The Conservative War on Prisons, etc.

by Seany2000

by Seany2000

Via Metafilter’s kliuless (who definitely has a kliu):
  • The Conservative War on Prisons: “Right-wing operatives have decided that prisons are a lot like schools: hugely expensive, inefficient, and in need of root-and-branch reform. Is this how progress will happen in a hyper-polarized world?”
  • Raise The Crime Rate: “Statistics are notoriously slippery, but the figures that suggest that violence has been disappearing in the United States contain a blind spot so large that to cite them uncritically, as the major papers do, is to collude in an epic con. Uncounted in the official tallies are the hundreds of thousands of crimes that take place in the country’s prison system, a vast and growing residential network whose forsaken tenants increasingly bear the brunt of America’s propensity for anger and violence.”
  • The Caging of America: Why do we lock up so many people? ”Six million people are under correctional supervision in the U.S.—more than were in Stalin’s gulags.”