[–] Lighting 0 points 8 points (+8|-0) ago  (edited ago)

The article says that money isn't the main issue, and says

Private prisons only control 8 percent of prison beds

But that's a 5-year-out-of-date statistic and way too low.

  1. If you look at prisons which are entirely privately owned in 2010 it was 8% across the entire US, 8.2% in 2011, 8.7% in 2012. In 2013 the number of federal prisoners dropped for the first time since 1980, but apparently not in private prisons as in 2013 the private prison population for federal prisoners grew to 15% of federal prisoners . Part of that is that it's a state by state decision: For example a year ago in AZ 20% of the AZ state prison population was in privately run prisons, In Louisiana its 50%

  2. That old 8% number does not count public prisons which are ... RUN by private companies or local community prisons run by a sheriff for profit. You can have a "for profit" prison just run by a corrupt sheriff. LA has a ton of those and it's a real problem.

  3. Does not count youth correctional facilities like this one caught giving kickbacks to judges, lawmakers, etc to send more and more people to jail for profit.

So - the article's main point that money isn't a major driving factor of the growth in incarceration isn't true. Money is a contributing factor.

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[–] Scotcheggs 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

The DA Judges etc all get money from it as well from what are probably 150k+ salaries at the least. The system get like $100 a day or so for each bed filled.

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[–] Easybee 0 points 4 points (+4|-0) ago 

Fantastic article; I'm glad I took the time to read it.

I find it interesting that the roots at the beginning of this article were triggered by police brutality -- before any of this militarisation began. It seems some things have not changed.

A lot of people in these comments are talking about the racial motives, but I see these as largely auxiliary. The central theme is the oppression of the poor to create the employment pool needed for capitalism to succeed. Racism is a cultural context in the US that was systematically exploited as a TOOL to divide the working classes and prevent labour disruption.

What we really see is the perpetuation and expansion of inhumane treatment of the vast majority of Americans (regardless of race) to secure ever-increasing wealth for the already wealthy.

That is to say that the US has chosen greed over humanity. Until US culture decides that there are ethics more important than greed, this oppression will continue and worsen.

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[–] CrypticMetaphr ago 

I'm also of the opinion that a lot of the problems we see in the US are more class motivated that race motivated. It just so happens that in a lot of cases, the minority population and the poor population have a lot of overlap. Everyone wants to boil the issue down to one catchy word, like racism or money or whatever, but there's almost never one single reason why a person or system ends up doing something. Yes its racism, yes its greed, yes its a system that wants to keep poor people poor and make rich people rich, but its also the availability of military equipment to police, quotas on arrests and tickets which means they're going to go harder on/have a bigger presence in places that are more likely to have crime (poor, black/hispanic communities), increasing hostility towards the police which in turns makes the police defensive which in turn makes people hostile, propaganda aimed at making middle class people hate and blame poor people for their problems, confirmation bias that makes police officers more hostile towards minorities, the list goes on.

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[–] Balrogic 1 point 0 points (+1|-1) ago  (edited ago)

We let fucking Blackwater train our police, we let the Patriot act happen, we haven't been terribly successful at opposing our out in the open abuse by tyrants. The same company that trained the Blackwater guys that had a penchant for randomly murdering innocent people in Iraq are training police officers with a penchant for randomly murdering innocent people. Coincidence? I think not.

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[–] newoldwave 1 point 0 points (+1|-1) ago 

How did America end up this way? Our law makers saw the danger with a drugged society and passed laws against certain drugs. Such drugs became immediately available on the black market because so many Americans wanted those drugs as if they couldn't live without them (which of course, they could very well). Criminal enterprises saw the opportunity to make a lot of money selling illegal drugs to the people. So the federal and state governments set about to put the drug dealers out of business. They quickly learned that to find the dealers and drug king pins they had to start by finding the drug users and work upwards. The state put the drug users in jail hoping some time in prison would discourage their drug use. They keep hoping this approach will work. But, then the drug lords now have enough money to fight back when police come calling, so the police upgrade their equipment and so on. So, now we have the drug industry, the prison industry and the police industry all because so many Americans just have to have their cocaine and marijuana. Why they want it so badly, i haven't a clue.

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[–] BoiseNTheHood 0 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago 

The War on Drugs is the easy answer. Once again, another government-created problem.

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[–] mrskeletaldootdoot 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

There is a simple answer, the war on drugs. Look at our system, mandatory sentencing laws which fill the jails, an increase in what is considered a felony for our safety, an apathetic public who thinks anyone in prison is an animal and should be locked up, a failed war in Iraq with millions of dollars of surplus equipment handed over to Local PD's for the purpose of safety, civil asset forfeiture to help fund those organizations as the populous does not want to pay anymore taxes, for profit prisons who want and need recidivism and an increase in populous to survive and thrive, and boom you have the system today. We have managed to create a mess that will take decades to undo

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