It’s time we asked, do we care more about how we treat our citizens in the social justice system, or the effectiveness of police?
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The US incarcerates more people than any other nation on the planet.
Is it because we criminalize social problems, as Ta-Nehisi Coates, National Correspondent at The Atlantic suggests, or because the “public actually cares a great deal more about how they are treated…than they care about the effectiveness of police”? as Tracey Meares, Professor at Yale School states?
However you dice it, no matter your opinion, the fact remains.
This is a conversation we need to have.
Photo Credit: YouTube/The Atlantic
Video Credit: YouTube/The Atlantic
I suppose the first observation would be that the US has more people than most other countries. So we would necessarily have more people in jail if we had the same criminal justice system and the same number of criminals. The next point is how many people are in jail who didn’t commit crimes? I am aware of prosecutorial corruption, but there’s no reason to think other nations’ prosecutors are any more honest. Japan is reputed to have better than a 90% conviction rate. Which means they only take the slam-dunk cases or there’s something rotten going on. If they… Read more »