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Originally posted by THGRRI:
This should have always been the topic. I tried to make it so. I wanted to discuss not this incident but what led to it. That is impossible with some here. I am too tired to start all over.

I might respond to what else is posted but I gave a major accounting on what needs to happen to effect change in the other thread.

I will point out that I see you suggesting what we can do and not the community at large. Shows me you are looking in the wrong place. We have spent hundreds of millions trying to effect change by changing what we do. It's not working.

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Fifth Amendment


No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.[71]


Sixth Amendment


In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.[71]


Eighth Amendment


Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.[71]

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...me

Ok first, stop bringing the rest of the world into this and focus on here.

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....sig

It's a little hard to just focus on "here", because so much of what we do "there" comes home to roost. The militarization of the police, for example, is a result of 9-11 and the "GWOT" ("global war on terror"). The intrusion of the NSA into everyone's life, and the view of EVERYONE as a potential terrorist is because of blowback from the rest of the world. And then, there is the (completely failed) "war on drugs". All we've managed to do is metastasize our gangs into central and south America, and now they're coming here to roost... again. You can't have a paranoid authoritarian alphabet agency/ military goon culture without it filtering down to the local PDs.

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….Me
I agree with you but how it needs to be done is by those who live there.

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....Sig
Bullshit. A neighborhood can't create it's own jobs. As long as the larger commercial economy in which they're embedded exists only to suck money out of poverty, nothing will ever happen. EVEN IF they band together and become hard-working, crime-intolerant neighborhoods, what are these people going to DO for jobs and honestly-earned money???

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....Me
Once they make the move we really can help a lot. It is like stopping drinking though. You really have to want it to make the necessary changes. It very hard for them to take this on.

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....Sig
These neighborhoods are created because of the predatory culture in which we all live. What is the difference between a bankster and a drug dealer, except the size of the crime? What "move" are they supposed to make that's going to make their neighborhoods thrive, economically?

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....Sig

You're speaking from an individual standpoint. Yes, AN individual can beat the odds. But the problem is, in THIS culture, your gain is someone else's loss. You get a job, someone loses one. You get a student loan, someone else has not gotten one. You get a home loan, someone else has failed.
If you can't apply your solution to EVERYBODY all at once, then it's not the solution these neighborhoods need.

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Fifth Amendment


No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.[71]


Sixth Amendment


In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.[71]


Eighth Amendment


Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.[71]

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Originally posted by THGRRI:
We meaning the society that exists outside of the black community. I will also point out that bringing up people like Bernie Madoff just confuses the issue. This country has never stop trying to figure out how to appease these communities nor should we. However, nothing is going to change.

They have to do it. They have to do it. They have to do it.

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"Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today," writes the New Yorker's Adam Gopnik. "Over all, there are now more people under 'correctional supervision' in America--more than 6 million--than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height."

Is this hyperbole? Here are the facts. The U.S. has 760 prisoners per 100,000 citizens. That's not just many more than in most other developed countries but seven to 10 times as many. Japan has 63 per 100,000, Germany has 90, France has 96, South Korea has 97, and Britain--with a rate among the highest--has 153. Even developing countries that are well known for their crime problems have a third of U.S. numbers. Mexico has 208 prisoners per 100,000 citizens, and Brazil has 242. As Robertson pointed out on his TV show, The 700 Club, "We here in America make up 5% of the world's population but we make up 25% of the [world's] jailed prisoners."

There is a temptation to look at this staggering difference in numbers and chalk it up to one more aspect of American exceptionalism. America is different, so the view goes, and it has always had a Wild West culture and a tough legal system. But the facts don't support the conventional wisdom. This wide gap between the U.S. and the rest of the world is relatively recent. In 1980 the U.S.'s prison population was about 150 per 100,000 adults. It has more than quadrupled since then. So something has happened in the past 30 years to push millions of Americans into prison.

That something, of course, is the war on drugs. Drug convictions went from 15 inmates per 100,000 adults in 1980 to 148 in 1996, an almost tenfold increase. More than half of America's federal inmates today are in prison on drug convictions. In 2009 alone, 1.66 million Americans were arrested on drug charges, more than were arrested on assault or larceny charges. And 4 of 5 of those arrests were simply for possession.

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Bipartisan forces have created the trend that we see. Conservatives and liberals love to sound tough on crime, and both sides agreed in the 1990s to a wide range of new federal infractions, many of them carrying mandatory sentences for time in state or federal prison. And as always in American politics, there is the money trail. Many state prisons are now run by private companies that have powerful lobbyists in state capitals. These firms can create jobs in places where steady work is rare; in many states, they have also helped create a conveyor belt of cash for prisons from treasuries to outlying counties.
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The results are gruesome at every level. We are creating a vast prisoner underclass in this country at huge expense, increasingly unable to function in normal society, all in the name of a war we have already lost. If Pat Robertson can admit he was wrong, surely it is not too much to ask the same of America's political leaders.

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2109777,00.html

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"Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today," writes the New Yorker's Adam Gopnik. "Over all, there are now more people under 'correctional supervision' in America--more than 6 million--than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height."

Is this hyperbole? Here are the facts. The U.S. has 760 prisoners per 100,000 citizens. That's not just many more than in most other developed countries but seven to 10 times as many. Japan has 63 per 100,000, Germany has 90, France has 96, South Korea has 97, and Britain--with a rate among the highest--has 153. Even developing countries that are well known for their crime problems have a third of U.S. numbers. Mexico has 208 prisoners per 100,000 citizens, and Brazil has 242. As Robertson pointed out on his TV show, The 700 Club, "We here in America make up 5% of the world's population but we make up 25% of the [world's] jailed prisoners."

There is a temptation to look at this staggering difference in numbers and chalk it up to one more aspect of American exceptionalism. America is different, so the view goes, and it has always had a Wild West culture and a tough legal system. But the facts don't support the conventional wisdom. This wide gap between the U.S. and the rest of the world is relatively recent. In 1980 the U.S.'s prison population was about 150 per 100,000 adults. It has more than quadrupled since then. So something has happened in the past 30 years to push millions of Americans into prison.

That something, of course, is the war on drugs. Drug convictions went from 15 inmates per 100,000 adults in 1980 to 148 in 1996, an almost tenfold increase. More than half of America's federal inmates today are in prison on drug convictions. In 2009 alone, 1.66 million Americans were arrested on drug charges, more than were arrested on assault or larceny charges. And 4 of 5 of those arrests were simply for possession.

.....................
Bipartisan forces have created the trend that we see. Conservatives and liberals love to sound tough on crime, and both sides agreed in the 1990s to a wide range of new federal infractions, many of them carrying mandatory sentences for time in state or federal prison. And as always in American politics, there is the money trail. Many state prisons are now run by private companies that have powerful lobbyists in state capitals. These firms can create jobs in places where steady work is rare; in many states, they have also helped create a conveyor belt of cash for prisons from treasuries to outlying counties.
.....................

The results are gruesome at every level. We are creating a vast prisoner underclass in this country at huge expense, increasingly unable to function in normal society, all in the name of a war we have already lost. If Pat Robertson can admit he was wrong, surely it is not too much to ask the same of America's political leaders.

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snipped a bit, but an interesting read

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