The better question would be "What did these kids "do" to be in prison to begin with?"
Burgers calling China authoritarian yet never blink for a second when a car full of 18 year olds get charged with felony murder because someone who was allegedly riding with them does a murder.
I don't think 99% of Americans even understand what the fuck those charges even entail. Literally if you had your weirdo uncle Steve with you and he decides he wants the scratch off lotto tickets for free and shoves his gun in the clerk's face (which a ton of people carry daily- welcome to Burgerland, here's your McBurger with a gun) gets fidgety, pulls the trigger killing the clerk, and runs out to your car... well, you committed a crime (potentially). According to the great nation of Burgers.
Mostly you getting charged or not depends on how much melanin you have and how "valuable" a (absolutely racist) prosecutor/judge think you/your family are to society. If you're a poor black/brown teen and that shit happens to you... welp, hope you like fighting fires otherwise you're just staring at walls for decades. You didn't even harm anyone, may not have known what was happening (not a requirement to be charged), but your ass sure as shit will be collateral.
It's a totally bullshit way of avoiding proving someone was an accomplice to murder which I would agree (assuming they actually WERE an accomplice) they should get charged with something (but lesser than murder obviously). They just say "Doesn't matter. A murder happened, you were there, guilty."
But China is the authoritarian state. Not the state finding excuses and writing laws specifically to lock up non-murderers for murder. 🤔
The NYPD’s definition of “gang” is, if there’s some kids that hang out together on a block and one of them has priors, they’re all considered gang members.
Yeah, just ranting. Not directed at you. I've just seen a lot of fellow Burgers (I am Burg) saying "they should get paid more" or "get out prison sooner." Which, sure, ok. I just wish they'd question the underlying problem here which is a major problem across the nation. Mass incarceration
One of the fucked up parts is that if you have a felony conviction you aren't allowed to serve as a firefighter after finishing out your sentencing even if you have experience fighting wild fires for no pay.
Yes, there are many compounding and interrelated bad things involved in all of this stuff.
It is very strange, if you remove yourself from the context of current day Burgerland, that people who commit crimes (minus a very select few crimes that reactionaries will point to as the rule rather than the exception- talking about SA, child abuse, etc.), "do their time," are still punished further... and it's fully legal to do so. You'd think there would be a fully encompassing anti-discrimination standard set like "You can't just not hire people because of arbitrary bullshit reasons like them getting hit with a burglary charge" (even assuming they did it. I don't give a shit).
And I know people, reactionaries/right wingers, always go "ohhhhh but uhhhhhremoveds?" Yeah, dumbfucks, certain, specific violent crimes should bar people from certain careers. They just take the exception and try to apply it broadly. Also, probably unpopular opinion (absolutely unpopular in broad American culture), but even if someone committed a violent crime likeremoved or murder, if they "did their time" and actually were rehabilitated (ahh... there's the problem in US prisons...) then they should be integrated into society back to some level of normalcy. Even I have some hangups on what exactly that entails, etc. but my idealistic view is most people can be rehabilitated and at the very least society owes everyone the effort to try to rehabilitate people. It will fail sometimes, but it would be incredibly vastly better and more humane if we actually tried.
But we can't even convince people to stop thinking cops rounding up homeless people fixes anything or that providing homes and basics for life should be guaranteed to everyone... without bullshit conditions like "not using recreational drugs." I'd rather someone have a home to shoot heroin rather than doing it on the street or in crack dens and such where people are being assaulted and murdered constantly. That's the frustrating part of Burger-brain in the end is... do you actually want to stop seeing the heroin addicts everywhere? I do. And killing them or shooing them away will never solve the issue permanently. Give people purpose, stop labeling people for life based on stuff they did very young or stuff they did at their lowest points, support them, and see what happens.
All of this just feels like a pipe dream in Burgertown USA. People literally scoff and laugh if you say the solution to most of the homeless and addiction epidemic, or at least the way to alleviate the worst symptoms, is free housing for everyone with zero conditions. As a human right. Some of the reactionary tendencies towards addiction has lessened in the last 10 years or so since now addiction is a plague in white communities (as opposed to crack epidemic which mainly hit black communities). But still, people have a nearly violent reaction to the mere suggestion that throwing someone in prison for using heroin is bad/not solving anything. Or (and this is fucking impossible to convince them) that piling on ten billion charges of burglary and theft because someone stole to feed an addiction is absolutely not "holding them accountable" it's just destroying their already zero chance of ever recovering. Now they're doing hard time. What the fuck do they think a heroin addict that gets hit with years of time for burglaries does when they finally get out?
The better question would be "What did these kids "do" to be in prison to begin with?"
Burgers calling China authoritarian yet never blink for a second when a car full of 18 year olds get charged with felony murder because someone who was allegedly riding with them does a murder.
I don't think 99% of Americans even understand what the fuck those charges even entail. Literally if you had your weirdo uncle Steve with you and he decides he wants the scratch off lotto tickets for free and shoves his gun in the clerk's face (which a ton of people carry daily- welcome to Burgerland, here's your McBurger with a gun) gets fidgety, pulls the trigger killing the clerk, and runs out to your car... well, you committed a crime (potentially). According to the great nation of Burgers.
Mostly you getting charged or not depends on how much melanin you have and how "valuable" a (absolutely racist) prosecutor/judge think you/your family are to society. If you're a poor black/brown teen and that shit happens to you... welp, hope you like fighting fires otherwise you're just staring at walls for decades. You didn't even harm anyone, may not have known what was happening (not a requirement to be charged), but your ass sure as shit will be collateral.
It's a totally bullshit way of avoiding proving someone was an accomplice to murder which I would agree (assuming they actually WERE an accomplice) they should get charged with something (but lesser than murder obviously). They just say "Doesn't matter. A murder happened, you were there, guilty."
But China is the authoritarian state. Not the state finding excuses and writing laws specifically to lock up non-murderers for murder. 🤔
The NYPD’s definition of “gang” is, if there’s some kids that hang out together on a block and one of them has priors, they’re all considered gang members.
Great country
I figured you didn't think i believe otherwise but just so we're on the same page i don't think prison is good ever
Yeah, just ranting. Not directed at you. I've just seen a lot of fellow Burgers (I am Burg) saying "they should get paid more" or "get out prison sooner." Which, sure, ok. I just wish they'd question the underlying problem here which is a major problem across the nation. Mass incarceration
One of the fucked up parts is that if you have a felony conviction you aren't allowed to serve as a firefighter after finishing out your sentencing even if you have experience fighting wild fires for no pay.
Yes, there are many compounding and interrelated bad things involved in all of this stuff.
It is very strange, if you remove yourself from the context of current day Burgerland, that people who commit crimes (minus a very select few crimes that reactionaries will point to as the rule rather than the exception- talking about SA, child abuse, etc.), "do their time," are still punished further... and it's fully legal to do so. You'd think there would be a fully encompassing anti-discrimination standard set like "You can't just not hire people because of arbitrary bullshit reasons like them getting hit with a burglary charge" (even assuming they did it. I don't give a shit).
And I know people, reactionaries/right wingers, always go "ohhhhh but uhhhhhremoveds?" Yeah, dumbfucks, certain, specific violent crimes should bar people from certain careers. They just take the exception and try to apply it broadly. Also, probably unpopular opinion (absolutely unpopular in broad American culture), but even if someone committed a violent crime likeremoved or murder, if they "did their time" and actually were rehabilitated (ahh... there's the problem in US prisons...) then they should be integrated into society back to some level of normalcy. Even I have some hangups on what exactly that entails, etc. but my idealistic view is most people can be rehabilitated and at the very least society owes everyone the effort to try to rehabilitate people. It will fail sometimes, but it would be incredibly vastly better and more humane if we actually tried.
But we can't even convince people to stop thinking cops rounding up homeless people fixes anything or that providing homes and basics for life should be guaranteed to everyone... without bullshit conditions like "not using recreational drugs." I'd rather someone have a home to shoot heroin rather than doing it on the street or in crack dens and such where people are being assaulted and murdered constantly. That's the frustrating part of Burger-brain in the end is... do you actually want to stop seeing the heroin addicts everywhere? I do. And killing them or shooing them away will never solve the issue permanently. Give people purpose, stop labeling people for life based on stuff they did very young or stuff they did at their lowest points, support them, and see what happens.
All of this just feels like a pipe dream in Burgertown USA. People literally scoff and laugh if you say the solution to most of the homeless and addiction epidemic, or at least the way to alleviate the worst symptoms, is free housing for everyone with zero conditions. As a human right. Some of the reactionary tendencies towards addiction has lessened in the last 10 years or so since now addiction is a plague in white communities (as opposed to crack epidemic which mainly hit black communities). But still, people have a nearly violent reaction to the mere suggestion that throwing someone in prison for using heroin is bad/not solving anything. Or (and this is fucking impossible to convince them) that piling on ten billion charges of burglary and theft because someone stole to feed an addiction is absolutely not "holding them accountable" it's just destroying their already zero chance of ever recovering. Now they're doing hard time. What the fuck do they think a heroin addict that gets hit with years of time for burglaries does when they finally get out?