Dolphins announce they will be staying inside for anthem

"Dol-Fan Dupree wrote:

You are asking questions. Giving me an answer to those questions. Making assumptions. Then answering the assumption.

Nonsense.

You never even asked for sources or given sources. I had to look up your Kamala claim. Don't ask for something you aren't providing. Or does that not speak volumes?

I can give you quote after quote from MLK and his followers advocating for non-violence. Do you need me to? Have you not seen them? And everything else you said above is basically meaningless to the point of not making any sense at all.

"Rick 1966 wrote:

I can give you quote after quote from MLK and his followers advocating for non-violence. Do you need me to? Have you not seen them? And everything else you said above is basically meaningless to the point of not making any sense at all.

Is one of those books you read "How to Argue with a Liberal and Win!"? Because that is how you are talking.

Let me just say, two wrongs don't make a right. It's just two wrongs.
The real issue is the Private prison system and the "war" on drugs. Private prisons create a demand for prisoners, that's the profit. More prisoners, more money. More money, more politicians on the payroll. The "war" on drugs created an para military police force armed to the teeth and empowered to shoot first and ask questions later. Poor people in general, minority neighborhoods in particular are low hanging fruit under this system. We incarcerated 1 million people a year for possession of a plant until recent legalization slowed those numbers, but it's still happening. Instead of a "war" on drugs or a "war" on crime, how about a "war" on poverty?

A community based police force ( instead of us vs them, us for them) and a not for profit prison system that is focused on rehabilitation and real justice is where we need to get.

My utmost respect for the brave men and women who continue thru this turmoil to protect and serve their communities. Stay safe.

"Dol-Fan Dupree wrote:

Is one of those books you read "How to Argue with a Liberal and Win!"? Because that is how you are talking.

I don't need to read a book on how to win an argument, I'm doing quite well right now without one.

"Puka-head wrote:

LInstead of a "war" on drugs or a "war" on crime, how about a "war" on poverty?

We had that under LBJ. We lost.

"Rick 1966 wrote:

I don't need to read a book on how to win an argument, I'm doing quite well right now without one.

Please keep this thread on topic. The issue at hand is bigger than personal victories in an online forum.
Thanks.

"Galant wrote:

Please keep this thread on topic. The issue at hand is bigger than personal victories in an online forum.
Thanks.

If a man argues that MLK didn't actually support non-violence, he's already lost the argument before anyone else says anything. It was what the man lived and died for.

"Rick 1966 wrote:

If a man argues that MLK didn't actually support non-violence, he's already lost the argument before anyone else says anything. It was what the man lived and died for.

Either way, it's not going to advance this discussion, and that's my main concern here.

Let's do our best to try to keep this progressing and not get stuck, or start directing comments at posters.

Thanks.

If Miami is going to continue to play like they did today please stay inside the tunnel till the seasons over that’s was a bad showing today!!

"brandon27 wrote:

These riots and messages are long overdue. Quite frankly it should have happened years and years and years ago because peaceful demonstrations don't work when you're the minority of the power struggle. Honestly, it's that stance that enables the systemic problem to persist and really prompts the need for these messages and protests. I don't care what they've done in the past; any criminal record at all doesn't justify their MURDER for an unrelated incident.
.

So more hate and violence should counter that which its trying solve? Most of these riots are younger WHITE males that would act out anyway as some troublesome teenagers do. Most them have no idea what it means to be a different color. That being said, the only thing "systemic" about the current situation, is that we have governing bodies along with digital/media outlets pushing the fact this is somehow entrained in all of our culture. It goes against the whole idea of individuality in principal. Until we stop categorizing and labeling, none of our issues are going to be solved. The core issue is that some bodies FEED off of this negative energy and will weaponize it for political/economical gain. Which lands us the core answer, there will always be SOME humans that do things (good or evil) that will benefit them. If we truly want to end this, we need to stop labeling each other. "White-Privilege" being the trigger word of the year is so mind-bogging and hypocritical of everyone that thinks we should treat everyone the same.

"Galant wrote:

Either way, it's not going to advance this discussion, and that's my main concern here.

Let's do our best to try to keep this progressing and not get stuck, or start directing comments at posters.

Thanks.

I don't know how you have a constructive discussion with someone when you can't agree on the facts of history. If we each have our own individual idea of what actually happened, we will never agree on anything, including what color the sky is or what direction the sun rises in the morning. MLK was the greatest civil rights leader of modern history. The man understood that making African-Americans perceived as a threat by whites in the US would be counter-productive, would make them react out of fear of the "other," that which was not like them. That fear is natural, evolutionary adaptation. Instead, he shamed them by making see the results of the policies they supported and the people they voted for, made them see the police brutality and the racist violence, and made clear that the African Americans were not the ones perpetrating the violence, that they were not their racist stereotype.

It's a damned shame the lessons he taught have been forgotten.

"Rick 1966 wrote:

I don't know how you have a constructive discussion with someone when you can't agree on the facts of history. If we each have our own individual idea of what actually happened, we will never agree on anything, including what color the sky is or what direction the sun rises in the morning. MLK was the greatest civil rights leader of modern history. The man understood that making African-Americans perceived as a threat by whites in the US would be counter-productive, would make them react out of fear of the "other," that which was not like them. That fear is natural, evolutionary adaptation. Instead, he shamed them by making see the results of the policies they supported and the people they voted for, made them see the police brutality and the racist violence, and made clear that the African Americans were not the ones perpetrating the violence, that they were not their racist stereotype.

It's a damned shame the lessons he taught have been forgotten.

I think this is precisely one of the problems that makes this issue difficult to discuss. There are distinct viewpoints some odd which are opposed and entrenched. Part of the question is how to get people on the same page or navigate around the areas that can't be resolved.

The question of racism/ black deaths is multi faceted. Clearly a lot of black people are concerned and even in fear. That needs to be acknowledged and addressed. It also seems clear that some effort is going to need to be made to improve policing methods. Then there are clearly some other groups that want to act as aggravating factors. Those are going to need to be separated out.

I think Americans are going to need to come together to find multiple points of common ground where they can press for change. A greater unity built of small victories and positive changes can bring clarity and overcome the muddy waters that most people are stuck in.

A conversation between people motivated to do that can help achieve it, I think. And it's something that can be done.

"Puka-head wrote:

Let me just say, two wrongs don't make a right. It's just two wrongs.
The real issue is the Private prison system and the "war" on drugs. Private prisons create a demand for prisoners, that's the profit. More prisoners, more money. More money, more politicians on the payroll. The "war" on drugs created an para military police force armed to the teeth and empowered to shoot first and ask questions later. Poor people in general, minority neighborhoods in particular are low hanging fruit under this system. We incarcerated 1 million people a year for possession of a plant until recent legalization slowed those numbers, but it's still happening. Instead of a "war" on drugs or a "war" on crime, how about a "war" on poverty?

A community based police force ( instead of us vs them, us for them) and a not for profit prison system that is focused on rehabilitation and real justice is where we need to get.

My utmost respect for the brave men and women who continue thru this turmoil to protect and serve their communities. Stay safe.

Don’t forget about the abuse of the bogus civil forfeiture scam that allows the police to steal money and property to add to the police war chest.

"Rick 1966 wrote:

If a man argues that MLK didn't actually support non-violence, he's already lost the argument before anyone else says anything. It was what the man lived and died for.

I never said he didn't "support" non-violence.

It is not that black and white as non-violence vs violence. He saw the reason for both of them.

He didn't live and die for non-violence. He had lived and died for his dream of racial equality. It is in his "I have a dream" speech.

Non-violence was a tactic he thought would work to get the sympathies of enough people on the side he was going for.

"M1NDCRlME wrote:

Don’t forget about the abuse of the bogus civil forfeiture scam that allows the police to steal money and property to add to the police war chest.

**** civil forfeiture. I don't understand why this isn't a bigger deal.

"Rick 1966 wrote:

We had that under LBJ. We lost.

WE didn't lose. We quit

"Rick 1966 wrote:

We had that under LBJ. We lost.

Are you suggesting we not try to figure out the problem of poverty in America because we failed 50 years ago?

"Puka-head wrote:

The real issue is the Private prison system and the "war" on drugs. Private prisons create a demand for prisoners, that's the profit. More prisoners, more money. More money, more politicians on the payroll.

That's not entirely true- at least the part about "private" prisons being the source of the problem. Nobody goes to jail if a judge doesn't send them there, and the judge doesn't do that if there aren't sentencing mandates to base his decision on.

As a former corrections officer in multiple SC state prisons, I saw kids in there for 5+ years for a handful of drugs. If it's pot, maybe it earns you 1 year...meth 2 years...coke 5 years. All for the same amounts and all mandatory minimums that completely ties the judge's hands. Only, it's not the judge sending these folks to jail...that's not how the system works (especially under COVID). You have that little baggie of coke and you're facing 5 years, and you spend 12+ months in county lockup because the bond is so ridiculously high due to a different set of mandatory minimums.

As you sit there, you lost your job, your wife, and basically anything that makes you feel normal, while the prosecutor keeps throwing offers your way. Plea to a lesser charge and we'll only give you 4 years.....or only 2.5....last chance, take this offer and go home tomorrow with time served. It's a great deal, right? So you take it. But now you're a convicted felon, and those mandatory minimums triple for a 2nd time offender.

Three years later, you're sober and have nothing to do with drugs anymore. But you're in your hommie's car and get pulled over for not 100% completely stopping at a stop sign, and the cop wants to search the vehicle. He finds a little baggie of meth and nobody seems to know who's it is...so the cop runs records and see you're a prior offender. You go to jail, your friend who owned the meth goes home, and now you're back in the game. Plea to 8 years and we'll transfer you to jail this week...what about 7 years? Five years? It's a game you just can't win even though you've never had a trial or had a judge call you guilty.

And when we make more offenders in a certain area, the problem warrants higher police protection in that area as well. So now folks are stopped at a much higher rate, they have negative interactions with the police and ultimately, more interactions turn violent. It creates this cyclone of arrests, pleas, stops and more arrests for people who aren't inherently bad...and it sends them to prison with some truly terrifying folks. If you do two years in prison, let's say, you'll come out with an entirely different belief system because of what you had to do in order to survive. You've joined a gang, you've participated in hundreds of minor jail crimes just to avoid getting your brains bashed in and your sense of right/wrong is nothing compared to when you got locked up.

Because if you say, "Woah, I'm not a convict....I don't want anything to do with that stuff," that tells everyone that you're weak, you're scared and that they can walk all over you and take everything you have at any time. After your first few beat downs, robberies and rapes, you'll quickly make the wrong types of friends to make it stop....and the guards can't protect you. If you tell on someone, there's a chance that you're going to get stabbed in the shower and bleed out before a guard even knows what happened...so there's zero avoiding a complete life-change of your moral compass, you will become a hardened criminal regardless of why you're locked up. Combine that with the new levels of difficulty you face on the streets and life as you knew it is over- minimum wage or more crime are your only two viable options, and only one pays enough to survive.

Due to mandatory minimums and shady plea deals, I knew inmates who received 5 years for driving without a license (while taking his kid to the ER), 15 years for shoplifting (after 7 or 8 plea deals- with a petty crime becoming an automatic felony for repeat offenders) and 50 years for drug possession (it was a trunk full of weed, but still...50 years?). And maybe you say, well it serves those guys right...why'd he shoplift 8 times and get caught? Because he couldn't get a job over being caught shoplifting and he had to eat! That person got 15 years for stealing a gas station sandwich and a soda due to mandatory minimums.

Our justice system turns law breakers into convicts and repeat offenders, simply because it's so ridiculous easy to violate probation or parole and you stay "marked" for life. Once you plea to that felon title, it's pretty much game over for life unless someone gives you serious tools to reinvent yourself in an entirely different area. Is that really justice? Or is it systematic abuse that creates the very criminals we're supposed to be rehabilitating...

So again- it's not private prisons creating this problem. It's the entire justice system that's extremely efficient at locking people up and ensuring they stay "in the system" the majority of their lives. The real problem is not the judges or the cops or even the lawyers, but state politicians that you don't know by name that essentially wield incredible power over criminal justice without understanding even the most basic of concepts of the laws they pass.

Now, here's the fun part...let's say you personally want to change this. After I quit working for the prisons, I met with my local state senator in the capital in Columbia and he took me out to lunch. He had a personal grudge against the head of our prison system so I was an ally, and I thought that maybe meeting with him can make a real difference. We talked for an hour and I told him all about rampant abuse within the prison system that's caused by broken laws and unfair treatment, and he told me that my issues were truly a lost cause.

Why? He explained how laws actually work in South Carolina- one senator holds relatively zero power on his own. So you have to find allies by voting on their pet projects and after several years, you may be in a position of enough power to where others actually listen to your ideas. Meanwhile, you're hearing from special interest groups and lobbyists daily with tons of money floating around to "change your opinions", meaning that these lawmaker's moral compasses aren't much better than the average inmate.

I personally thought about running for state senate over prison reform, but I quickly realized that nobody understands the basis of why our justice system is so broken. People think, tougher laws against criminals...that has to be good, right? No, it's really not. Tougher laws are horrible and it turns decent men into monsters who have to fight to survive...and that's when they're not in jail! The goal should be to truly rehabilitate and lower overall crime rates by giving these folks a future....not stripping away any hope that they'd ever have of being able to feed a family.

That's depressing.

http://cjpp.law.harvard.edu/assets/Massachusetts-Racial-Disparity-Report-FINAL.pdf

According to 2016 data from the Massachusetts Sentencing Commission, 655 of every 100,000 Black people in Massachusetts are in prison. Meanwhile, the state locks up 82 of its white citizens for every 100,000 who reside in the state. While an eight-to-one racial disparity might seem like a lot for one criminal justice system, nationwide, African Americans are imprisoned at almost six times the rate of white people. So, in 2016, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Ralph Gants asked Harvard researchers to “take a hard look at how we can better fulfill our promise to provide equal justice for every litigant.”

"People of color in Massachusetts are substantially more likely to be arrested and charged with a crime at all, and thus are more likely to be convicted and incarcerated on average even though conviction and incarceration rates are similar across race once charged"

"Even after accounting for case severity and a host of other factors, Black and Latinx defendants charged with drug and weapons crimes are more likely to be convicted and sentenced to incarceration and they also receive substantially longer incarceration sentences than similarly situated White defendants. Taken together, these results indicate that disparities in cases that involve serious drug and weapons crimes drive the overall disparities in incarceration in the Massachusetts criminal system."

"Superior Court cases with Black and Latinx defendants are more likely to include a charge that carries a mandatory minimum incarceration sentence. Indeed, cases involving Latinx defendants are twice as likely to include a mandatory minimum charge than cases involving White defendants. White defendants are also proportionally less likely to ultimately receive a sentence that is consistent with the mandatory minimum, indicating that they are more likely to be given a plea deal that does not include the mandatory minimum charge."

Those are a few excerpts. Conclusion was the system is racist from top to bottom. But we know that. Now there is a report from Harvard proving it.

"KeyFin wrote:

That's not entirely true- at least the part about "private" prisons being the source of the problem. Nobody goes to jail if a judge doesn't send them there, and the judge doesn't do that if there aren't sentencing mandates to base his decision on.

As a former corrections officer in multiple SC state prisons, I saw kids in there for 5+ years for a handful of drugs. If it's pot, maybe it earns you 1 year...meth 2 years...coke 5 years. All for the same amounts and all mandatory minimums that completely ties the judge's hands. Only, it's not the judge sending these folks to jail...that's not how the system works (especially under COVID). You have that little baggie of coke and you're facing 5 years, and you spend 12+ months in county lockup because the bond is so ridiculously high due to a different set of mandatory minimums.

As you sit there, you lost your job, your wife, and basically anything that makes you feel normal, while the prosecutor keeps throwing offers your way. Plea to a lesser charge and we'll only give you 4 years.....or only 2.5....last chance, take this offer and go home tomorrow with time served. It's a great deal, right? So you take it. But now you're a convicted felon, and those mandatory minimums triple for a 2nd time offender.

Three years later, you're sober and have nothing to do with drugs anymore. But you're in your hommie's car and get pulled over for not 100% completely stopping at a stop sign, and the cop wants to search the vehicle. He finds a little baggie of meth and nobody seems to know who's it is...so the cop runs records and see you're a prior offender. You go to jail, your friend who owned the meth goes home, and now you're back in the game. Plea to 8 years and we'll transfer you to jail this week...what about 7 years? Five years? It's a game you just can't win even though you've never had a trial or had a judge call you guilty.

And when we make more offenders in a certain area, the problem warrants higher police protection in that area as well. So now folks are stopped at a much higher rate, they have negative interactions with the police and ultimately, more interactions turn violent. It creates this cyclone of arrests, pleas, stops and more arrests for people who aren't inherently bad...and it sends them to prison with some truly terrifying folks. If you do two years in prison, let's say, you'll come out with an entirely different belief system because of what you had to do in order to survive. You've joined a gang, you've participated in hundreds of minor jail crimes just to avoid getting your brains bashed in and your sense of right/wrong is nothing compared to when you got locked up.

Because if you say, "Woah, I'm not a convict....I don't want anything to do with that stuff," that tells everyone that you're weak, you're scared and that they can walk all over you and take everything you have at any time. After your first few beat downs, robberies and rapes, you'll quickly make the wrong types of friends to make it stop....and the guards can't protect you. If you tell on someone, there's a chance that you're going to get stabbed in the shower and bleed out before a guard even knows what happened...so there's zero avoiding a complete life-change of your moral compass, you will become a hardened criminal regardless of why you're locked up. Combine that with the new levels of difficulty you face on the streets and life as you knew it is over- minimum wage or more crime are your only two viable options, and only one pays enough to survive.

Due to mandatory minimums and shady plea deals, I knew inmates who received 5 years for driving without a license (while taking his kid to the ER), 15 years for shoplifting (after 7 or 8 plea deals- with a petty crime becoming an automatic felony for repeat offenders) and 50 years for drug possession (it was a trunk full of weed, but still...50 years?). And maybe you say, well it serves those guys right...why'd he shoplift 8 times and get caught? Because he couldn't get a job over being caught shoplifting and he had to eat! That person got 15 years for stealing a gas station sandwich and a soda due to mandatory minimums.

Our justice system turns law breakers into convicts and repeat offenders, simply because it's so ridiculous easy to violate probation or parole and you stay "marked" for life. Once you plea to that felon title, it's pretty much game over for life unless someone gives you serious tools to reinvent yourself in an entirely different area. Is that really justice? Or is it systematic abuse that creates the very criminals we're supposed to be rehabilitating...

So again- it's not private prisons creating this problem. It's the entire justice system that's extremely efficient at locking people up and ensuring they stay "in the system" the majority of their lives. The real problem is not the judges or the cops or even the lawyers, but state politicians that you don't know by name that essentially wield incredible power over criminal justice without understanding even the most basic of concepts of the laws they pass.

The state politicians are funded by the private prisons which many do have contracts that the state has to keep them at a certain percentage of the capacity.

I would argue that one of the reasons the entire justice system is extremely efficient at locking up people and ensuring they stay "In the system" is due to the political power of the private prison lobby, which spends a lot of money to make sure that system is extremely efficient at keeping their pockets lined with money.

"brandon27 wrote:

Past transgressions don't justify being KILLED by police officers. People make mistakes and are capable of change. Yes, it would be a cause for concern if you're a police officer and heighten your awareness, but it doesn't mean you shoot someone 6 or 7 times in the back nor does it justify it in any way, so I'm not sure why people try using that, or try to mitigate these victims as "martyrs". That's not focusing on the actual issue here, the actual issue here is how and why they were killed, not things that happened several years prior unrelated to the incident at hand. That's just enabling the murderers.

The deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were absolutely horrible. I don't care what position you take on the political spectrum left or right, no one in their right mind will attempt to rationalize or justify their deaths. To do so would be just idiotic. Based on my own professional law enforcement experience in the military, the charges filed against Derek Chauvin were indeed justified and in my own personal opinion he should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. As to the death of Breonna Taylor, that investigation needs to go all the way to the top...

-A "no knock warrant": What local, state, federal law authorized this type of warrant?
-What intelligence did the Louisville Police have that indicate Jamarcus Glover was Taylor's home to issue the warrant?
-What intelligence did the Louisville Police have on who else besides Glover was in Taylor's home?
-What risk assessment was evaluated on potentially armed/unarmed persons at said residence?

To a degree, I don't blame the officers as much as the operation they were ordered to execute. Being in the army, you can have an OP O go south due to bad intelligence. You can't blame the soldiers executing the op...they're just trying to survive and the same goes with these police officers to a degree. You can't blame the officers that carried out this order without first questioning those who issued that order. Bottom line, who ever screwed this up also needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

These riots and messages are long overdue. Quite frankly it should have happened years and years and years ago because peaceful demonstrations don't work when you're the minority of the power struggle. Honestly, it's that stance that enables the systemic problem to persist and really prompts the need for these messages and protests. I don't care what they've done in the past; any criminal record at all doesn't justify their MURDER for an unrelated incident.

I have to respectfully disagree with you here Brandon. There have been other social justice issues that were rectified by means of peaceful protest, Women's Suffrage and the Civil Rights come to mind.

Susan B Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Alice Paul are just a few examples of women who through non-violent civil disobedience and protest effected change to social norms and the adoption of 19th Amendment to the Constitution, granting women the right to vote. There were no riots, there was no looting, there was no violence on the part of the women who protested. They, in that particular point in time of social norms, were in the minority and had no power. That was reserved to men and yet, they fought through peaceful protest for their right to vote.

The civil rights movement of the 60's was led and inspired by the likes of Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, Rosa Parks and Malcolm X. While King and Evers urged peaceful demonstration and non-violent civil disobedience, Malcom X aligned himself initially with Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam who asserted that violence was an acceptable form of protest with Malcom X being one of its prominent figures and his famous quote "By any means necessary". It wasn't until Malcom X's pilgrimage to Mecca during the Haj did he learn that many of the beliefs he learned from the Nation of Islam were in direct conflict with true Islam and left the nation of Islam, following suit with MLK in peaceful protest. The Greensboro Sit-in, The Selma March, the March of Washington all led to other non-violent protests, marches and sit ins that resulted in the Civil Rights Act.

Rioting, looting, violence are not at all necessary to effect social change if your message and your cause or grounded in fact and morally sound.

As for the Dolphins; I'm glad they're doing what they're doing. I doubt it leads to any changes because I don't believe the system wants, or will allow it to change within the so called united states of america and to me, trying to diminish these individuals as "martyr's" as it's been put here shows that IMO because its trying to diminish the actual issue at hand here, by looking the other way and pointing elsewhere. You don't have to be a saint or perfect to be a victim. I think teams decision, and the decision of athletes in general is because of how noticeable their platform is. It reaches a massive audience to try and draw attention to an issue that continues to be ignored by those who can change it. I hope they continue to do so across all major league sports until some change happens. I dont care who it inconveniences or upsets.

"So called United States of America"...divisive language such as this does little to effect social change and constructive dialogue as it demonstrates an already set in stone mindset. Now this is not a shot at you personally Brandon so please don't take it that way. This may be your feelings; I know it's certainly the feeling of many in the US but as long as we are incapable of actually extending the olive branch and try to have an open, candid, objective and constructive discussion to address regresses on all sides of the argument, no positive change will ever come.

I personally feel that black lives matter...
I personally feel that ALL black lives matter...
I personally feel that ALL lives matter...including "yours"

Life is life; people are people and EVERY person in the US has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If we as the human race can't all agree to this simple principle, then how in the world are we ever going to mend the differences that separate us?

Sadly, political rancor ad posturing trumps social healing and recovery. If it didn't, there wouldn't be the need for the Dolphins to stay in the locker room. People would actually talk WITH one another instead of talking AT one another.

"Dol-Fan Dupree wrote:

The state politicians are funded by the private prisons which many do have contracts that the state has to keep them at a certain percentage of the capacity.

I would argue that one of the reasons the entire justice system is extremely efficient at locking up people and ensuring they stay "In the system" is due to the political power of the private prison lobby, which spends a lot of money to make sure that system is extremely efficient at keeping their pockets lined with money.

:link: ???

"KeyFin wrote:

That's not entirely true- at least the part about "private" prisons being the source of the problem. Nobody goes to jail if a judge doesn't send them there, and the judge doesn't do that if there aren't sentencing mandates to base his decision on.

As a former corrections officer in multiple SC state prisons, I saw kids in there for 5+ years for a handful of drugs. If it's pot, maybe it earns you 1 year...meth 2 years...coke 5 years. All for the same amounts and all mandatory minimums that completely ties the judge's hands. Only, it's not the judge sending these folks to jail...that's not how the system works (especially under COVID). You have that little baggie of coke and you're facing 5 years, and you spend 12+ months in county lockup because the bond is so ridiculously high due to a different set of mandatory minimums.

As you sit there, you lost your job, your wife, and basically anything that makes you feel normal, while the prosecutor keeps throwing offers your way. Plea to a lesser charge and we'll only give you 4 years.....or only 2.5....last chance, take this offer and go home tomorrow with time served. It's a great deal, right? So you take it. But now you're a convicted felon, and those mandatory minimums triple for a 2nd time offender.

Three years later, you're sober and have nothing to do with drugs anymore. But you're in your hommie's car and get pulled over for not 100% completely stopping at a stop sign, and the cop wants to search the vehicle. He finds a little baggie of meth and nobody seems to know who's it is...so the cop runs records and see you're a prior offender. You go to jail, your friend who owned the meth goes home, and now you're back in the game. Plea to 8 years and we'll transfer you to jail this week...what about 7 years? Five years? It's a game you just can't win even though you've never had a trial or had a judge call you guilty.

And when we make more offenders in a certain area, the problem warrants higher police protection in that area as well. So now folks are stopped at a much higher rate, they have negative interactions with the police and ultimately, more interactions turn violent. It creates this cyclone of arrests, pleas, stops and more arrests for people who aren't inherently bad...and it sends them to prison with some truly terrifying folks. If you do two years in prison, let's say, you'll come out with an entirely different belief system because of what you had to do in order to survive. You've joined a gang, you've participated in hundreds of minor jail crimes just to avoid getting your brains bashed in and your sense of right/wrong is nothing compared to when you got locked up.

Because if you say, "Woah, I'm not a convict....I don't want anything to do with that stuff," that tells everyone that you're weak, you're scared and that they can walk all over you and take everything you have at any time. After your first few beat downs, robberies and rapes, you'll quickly make the wrong types of friends to make it stop....and the guards can't protect you. If you tell on someone, there's a chance that you're going to get stabbed in the shower and bleed out before a guard even knows what happened...so there's zero avoiding a complete life-change of your moral compass, you will become a hardened criminal regardless of why you're locked up. Combine that with the new levels of difficulty you face on the streets and life as you knew it is over- minimum wage or more crime are your only two viable options, and only one pays enough to survive.

Due to mandatory minimums and shady plea deals, I knew inmates who received 5 years for driving without a license (while taking his kid to the ER), 15 years for shoplifting (after 7 or 8 plea deals- with a petty crime becoming an automatic felony for repeat offenders) and 50 years for drug possession (it was a trunk full of weed, but still...50 years?). And maybe you say, well it serves those guys right...why'd he shoplift 8 times and get caught? Because he couldn't get a job over being caught shoplifting and he had to eat! That person got 15 years for stealing a gas station sandwich and a soda due to mandatory minimums.

Our justice system turns law breakers into convicts and repeat offenders, simply because it's so ridiculous easy to violate probation or parole and you stay "marked" for life. Once you plea to that felon title, it's pretty much game over for life unless someone gives you serious tools to reinvent yourself in an entirely different area. Is that really justice? Or is it systematic abuse that creates the very criminals we're supposed to be rehabilitating...

So again- it's not private prisons creating this problem. It's the entire justice system that's extremely efficient at locking people up and ensuring they stay "in the system" the majority of their lives. The real problem is not the judges or the cops or even the lawyers, but state politicians that you don't know by name that essentially wield incredible power over criminal justice without understanding even the most basic of concepts of the laws they pass.

Where is the personal responsibility? If you don't want to go to prison for drugs, here's an idea, don't do drugs. If you don't want to get caught again, don't hang out with people who do drugs as this might just not be the best people to get you're life moving in the right direction. Why is it always someone else's fault. Who's MAKING them commit these crimes? Twisting their arms? Forcing them? There's an old saying that is still true. Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.

In the Floyd case he's high on meth and fentanyl. Was put into the cop car where he became enraged and was taken out of the car to get him under control (didn't see any of that until recent tapes have come out). Maybe he shouldn't have stuck a gun in a pregnant lady's belly when he robbed her (another ex con). And yes his violent past does count when they run his name and find out he's a danger. Maybe his life choices could have been better and he wouldn't have been in the situation he was in. Where's the personal accountability for his actions that directly led him to his path. Not excusing that the cop should have or could have handled it differently. Floyd put himself in that situation being a junkie and a armed robber. But now he's got portraits painted of him. I guess it's the systems fault.

Rashard Brooks was wasted and passed out in a Wendy's drive thru. Ex con on parole realizes he's going back to jail and fights 2 cops over powering them. Steals one of their weapons. Tries to shoot a cop in the face with weapon. Those were his choices that led him down that path. No one made him pass out, beat up 2 cops and steal a weapon and tried to shoot the cop with said weapon. He got shot because the cop was racist I guess. None of the event prior matter. Where's the personal accountability for his actions??

I guess it's always the "systems fault" now, because there just isn't any personal responsibility or self control. It's just easier to blame it on the "system" and "oppression" then to look at this and say these martyres brought most of it down around their heads by their personal actions. If either of them hadn't been high and physically fought the police, guess what??? they wouldn't be dead now. But it's racism and the systems fault. That's the easy answer now.

"The_Dark_Knight wrote:

:link: ???

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/the-cold-hard-facts-about-americas-private-prison-system

here is an opinion piece on it.

I should have been more clear in the sense that they have a guarenteed occapancy rate that the state has to pay.

Unless you want a link to the prison here that is.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/how-for-profit-prisons-have-become-the-biggest-lobby-no-one-is-talking-about/