You must mean, like, a decade or two before most of us were born?
Who is âweâ? And yes, as a collective country we are clearly better than many other countries in the third world. Doesnât mean many people in our country do horrible things, fomented by guns and anomie and inequality and all the rest.
And things like years in solitary confinement are arguably worse than cutting off peopleâs hands or even capital punishment.
The United Nations considers solitary confinement exceeding 15 days to be torture.[5]
In the United States penal system, more than 20 percent of state and federal prison inmates and 18 percent of local jail inmates are kept in solitary confinement or another form of restrictive housing at some point during their imprisonment.[24] The period of confinement can last from a few days to several decades. According to Homer Venters, former Chief Medical Officer for the New York City jail system, "Solitary confinement is utilised for tens of thousands of people for years at a time.â
The US has one of the very worst criminal justice systems in the world imo. Itâs an incredibly easy system to get into (for some people more than others) and itâs the opposite of rehabilitation.
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We, as a citizenry, are all culpable in not sufficiently holding our cops accountable up until we finally do. And no, I donât think that we are obviously all that much better than the problematically-labeled âthird world.â We jail more people per capita than anyone else, including the âthird world.â So which is it: are âthird worldâ countries less criminal than us, or are we more barbaric than them?
Thank you, microbet, for the assist on solitary confinement, a salient point that had slipped my mind but that absolutely deserves opprobrium. There is so much brutality and such a lack of accountability at so many layers of our system that it is easy to leave big aspects out when highlighting some.
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Over-incarceration is a major problem in the US. The notion that crime is less prevalent and it is safer in the 3rd world because fewer people are incarcerated is ludicrous.
Youâve never been outside the US, have you?
Yes, Iâm the one that hasnât been.
Central America is more dangerous because of over-incarceration in the US. MS13 was exported from Los Angeles to El Salvador. But, forget about the 3rd world for a second. The US is more dangerous than countries with comparable wealth and comparable political and social stability not just in spite of high incarcerations rates, but because of them. Prison in the US makes people much more desperate and often more dangerous.
Lots of times in lots of different situations policing and punishment make things worse.
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I fully agree. That wasnât the point of contention. The argument being made was that the US is less desirable and safer than ~every other country. No point could be made from more of a sheltered perch. CanadaMattâs point was to conflate the US with the worst places on earth because some places no longer provide abortion rights. Itâs preposterous.
I also think that wealth inequality is a huge contributor to the desperation furthered by prison and over-incarceration and punitive systems. Again, none of this means the US is less safe than Guatemala.
Not a mystery why smart, well-meaning people arenât running campaigns when theyâre 19:1 dogs against people who think the Illuminati are shipping kids to the Pizza District, where they are hogtied in a basement for Bill and Hillary to spitroast Pulp Fiction style, and thatâs only if they make it past the first level of NPC corporate sock puppet meowchow dipshits. The strategy has already been previewed on this forum: theyâre going to use their resources to inoculate themselves from the insanity as much as possible which includes fleeing the country entirely.
I believe the discussion that spawned this was about whether or not the US had a worse criminal justice system than most other countries. I think it does.
Should we go into why Guatemala is a more dangerous country than the US? (hint: The US is largely to blame.)
Not quite. It was equating the US with the worst places on the planet because of restricted abortion access in some states. âWeâre already the third world, bro.â Constant and daily terrorizing is par for the course there, and awful though we are, we shouldnât stoop to those levels.
As to the slight offshoot of the US justice system: itâs mostly problematic due to the larger inequities in society. I actually donât think the social structure in the US is comparably stable to Northern Europe: way too much homelessness and extreme poverty here.
Iâll just go. You want to get to the heart of why some parts of Guatemala are extremely dangerous, you should start with United Fruit (aka Chiquita Banana).
The context of the struggle was based on longstanding issues of unfair land distribution; European-descended residents and foreign companies, such as the American United Fruit Company, had dominated control over much of the land, leading to conflicts with the rural poor.
Democratic elections during the Guatemalan Revolution in 1944 and 1951 had brought popular leftist governments to power. A United States-backed coup dâĂ©tat in 1954 installed the military regime of Carlos Castillo Armas, who was followed by a series of right-wing military dictators.
During the 1980s, the Guatemalan military assured almost absolute government power for five years; it had successfully infiltrated and eliminated enemies in every socio-political institution of the nation, including the political, social, and intellectual classes.[17] In the final stage of the civil war, the military developed a parallel, semi-visible, low profile but high-effect, control of Guatemalaâs national life.[18]
It is estimated that 140,000 to 200,000 people were killed or forcefully âdisappearedâ during the conflict, including 40,000 to 50,000 disappearances.
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I also think the risk of getting grassy knoll headshotted would be way higher than normal given my platform*.
*Mine or someone running a campaign similar to mine.
The entire history of occupation, including intra-African feuds preceding European colonial occupation, is about subjugation of the weak to the âdominantâ. Same as it ever was.
Nobody argued that instability in the third world wasnât mostly the first worldâs fault (predominantly, Spain, England, and France). At least a few people were arguing against my proposition that the US was not less safe than these places because we have more people in jail. Laughable.
Ok, well thatâs quite general and âthe third worldâ is quite broad. I havenât traveled a lot (though I just got back from Mexico City and would compare the nice but not the best neighborhood there favorably with similar relative neighborhoods in LA or SF), but some poorer countries are safer and less terrorized than the US and some arenât.
Iâve spent several months in Cdmx and the typical tourist spots are quite safe. Interestingly, they are absolutely swarming with police but it works out quite well.
This is funny because I live in Mexico, and for the record I am far more terrified of the police when Iâm in the states. (Yes this is somewhat of a privileged stance, but in Mexico the worst thing that could likely happen to me is having to pay a bribe while here the cops have a multitude of ways to literally ruin my life.)
Iâm not quite sure I follow this or what your proposition was, but the US is less safe than some poorer countries and more safe than others. Murder isnât the only kind of danger or violent crime, but here are murder stats.
Yeah, USA has a lower homicide rate than Brazil or Guatemala, but higher than Kenya or Angola or India or Thailand or Iran or Sierra Leone.
Iâm highly skeptical of reporting standards in many of these countries, particularly Iran, which I donât think anyone would argue earnestly is safer than the United States for women, minorities, or LGBTQ.