I think I'll join the NAAWP.

I won't disagree that poverty correlates to incarceration, only because it heightens the prospect someone will steal or rob someone and increase the desire to turn to drugs etc.
But racism is a deference to a particular race not income. Just because there may be more blacks in poverty, isn't the same as saying there is CURRENTLY institutional racism.
Having said that, there are many very poor countries with low crime rates, so not sure if it's more a sociological problem then it is a poverty problem. But I guess that's another thread LOL.

oh wow!.. so you will be running for Senate?

Crime(whether black or white) has more to do with family break downs then poverty. Its more related to society and not income. Here is an explanation of why I think this is true.

Even if you are living at the poverty level here in the U.S., you have much more then most people in other countries. In the poorest "projects" you will still find most with T.V.'s and cellphones(unless they have been stolen LOL ).
If you go to a very poor town in say Ecuador , where poor farmers live off the land and don't expect anything more then what they get from the land.
There is very little need for crime when your expectations are low and your morals are high from how you are raised.

On the other hand, if you have low morals and are raised that you are entitled to Ipads, Iphones and x-boxes, without earning them, you get high crime.

Just a thought.

Crime is a severe problem in Ecuador. Crimes against U.S. citizens in the past year have ranged from petty theft to violent offenses, including armed robbery, home invasion, sexual assault, and several instances of murder and attempted murder. Very low rates of apprehension and conviction of criminals � due to limited police and judicial resources � contribute to Ecuador�s high crime rate.

http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1106.html#crime


however, it was posted in another thread, and I Believe it to be true

that COLLECTIVIST cultures tend to be less negatively impacted in terms of crime,, by poverty

than INDIVIDUALISTIC cultures tend to be


probably because the value of humans comes more as a function of their PLACE as a MEMBER OF SOCITY in collectivism, decreasing the desire to climb atop of or ignore the needs and wants of others, because the focus is the community as a whole

where as the value of humans in individualism comes from how they RANK compared to others,,,increasing the temptation to climb atop of others and ignore their needs and wants to focus solely on our own

Felons wouldn't be doing the time if they didn't do the crime in the first place.

not an absolute truth,


people are 'wrongfully' convicted, and people are also just never caught

there are those not guilty labeled felon, and those involved in felons who are never labeled so because they aren't caught,,,or convicted

no doubt, those committing crimes should EXPECT consequences

but the reality is that money plays a big part in whether they actually RECEIVE Them,,,,

I admit that there have been cases of a person being wrongfully convicted, but I see no evidence that there are enough such cases to invalidate the incarceration statistics.

Yeah... Not so much..


Last year 14,000 people were murdered in Venezuela, three times more than Iraq. Why? Gang warfare. Rory Carroll reports on how one group is trying to escape the cycle of violence.

This is Venezuela, where more than 14,000 people were murdered last year, according to human rights groups. That is about three times bloodier than Iraq, which has a similar population. The government does not publish full statistics but says the official murder rate is 48 per 100,000 people, more than double South America's average. Some estimate the rate in Caracas to be as high as 140 per 100,000, making it one of the world's deadliest capitals. Hospital emergency wards overflow, especially at weekends, with bleeding, punctured casualties. Corpses stack up in morgues while grief-stricken relatives gather outside, noses cupped against the smell.

What makes this corner of South America, once best known for oil and beauty queens, a Hobbesian lottery? The short answer is gangs. Young men with guns drop bodies as they battle over turf and drugs in winding, rubbish-strewn streets. The catch-all description for them is malandros, supposedly feral thugs and ne'er-do-wells perpetually at war with themselves and the rest of society. They inhabit, Venezuelans tell you, the land "up there": hillside barrios. Malandros flit across television screens and newspapers as cadavers or hooded suspects paraded by police. Either way they are anonymous cyphers who do not speak, leaving their motivations, their world, incomprehensible to outsiders. A war over a piece of popcorn?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/mar/10/venezuela-caracas-gang-warfare-murder

While another person may be concerned about alleged institutional racism, I am concerned about the institutional godlessness that is a characteristic of criminal gangs.

I repeat: COLLECTIVIST cultures tend to be less negatively impacted in terms of crime,, by poverty

than INDIVIDUALISTIC cultures tend to be



TEND TO BE,, not an absolute

also Venezuela has a slightly higher poverty rate than Iraq as well


interestingly enough , Iraq also has about half the murder rate of the USA,,,,officially

Prisons tend to be breeding grounds for gangs.

TEND TO BE,, not an absolute.

I Agree, many are set up strictly as punitive resources and not as corrective resources,,,

the problems aren't addressed and you just have the same issues in a much smaller space,, people form clicks, just like in the outside world,,,,,but there is not much for them to share except the negative

I am concerned about the institutional godlessness that is characteristic of the culture, the country,,,,the world,,,

Separation of church and state. Government has taken God out of almost everything. Should we be surprised?

my point exactly,, 'godlessness' is not at all the predicator to being institutionalized

only 'lawlessness' by mans standards, which often directly refute and embrace and promote lawlessness by Gods standards,,,

Maybe Ecuador isn't the best example(just pulled it out of the hat) but like any country it shows that people living in the rural areas with closer family ties have less crime then big cities that tend to have more broken homes and social ties.
If you look at Asia and South America etc. where they have a strong tradition of respect of elders and family , most crimes are in big cities AND tend to be committed by gangs or cartel's. These become second "homes" of kids that have no close family or family structure. This can be said of many places including here.

I agree that God and religion may have an impact, but it's usually the parents that teach either the belief in God or the principles of love and respect that religion inspires to their children.

Broken homes destroy or at least diminish the capacity of a child to foster these principles and can lead them to seek principles of another kind from gangs,social media and people that don't have their interests at heart.

It is true that the govt's trend of taking God out of everything sure isn't helping matters, but it's the parents who are responsible for teaching these principles to their kids. With more and more kids being raised in broken homes AND the decrease of public pressure to be "more godly" our crime rates will no doubt increase.

North Korea is a collectivist society...

You wanna live there?

China..

You wanna live there?

Bolivia...

The writing was on the wall. Daubed in white paint on adobe bricks, it read: "Thieves who are caught will be burned alive." The zero-tolerance message can be seen throughout El Alto, a sprawling Altiplano city on a mountain above La Paz.

Lifesize effigies emblazoned with similar threats are strung like scarecrows on lamp-posts and telephone poles. Most depict men but one was festooned with the typical twin plaits and petticoats of a cholita � a traditionally dressed Aymara woman. A local shopkeeper � an Aymara woman with gold-rimmed front teeth � confirmed the warning. "If we catch thieves here, we kill them," she said.

It is not an empty threat: according to the UN office of the high commissioner for human rights in Bolivia, nine people were killed in 30 lynchings in the first 10 months of 2011.The figures marked a "notable decrease" compared to previous years, the annual report noted. Victims generally are suspected thieves who are tied to a post to be stripped, beaten and burned. The police sometimes intervene � but they are often outnumbered by the mob � and sometimes become victims themselves.

Such vigilantism is normally a spontaneous response to high levels of crime, but an Aymara leader in El Alto is now calling for harsh punishments to be meted under the auspices of community justice laws enshrined in President Evo Morales's 2009 constitution.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/dec/12/crime-bolivia

There is some collectivist community justice..

Is that what you want here? Community Justice Laws where we burn or lynch thieves?

Cuba...

How would you like to live there?

Black Cubans still struggle against discrimination

�More than half a century ago, Fidel decreed the elimination of racism,� said Leonardo Calvo Cardenas. But �this just made the problem deeper and more complex.�

�We have a message for the American left, especially the African American left,� he said. �There are forgotten Cubans, invisible Cubans, many of them Afro-Cubans, many of them not. They do not live in the utopia that some Americans still imagine. They live in Cuba.�

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2013/06/22/commentary/black-cubans-still-struggle-against-discrimination/#.Uix_Kj_Ha-U

I suggest you take a trip a any of these countries I listed and see for yourself how wrong your collectivist utopia really is.