Survivors Guide To Prison

.. and yet you have quite a few similarities between them. Starting point is, that the prison system is ... well broken to say the least. Privatising certain "businesses" can be a good thing. And I reckon it may take something away from the goverment. Like a weight they don't have to lift themselves. But that also opens up a big can of problems.

And many of them get shined upon here. Now this casts a wider net that another documentary I watched, which was about injustice against black people. This puts the justice system overall on trial. So that's quite a big undertaking. It works quite nicely, especially with narrating by Susan Sarandon and many contributions by people like Ice-T, Danny Trejo and Police employes who try to do the right thing (and get somewhat blocked by a justice machinery that needs reform as soon as possible) ...

I took a lot out of this documentary in terms of seeing things from a different perspective. It's Heart breaking and horrifying and I do agree that there should be other, more civilized means of rehabilitating people, I also have to point out that there really are EVIL people out there. I'm not referring to the guys who killed someone in a moment of rage, I'm referring to serial rapists, serial murderers, serial child predators. These people cannot simply walk the streets and they certainly don't deserve any "sugar coated rehabilitation". These people are rotten and deserve as much pain and suffering as they inflicted upon their victims. I do not believe prisons should be done away with altogether but merely reserved for the true evil members of society. The difficulty comes in in drawing the distinction though. It's a complicated and very distorted mess.

I watched this movie expecting a gritty how-to for surviving in prison but the longer I watched the more it felt like an advertisement for a politician during reelection. Lots of percentages and statistics thrown at you with very little in regards to the sources of where they came from. It also felt very imbalanced in its portrayal of prison and prisoners, on one side talking about how terrible prisoners are but then talking the next about how they all shouldn't be there. They didn't seem to be very clear to what exactly they were trying to say. One woman in particular struck me as being in complete denial that murder is bad. I would have liked to see both sides of this issue not just the one that they seem to want to shove down your throat.

This documentary is for the people that support the police and the justice system. This is for the people that believe they are law abiding. This is for the people that believe the old adage "if you do nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about." This is for the people that believe they will never see the inside of a jail cell. If this is you, it is a must watch. It is time to get out from under the rock you have been under the last 30 years.

Hopefully, this will open your eyes.

If you want to open your mind take a look at US incarceration rates trends over the past 25 years AND violent crime rates which have plummeted. google some charts on incarceration rates and violent crime/murder rates and superimpose them in your mind. AS incarceration rates rose, US murder and violent crime plunged. US murder is down 55%, gun murder rate down 59%. shortly after Us incarceration rates started falling again (and they have fallen the last four years) , murder started to creep up again News coverage of murder has increased, but murder has decreased (yes even mass shootings are down by 40%) . The peer reviewed science using anonymous surveys of prisoners shows on average they commit 20 serious crimes for every crime for which they are caught. 93% of all US murder is committed by prior criminals, 80% by prior felons or persons with 10 or more arrests (meaning 100 crimes). I don't care about people who live in buildings with heavy security like Cynthia Nixon, Danny Glover, have to say, they have not been victims of violent crimes. Russel Simmons? So now we have people with sexual assault allegations? Who will be lecturing us next? Harvey Weinstein?

As far as drug offenses the number of people in prison solely for recreational drug use is under 0.1% . This game has been played before bringing out as an example someone arrested for drugs, but not mentioning they were mugging people or beating people or also selling to children.

As far as comparing us to Japan-- come on. The confession rate for crime in Japoan is 95% the conviction rate is 99%. That is not exaggeration just google japan confession rate or japan conviction ate. In japan they can hold you in jail for a month without charging you and interrogating you 12 hours a day. If you want to get rid of the fourth and fifth amendments you can then talk about comparing the US to other countries. Even in Canada and Australia OJ Simpson could have been criminally tried a second time, something forbidden in our criminal defense system. Across the board in other developed democracies it is easier to get warrants, easier to wiretap, more evidence not specified on warrants is allowed in court. In most counties police do not need reasonable suspicion to search your car at all. In Germany and half of the developed world there is no such thing as a jury trial Criminals get away with more crime, we have more crime and therefore we have more people imprisoned. If you want to copy systems where prospective criminals are more certain to go to jail, therefore lowering crime before it is committed, then fine. Tell the ACLU they have to accept what they would call a police state