i love ze frank.

i love ze frank so much that i joined his forums. i hang around there a bit and read lots of stuff, most of it a little goofy but some of it is really thought-provoking. like the discussion i am currently in with another very challenging, very intelligent user in this thread.

i figured since it's right up the whole prison alley, i'd just post my latest in the thread:

Technically, since he doesn't live in our country, and hasn't committed any crimes himself, Bin Laden hasn't broken the law.

yes, he has, except we call the laws he broke, "International"

You can't quote statistics that are based on guesses - you can only prove who commits more crime based on who is convicted.

I want to amend your statement.  Black people don't get convicted more than white people.  POOR PEOPLE get convicted more then RICH PEOPLE.  OJ and Michael (still *technically* black) got off (mj literally).

no, actually, crime stats go a little deeper than that. they use what they call deductive logic [this has come up in my life like 40 times in the last week. the best was the professor joke, thanks garth, hahaha].

In 2000, 22 percent of those in federal and state prisons were convicted on drug charges. - human rights watch

from this we can deduce that  one of the most-convicted for offenses are drug related. but

from eurweb.com:

According to the Federal Household Survey, there were "an estimated 9.9 million whites (72 percent of all users), 2.0 million blacks (15 percent), and 1.4 million Hispanics (10 percent) who were current illicit drug users in 1998."

Despite those figures, Blacks constitute 36.8 percent of those arrested for drug violations and over 42 percent of those in federal prisons for drug violations. African-Americans comprise almost 58 percent of those in state prisons for drug felonies.

i have a friend in prison who was convicted of a crime that would be considered unrelated to drugs in any way. but he did it for drug money, hooked on the horse, yadda yadda, you know the story.

i bring this up because we all know, with or without stats, that a lot of crime, violent crime, robberies, etc, a lot of crime stems from the illegality of drugs. people have to find ways to fund their illicit habits. prostitution, burgalaries, hold ups, mugging, etc. the majority of crime in our society is related either directly or indirectly with drugs. and if the majority of drug users are white, why are there so many blacks in prison?

this has been studied to exhaustion by such respected groups as the ACLU, human rights watch, Amnesty International and they've all reached the same conclusion. racism in the criminal justice system in the united states of america is a very real and far reaching force, filling up prisons with black people who've comitted the same crimes as white people who are on house arrest, probation or have lighter sentences. this isn't just something you can will away because you saw two black (well, in mikey j's case, black-ish) celebrities within the span of a decade, walk. celeb cases are different, in that they're in the spotlight, everyone is carefully scrutinizing every move of every lawyer, judge and freaking court reporter. to have a case in the public eye like that turn into a white on black lynching, would be absurd. of course you won't see a realistic taste of what the criminal justice system is like.

besides, michael jackson and oj simpsons cases represent maybe .000000001 per cent of all cases involving black people. you cannot even pretend to think these two cases are representative in any way.

I have a poor white friend who went to jail.

i have a rich white friend who went to prison. he got 9 years. he's still serving. no one ever tried to claim that no white people go to prison. your one friend and my one friend are simply not enough to deduce any real information from. the prison population in the US is 2.2 million. you think two guys gives us a representative slice of the prison pie? no. that's absurd. that's why we form human rights groups like the ACLU, to collect funding for research projects where the researchers actually look at a representative number and from that they deduce the actual stats. it's all very scientific, not just "i know this guy, and this happened so i think this".

Do I want things to be this way?  No.  Everyone in prison for a non-violent drug offense should be let out of prison, and room made for violent offenders of all types.  In a perfect world.

amen.

By your logic, since buying fertilizer is legal, Timothy McVeigh never should have been arrested.  By my logic, better to be safe than sorry

you know, cell phones and fertilizer aren't the only things people use to make explosives. unfortunately what you say is flawed because if we arrested and investigated people for anything that could be related to explosives, or criminal activity in general, we'd all be in line waiting for the interrogation room. this is what i mean. why aren't people who buy semi-automatic weapons investigated? and by investigated i mean detained and interrogated like the arab boys were. i don't mean answering the question, "are you of sound mental health?" by the gun store clerk to fulfill a legal obligation.

look at human rights like a wooden table. the legs are made up of each right we have as members of a free society. suddenly someone carves out the section that gives you the right to buy cell phones without being investigated. the leg gets weaker. then someone carves out your right to have a phone conversation in privacy. weaker. next thinng to be knocked out is your right to keep your bank records confidential. weaker. and so on and so forth until finally the whole table collapses and we're living under big brother drinkin' victory gin.

and since he isn't a farmer, he would have been investigated.

he had land. he had just as much right to buy bulk fertilizer as anyone.

As far as not stripping people of their rights, its already been done.

fortunately there are optimists out there such as myself, that believe this can be reversed.

If you put an old lady in the seat of a bulldozer, its going to knock a house down just as much as a muscular construction worker; who is at the helm doesnt matter, its the vehicle. The vehicle we are all in is fucked. The difference between me and all of you, is that a lot of you seem to think it can be fixed with some caring and compassion, and adjusting who is in office or the like. You see the war and want to protest and end it.

this, sadly, is where the american people have failed miserably and why the rest of the world suffers for it. and yes, i said the people. not the administration.

understand what democracy is. it's a government for the people, by the people. yes, bush is just a front man for a much larger behind the scenes machine, but american citizens outnumber their civil servants. that's what the government is, a band of civil servants who're paid BY YOU.

throughout history there have been times when people have stood up and said we're not going to take this anymore and it's worked. ghandi in india, women for suffrage, black people for equal rights. it just goes on and on and on. but the vast majoity of you just have this defeatist attitude, like it's a lost cause and we might as well play tombraider until someone activates the doomsday machine. and the rest of the world stands by in awe and disbelief that such a powerful and once incredible nation, once a nation to be more than proud of, has just withered as a people... it's very sad and very angering.

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