Sorry guys, I know it's been a day for really non game related posts, so please do feel free to close this now.

I was reading this article by Louis Theroux, he's a respected journalist, a little daring, and a little sensational, but generally trustworthy. Can someone more in the know about things tell me how accurate it is?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13457576

It's appalling, but not surprising, and it's probably accurate or close to it.

The way Americans operate jails and prisons long ago discarded any belief that rehabilitation is a suitable goal or even possible, in favor of the well-founded observation that the politician who promises the most Draconian retributive "justice" is usually the one who gets re-elected.

When the sheriffs and wardens who manage modern jails speak candidly, they will tell you that their institutions have become mostly places where the dangerously mentally ill are housed.

Louis Theroux has a weird way of seeing things sometimes, but he usually makes a very good point.

Some class him as a fringe reporter, even though his stuff is usually worth watching.
The whorehouse series in Nevada? was funny, and poignant...

Some of his work is a little hard to swallow, but at least he's not Michael Moore. :P

I don't know if that was deliberate, but that was of course where he started. On TV Nation. Was it?

Yeah, something like that :P
He was a roving reporter for Moore back in the day.

Nice catch :D

Because they're right. If you think rehabilitation was the point of prisons, read more into that and find out the whys. And the simple fact is, for the vast majority it doesn't work. The point of prison is to protect citizens from harm by others, here in the States.

The more appropriate option is to not be retarded about making just about every damn thing illegal that doesn't have a victim (drugs, prostitution, et al), and being more intelligent about the stuff that does (like actually sticking murderers in for life until the day they die instead of giving them 5 years because of overcrowding and dumb ass jurisprudence). The numbers don't stack up for that one. 50% or more are from victimless crimes, and pretty specifically drug possession/trafficking/use. But there is some truth in that, because of retards trying to be goody goodies without going through the thinking process first decided to pretty much abolish all mental health facilities; I think in the 50s, specifically.

I don't know that this is true, but I will tell you what I do know:

1) In the US the majority people think the idea that a prisoner be raped is somehow deserved, or at least not worth preventing, and serves as a valid form of deterrence.

2) We punish people long after their sentences have been served by disenfranchising them and making certain types of felons register forever (these felons actually have a very low recidivism rate, but people stubbornly believe it's higher than normal, despite proof that it's lower).

3) We make it extremely hard for them to get jobs, and not just jobs where they'd be handling a lot of money, working with children, or whatever.

4) Up to 95% of people in prison are there on plea bargains, meaning they never faced their accusers or had a trial. They stack so many charges against you that even 10 years behind bars is extremely light compared to what you'll get if you roll the dice of a jury trial and lose. The Innocence Project has exposed convictions of where people plead and signed confessions and were later exonerated via genetic proof.

A couple of my ex's family have spent time in jail (under a year) and prison (over a year). The women's jail that he sister spent time in provided a bar of soap for cleaning, that's it. No shampoo (women have long hair) or anything else. I don't like this woman, I will not willingly spend time around her, she's unpleasant and that's being kind.

However, I couldn't stand how they were treated. Of course, she's in jail, I can't just give her a bottle of shampoo. I have to pay 20 bucks to have an approved "canteen" company deliver one. It's the same crappy and little bottles of shampoo/conditioner and bar of soap you'd get for free in your hotel room. It's 20 bucks to give one to someone in jail.

In Oregon it costs something like .7 cents (not even a penny) to provide soda as part of a meal to a prisoner. This is often taken away for bad behavior, so the guards are all for it, but citizen groups recently threw a fit about the 700,000 dollars spent a year in Oregon to do this (it's government waste, they don't deserve anything, donchaknow?). Never mind that indicates we imprison way too many people...

'Miami Jails', maybe Rockstar will pick that up :P

I bet most americans would whole-heartedly defend a system that ends up committing such atrocities.

That is, until they end up in the cage themselves for a DUI or a suspended license or some other misdemeanour. They typically reconsider shortly after saying hi to Bubbah.

Had a DUI, had 2 possession charges, one paraphernalia charge(most expensive pot pipe EVER) all on the misdemeanor level in the States. No jail time for me. One night in a holding cell, yes; then again, holding cell doesn't equal jail time.

Your first and second victimless DUIs are 1st degree misdemeanors. A third one is an automatic felony according to Florida law where my DUI, victimless thank God, happened. Jail time is dependent on the circumstances of the crime and your record and the judge you get in your case.

So ,no offense, but please be a little bit more informed about the way the US handles things law wise. Protip: every state has slightly different laws thus you could get jail time for a victimless DUI because it might be a mandatory sentence.

Please note that I am not proud of my past.

Source: http://www.flhsmv.gov/ddl/duilaws.html.

EDIT: found the official source.

Try a DUI in Stonebro's Norway and you will understand why he used it as an example. When seeing American cops releasing people so easily for DUI I can't help but to put my palm to my forehead in disbelief.

I still haven't quite understood why our US prison cells are the way they are when compared to other countries. Hell, I saw a German prison cell and it was larger and furnished better than my dorm room at Camp Bullis.

Punish, retribution and locking people away has never been a successful strategy in history. It's nothing but hunting every symptom that shows from a broken system.

There is something wrong with society when so many commits crimes that undermines humanity, it's not (in most cases) genes etc that plays the biggest part. If i was then countries like Australia would be an anarchistic violent mess if you look at the country's history.

Do other countries allow prisons to be owned and operated by private companies? We do, and unfortunately I can definitely see the floorplan above designed to help the bottom line.

Gotta keep those shareholders happy!