I know, America is so horrible, there are actually consequences for bad behavior. What a shame that we hold people accountable for their actions.

And the prison system is one of the reasons marijuana will never be legalized...

I can't believe I'm even dignifying this filth with a response...

Just what was that example? What the hell were you even talking about?

Isn't that the whole problem?

Your mastery of sarcasm is astonishing. Truly.

This is horseshit, and you should know better. Anyone who believes this is just as deluded as you seem to be.

What are you still doing in such a scary place, then? Why haven't you turned tail and run back to the super-safe love-fest that you claim is the US and A?

You're right! They're called "politicians," and they're armed with an enormous, frightening, and deadly military!

You know, I was just thinking that...

Too bad they're holding the wrong crimes accountable...

America has twice the number of people incarcerated than china (if that is a true statistic) because we fucking enforce the law -- has nothing to do with population. We enforce the law. You fuck up; you pay the man. I've been arrested 3 times and every time, I may not have been guilty of what I was charged with, but I was fucking up. I was doing bad shit at a bad hour with bad people, and I payed the price. That's what fucking happens. In the end, things work themselves out, if you're not guilty, but for the most part -- we don't have death squads going around killing gang members... We don't have hundreds, let alone thousands (look at Mexico, more than 1000 unsolved murders this year and it's only June) of violent crimes going unsolved...

The number of prisoners in our justice system is NOT a consequence of injustice. It is the effect of policial adequancy... Contrary to the popular CRIMINAL belief, we don't arrest people innocent of crimes on a regular basis.

You should be. And you should be grateful....

Yawn. Could you be more stereotypical? This diatribe is worse than the blue collar schtick.

The ultimate tyranny in a society is not control by martial law. It is control by the psychological manipulation of consciousness, through which reality is defined so that those who exist within it do not even realize that they are in prison. They do not even realize that there is something outside of where they exist...

You have been controlled like sheep in a pen by those who THINK they own you - from the government to the World Management Team to those in space. You have been deprived of knowledge by frequency control...

You believe that you live in the land of the free and the home of the brave, yet you live in the most controlled experimental society on the planet. The tyranny that has been set up here is rather interesting, because it is a tyranny without walls. As a country and as a collective consciousness, the United States [as a whole, i.e., a critical mass consensus of informed citizens] still has not reached an awareness that something is not right. The environment of the United States is actually much more controlled than that of the former Soviet Union, where the control was obvious [cf. Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent].

Because everyone is so frightened of giving up THE SYSTEM in the United States, they are going to be FORCED to give it up. The system is corrupt, it does not work, it does not honor life, and it does not honor Earth. That is the bottom line. IF SOMETHING DOES NOT HONOR LIFE AND DOES NOT HONOR EARTH, IT IS GOING TO FALL - and it is going to fall BIG TIME.

CONSCIOUSNESS MUST CHANGE... There has been an overinvolvement in the material world and a complete lack of understanding of the nonphysical world that exists all around you, so there will be a reprioritizing of what comes first in life. PEOPLE WILL STAND UP, ONCE THEY HAVE LOST EVERYTHING, who had never thought of standing up when they owned everything. PEOPLE WILL AWAKEN TO THE INCREDIBLE POTENTIAL OF THEMSELVES.

In the next few years, a connectedness and communal cooperation will begin to run through this country so that you will stop separating yourselves with respect to political ideology. That separation was DESIGNED. Whenever a people are separated, and they focus on what they do not have in common or label themselves different from others, it is a perfect disguise to keep them from discovering what they do have in common. This separation keeps people from banding together and becoming very strong...

You are controlled and separated by issues that strike at the core of your emotions... The 'pro-life'/abortion issue has been PURPOSELY ORCHESTRATED in the United States by different factions within the government to create a lack of harmony. Divide and conquer, and you own the people... Whenever people oppose people, THOSE IN CONTROL benefit, even down to the issue over abortion...

Always look at an issue from the perspective of the Bigger Picture so that you have neutrality with it, for the picture gets bigger and bigger all the time.

The planet is headed for a major confrontation with 'certain entities'... FEAR AND CHAOS have predominated on this planet because these 'entities' have stirred them up; [fear and chaos are] what nourishes them... 'We' are simply pointing this out; 'we' are not here to promote fear. Fear is what [those in control] want you to feel. 'We' want you to understand that YOU CAN CHANGE ANYTHING YOU WANT TO CHANGE. This is going to be a game of numbers in the future, because you will work together to bring yourselves to a place of EMPOWERMENT.

You will see a lot of ANGER in this country, because many people will feel POWERLESS. Anger is one of the first emotions that will occur when people finally understand the MANIPULATION that has been going on and begin to get in touch with their feelings.

Modern technology is one of the biggest weapons of frequency control. You have been sold devices for 'entertainment' [read: CON-tain-ment] and 'convenience,' and they are all involved with frequency control... GET RID OF YOUR TELEVISION SETS. They are the primary tool used to manipulate your consciousness on a day-to-day basis...

As a matter of fact, if you really want to evolve, do not read your newspapers, do not listen to the radio, and do not watch television. If you are able to be MEDIA-FREE for periods of time, and you disengage yourself from the frequency of chaos and anxiety and stress and hustle-bustle and temptations of all kinds that you don't need, you begin to get clear. You begin to listen to what is going on inside of yourself and to live in the world and not necessarily be lost in it. YOU BECOME CLEAR...

- Barbara Marciniak, BRINGERS OF THE DAWN, Bear & Co, 1992 (pp. 87-96)

One of the main differences in the US is that we have the longest sentences in the world. I don't know if we necessarily convict more people so much as we keep them longer, hence the high numbers.

Although if you look at the records, (citations anyone?) the number of prisoners in the US has tripled or quadrupled since one thing: the war on drugs Roughly 2/3 of the prison population is in jail for drug-related offenses, be they possession or 'intent to sell' (which is based on the amount in possession -- not actual sales). Drug crimes are punished according to federal guidelines, which can't be altered at the discretion of a judge. And there's no mystery about what populations are the main targets of drug enforcement.

Compared to other places, we also have fewer alternatives to prison; we have little or no support system to help those who would opt for a new life after prison. The public's simply not very interested in psychiatric treatments, halfway houses, rehabilitation, etc. Popular opinion is that prisoners should have longer, harsher punishments, even though longer, harsher sentences haven't reduced recidivism or shown much success in the prevention of crime at all.

Think prison is effective? Our recidivism rates are also the worst in the world. Long sentences, if anything, increase crime rates. For instance, lots of prisoners seek protection from gangs on the inside. Gangs are unofficially tolerated, (aka 'monitored') by most prison systems, since it actually keeps some kind of order -- but this virtually guarantees that many ex-cons will have gang loyalties to repay on the outside, and for those with no other support systems, prison and gangs are their new way of life, if they weren't already.

Anyway, with all that said, there's no escaping the fact the US just has a huge amount of violent crime for a 'developed' country. Who knows why this is. Is it economic stratification? It is the legacy of institutionalized racism? Is it the lack of social welfare or decent education systems? Is it radio waves? High sugar cereals? Porn? I really don't know.

Right, throw away your tv and newspapers...but continue to read and internalize books by Barbara Marciniak. How much did this book cost again?

One article about the prison system in the US, and suddenly we're all living in the Matrix.

Oh, I'm sorry...did you actually have something of value to say, or were you just here to make baseless, meaningless judgments?

Boy, you sure hit the nail on the head. The Chinese are incredibly lax on law enforcement.

Wait. No. You are talking out of your ass.

Because psychiatric treatments, halfway houses, and rehabilitation cost too much, and yet they'll put money into expanding a prison to accomodate 57,000 more prisoners. This is what I truly don't understand about our prison system... It seems like the government would rather pump money into sweeping people under the rug than to help them rejoin society.

I agree, but I don't think we can blame the government for that. Its the taxpayers who aren't interested in paying for that sort of thing.

I mean, I don't really want to pay for it either, but none of us live in a vacuum. Sometimes you get what you pay for.