zlacker

>>sorami+(OP)
I’m pretty sure the problem of police abusing their power is never going away, so long as we have policing in its current form rather than some sort of unarmed or lightly armed community helpers. The reason they are always equipped with lethal weapons and so quick to use them is that their role is mostly to protect the people who have property from the people who don’t. And in America that’s always going to have a racial element. Black people in America are mostly still used as cheap labor- human capital stock. Unless they are willing to start redistributing wealth away from the super wealthy towards the least wealthy the ruling strata will always have to use violence to maintain order. And that means journalists too.

That is why if you want to highlight who is holding the real power and address the issues of inequality, the best place to start is to attack the police directly. Because it’s something that they are structurally unable to fix without fixing a whole bunch of other stuff first, and it places the focus right in the center of where the violence is coming from. It forces a confrontation by making a demand that they cannot ignore but also cannot actually address.

>>fallin+ky
> I'm pretty sure the problem of police abusing their power is never going away

The next handful of years is going to be interesting. Between civil forfeiture, marijuana decriminalization, self driving cars (and for the shorter term, coronavirus reduced driving) - police departments will be losing a significant amount of their current income streams; especially if unemployment returns back to its lows.

Everybody looks at automation in the food or retail industries; or health administration and insurance; but we have a police and prison system designed with illegal marijuana; that could shrink to 1/8th of it's size with relatively few changes in laws (drug law repeal, mandatory minimums, crime act).

>>smiley+tP
> we have a police and prison system designed with illegal marijuana; that could shrink to 1/8th of it's size with relatively few changes in laws (drug law repeal, mandatory minimums, crime act)

Really?

Only about 18% of current prisoners (state and federal) are serving time for drug offenses. [1]

Of federal prisoners serving time for drug offenses, only 12% are primarily about marijuana. (54% are cocaine and 24% are meth.) [2]

Only 14% of federal offenders were subject to a mandatory minimum sentence. (About half of those were drug offenses, so this overlaps heavily with the 18% figure above.) [3]

No realistic minor changes could reduce the prison system to 1/8 of its size. 51% of prisoners are serving time for violent offenses. In fact, 14% of prisoners are serving time for homicide alone, and a similar number for rape. [4] So if you decriminalized _every_ crime except homicide and rape, and cut the sentences for homicide and rape in _half_, then the prison system would be 1/8 of its current size.

I am optimistic that the USA could eventually, in the very long term, reduce the prison system to 1/8 of its size. Fifty years ago, the prison system was 1/4 its current size. [5] Most western European countries have between 1/8 and 1/4 the US incarceration rate, and a few have below 1/8. [6] But this will require way, way, way bigger societal changes than just marijuana decriminalization or other minor tweaks.

[1] Source is https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=6846. Of the 1.274M state prisoners, 14% are serving time for drug offenses. Of the 162k federal prisoners, 47% are serving time for drug offenses.

[2] Source is https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/dofp12.pdf. Caveat: this is federal-only, and federal prison statistics are often different from state prison statistics.

[3] Source is https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-pu.... Caveat: this is federal-only, and federal prison statistics are often different from state prison statistics.

[4] Source is https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=6846 again. Of the 1.274M state prisoners, 56% are serving time for violent offenses (16% for homicide). Of the 162k federal prisoners, 8% are serving time for violent offenses (2% for homicide).

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...

[6] https://www.statista.com/statistics/957501/incarceration-rat...