"If people are trying to get into prison, we're doing it wrong."First off, we do have a multi-generational criminal sub-culture in this country and if you're going to pretend we don't, then I don't think we're going to be able to productively discuss this. I'm talking about sub-cultures not the entire culture, okay?The life-skills and attitudes of the people who are best able to survive in a prison environment, or in the sub-culture of the population most likely to be imprisoned, are totally different than the ones necessary to lift oneself out of generational poverty and to survive in a normal functional working society. They are simply not prepared or equipped for that environment, anymore than the typical suburban video-game playing 18 year old is ready for prison instead of college.You are cool. Agree with you 100%. Incarceration should be designed to break cycles of thinking and in extension behavior. Prison by itself is not the problem, our implementation of it is. For some inmates education, training and some form of counseling seem prudent. How do you read someone’s heart though? Some folks just have a “criminal mentality” and none of us can change until we are ready and want it enough to make sure it happens. How do we know when someone is ready to help themselves as opposed to working the system to get back at what landed them in custody in the first place?
What motivates individuals is as varied as our worlds population. I have gone into my county jail for the past few years to help inmates earn their GEDs. Some go after it like they are starving and the books in front of them are hamburgers. Others are just looking for an excuse to get out of their block. Some can’t wait to get on with their life, find a job and work hard. Others get released and are back within 6 months. The only difference is that some are mature enough to say, I do not lIke my situation and will do whatever it takes to change (note they take responsibility). Others say exactly what they think the “authority” wants to hear and as soon as they are out and the door to the jail closes with them on the other side...they are in the wind. What accounts for this difference? The best answer I’ve ever heard is that you have to be sick and tired of being sick and tired.USA needs far more prisons than ever before
Actually, we need to cut the number of prisons in half. We already have more people in prison than nation on this planet. China has four times the population and we have more people in prison than communist China! If you're going to participate in this, you really should read the thread so we don't have to end up beating a dead horse.
That not really true compared to Europe the US has major prison population problem but compared to the world many other countries that have a very high prison population are close to the US level.
When you look at the map it all comes down to poverty. The countries that have more poverty are worse.
You you cannot really look at China because it is communist country.
And even that, is really reversing the causal link.
Crime.... causes.... poverty. People that engage in crime, get fired from their jobs. Don't advance up the economic ladder. End up going to prison, have criminal records, which makes it even more difficult for them to climb the economy ladder.
The implication here is that if we can just eliminate poverty, that crime will go away. That is absolutely false.
You need to eliminate crime, and then poverty will go away.
When people stop engaging in crime, and instead start working for what they want, they'll naturally progress up the economic ladder.
So locking people up, and enforcing the law... and teaching right and wrong in the public, that there is no excuse for crime.... that is how you end up with people becoming wealthy. Because they'll start working lawfully for what they want.
The problem is morals, and a lack of law enforcement. We need to double the size of our police force, and start coming down hard on crime.
Then poverty will decline.
Additionally, we need to stop encouraging unwed mothers, and stop subsidizing the breakup of the family. That also has a direct clear impact on crime, which has a direct impact on poverty.
Those are the solutions. Family values, and enforcing the law.
what they need to do is send them to a military school that teaches education and rehab them than give them a TV and gym to workout in prison to get big and strong.
If you don’t get high school you are going to get low paying job getting less than 10 dollars flipping burgers, working at car wash ,taking out the trash, being house cleaner or working at dishwasher in fast food or restaurant.
You well lack of education and good paying job and you will be doing crime to support your self.
That's not true. I know people who worked those jobs, without education, and didn't need to do crime to support themselves.
ME... for example.
I have no education. I have no training. No skills. No nothing.
I have worked flipping burgers, working a car wash, taking out trash, and so on.
Never once did I think.... oh I need to engage in crime to support myself!
By the way, cleaning houses is not a low pay job. What the heck are you talking about? You realize that house cleaners of any decent reputation, make almost $50/hour? How much they make a year, only is dependent on how many houses they are willing to do a day.
Now it takes work. You got to work at it. But you clean 3 houses a day, putting in 2 to 3 hours at each house, that's $200, to $400 per day. You do that 5 days a week, that's $2,000 a week, or $100,000 a year.
Ask me how I know that? I know two women that do that. There is only one reason they don't make $100,000 a year, and it simply because.... they don't want to. They would rather do fewer houses, and have time with their family.
But that actually illustrates my point. Anyone in this country, even ex-convicts, can be wealthy. It's a matter of choice. If you go and clean houses, you can make good money.
The problem isn't this mythology that people can't earn enough and thus.... magically... they just simply have no choice but to commit crime! .... No. The problem is, people don't want to work.
It's that simple. They commit crime, because they simply have no morals and think they are "entitled" to what they want in life. That is it. All that "they have no choice!" crap is made up left-wing nonsense.
And you know what, most of the the students that have succeeded were waiting trial for violent crimes ranging from murder to rape to human trafficking. You know who does consistently poorly? Guys who are serving 6 months for a DWI/not having the money or wisdom to hire a decent lawyer.
So what’s the answer? I help who is in front of me and hope they can make this the first step of positive change. I make no judgements because I have no idea what their history or specific circumstances are and I hope that if I ever found myself at the bottom of the barrel, someone would extend a hand to help me help myself.
Now those skills and attitudes can be learned and adopted, but it takes a lot of effort and some good guidance by people that the individual is willing to listen to.
And it's hard to take even good advice from someone you know would never last a day in the environment you've been surviving in for years.
I completely disagree with you. Because we have people here, that immigrate here from other countries, where their parents, their grand parents, and their great grand parents, were all in poverty.
They come to the US, they open a business, they make money, and they become wealthy.
How did they do that? Where did those magical skills to be "prepared or equipped for that environment".... when they came from an entirely different country, with different culture, with different language..... how did that happen?
Explain, I want you to explain to me, why poor people, from poor countries, with poor parents and poor grand parents, who came from poor people.... can come to this country, and become wealthy?
How does that happen? Where did their life-skills and attitude come from to lift themselves out of Generational poverty?
Is there something 'magic' about poverty in other countries that gives them all the skills and attitudes they need, that poverty here in the US does not bestow on them?
I met a couple from Laos. They fled socialists in Laos, and came to the US. Laos is 129th on the Economic Freedom index.
So they came here, without knowing English. They got a job, while they learned English. Then after this couple learned English, they learned how to do CNC Machining, and got jobs earning $50,000 a year, each one. So their combined income was almost $100,000 a year.
.... from Laos.... where the AVERAGE income.... is just above McDonald's wages. I think they are up to what.... $20,000 a year is the average income in Laos? That's the average. Meaning 50% of the country earns less than that.
From Laos... with no recognized US education... learning English as a second language.... with no family here in the US. Just two people, a Husband, and a Wife, from a 3rd world country.....
Six figure income.
Explain? Please explain that. Where did their magical attitudes and life-skills to lift themselves out of generational poverty, come from?
And how is it that a person in the US, going to a US public school, that knows English natively..... can't get the life-skills and attitude to life themselves out of generational poverty, but a impoverished immigrant can?
How does that work? Explain?
And by the way, that is one of dozens of stories I can tell.
How many dozens of people in our own nation, lifted themselves out of generational poverty? Chris Gardner?
Chris Gardner - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
This is man that was homeless. How did he magically gain the ability to lift himself out of generational poverty? Other than working very hard, and following the law..... what was the magic?
So no I don't buy that argument. Sorry, but that is wrong.
Those immigrants you talk about for the most part don't come from a culture that has been on welfare for 3 or 4 generations. They may be from a different culture but some of those cultures do value personal responsibility, hard work, and frugality, and some just plain don't.
Not all cultures are equal; some are just simply better than others.
If you never watched your parents or older relatives get up and go to work every day, where are you going to learn that behavior from? What examples are there for you to follow?
Not sure how, but I was under the impression you were arguing the opposite of all that.
Yes, I agree with most of that.
If you never watched your parents or older relatives get up and go to work every day, where are you going to learn that behavior from? What examples are there for you to follow?
Well you don't need an example to follow.
Where do you learn it from?
Proverbs 16:26
"The laborer's appetite works for him; his hunger drives him on."
You don't need an example.
Now don't get me wrong.... obliviously.... OBVIOUSLY... if you have a good example of a work ethic growing up, you'll do better. No question.
But you don't 'need' to have a good example. All you need is to be hungry, and have no other option but to work.
Cut welfare. Throw criminals in prison, or kill them.
When you look around and there is no free lunch anymore, and crime is a bad option because you go to prison for life.....
You'll work. You don't need an example. You'll be hungry, and do what you need to do, to earn some bread.
You realize that this is actually one of the earliest lessons, that was learned from the American colonies?
When they first established a colony, all the food was in a collective, and distributed equally to people. Well the result was, no one wanted to work. No one wanted to plant crops. No one wanted to labor. People were lazy, and complaining their back hurt, and their leg was injured.
The colony faced starvation. So the leadership of the colony decided to divide up the land to all the colonists, and everyone was to own the responsibility of feeding themselves. No more free food.
Shockingly, all the men that were 'sick' magically got up and worked. The people with injured legs, hobbled out into the fields, and started planting. Women and children both, which prior to this was considered taboo to have women and children working the fields... all went out to fields and started working the ground.
The Bible is right: "The laborer's appetite works for him; his hunger drives him on."
You don't need a good model. Yes a good model helps. No question. But people need, is no being fed for free... no more welfare, no more food stamps. And they need society to teach them through law enforcement, that crime is not an option.
Instead, we're doing the exact opposite, and the results are predictable.
Now I agree with you COMPLETELY... that culture matters. Like I mentioned in the other post, my father when he found I had shop lifted a game, that I already owned... he would have tossed me in Juvie. That black 'mother' (not sure how you can be a mother and openly promote theft), was teaching her kids that stealing was perfectly fine if you were not caught.
This is why prisons are so important. We need to make it clear that you will get caught. We need more enforcement. More policing. More tough laws on crime. More criminals executed or tossed in prison.
We need to make it so that, that black mother would NEVER encourage crime, because she knew it would get people in prison or executed.
I watched a 60 minutes years ago, specifically about people who intentionally committed crime, just to get back into prison. If people are trying to get into prison, we're doing it wrong.
Some of the loudest people in the country are demanding government provide free housing, free medical care, free education including college, food stamps (EBT or SNAP or whatever), and almost no guns anywhere.
Some others want to build a wall around it.
What does all of that sound like to you?
Not sure what you mean by people wanting to go to prison for free food, free education and place to stay.
If that was the case homeless people would do crime to get of the cold winter days in far north to get free food and warm prison cell.
I'm just saying it does happen, and fairly routinely. I mean, 60 minutes did a documentary on this. I watched. They talked with people who intentionally committed armed robbery... specifically... to get tossed into prison.
Now as far as the homeless... very very few of the "Homeless" are actually homeless. Most are people who have made being homeless, into a career.
This is normal. Here in Ohio, the local TV station had a reporter track a number of "homeless beggars" and all of them walked blocks away from where they were begging, climbed into a car, and drove to someplace of residence.
The few true real homeless people, are usually people with mental illness. Ironically this is tied to drug use, which the left-wing supports.
But beggars make pretty darn good money. Between $15, and $30 bucks an hour. This is why if you ever watch the guys with the cups... they don't leave the cash in the cups. Watch them. I have. You drop a $5, $10, or $20 in the cup.... they'll wait until you are around the corner, out of view, and quickly slip the money into usually a back pack. Not in their pocket, because you would notice the bulge in their pocket from all the cash. Plus they sometimes are robbed too. So you often see them with backpacks.
But back to the prisons.
The Social Order of the Underworld: How Prison Gangs Govern the American Penal System
Amazing little book about how people in prison gangs, write letters to gangs in other prisons. Make connections between prisons. Even plan out people getting back into prison. It's a fascinating insight into how the system works.
But the point here is that this is all planned out. They know who is getting out when, plan for them to meet up with other people, and have letters of references... kind of like references for a job interview, except they write each other talking about this guy is good for these things, he really good a such-and-such activity, and he'll be like this in prison, and can get smuggled drugs or whatever.
So people openly go back into prison to be with their gangs. This is a real thing.
Well the difference between west coast and Midwest is apples and oranges. If you hit the Midwest and south it is dirt cheap so you can get all those really small meth houses or meth trailer parks.The difference between west coast because of all those Mexicans coming to the US and no housing so those cities on the west coast are really costly now and the meth users and white trash are on the street where in the midwest and south they can buy cheap home or trailer park.
The Appalachian mountains have a lot of pill poppers and meth users but they not homeless because it is dirt cheap to live there.
Also poor down out white people and drug addicts normally steal ,shoplift, theft, fraud or ask people for money well black people rob and shoot people and sadly is violence and hood problem wanting to be gangsters among the black people.
The hip hop and rap music are full of this gangsters are cool and the rappers and hip hop not speaking anti gangsters.
Those cities are going get so costly by year 2050 that not even teacher or nurse will be able to buy home. And all middle class yes even upper middle class will be renting.
The people in the lower class will be on the street or living in rooming houses.
It is media, government and wall street that is lying there is middle class The middle class died in late 80s.
The only way to fix this is stop all immigration. If white people are not having enough kids and the population is going down than only bring in immigration to replace them. The US population should not be going up.
If you want lots and lots of immigration than do away with environment laws and start building homes and cities to lower housing cost. They don’t want city sprawl but want lots and lots of people all over the world moving to those cities. You can’t have it both ways.