Thanks for the gun, and keep up the good job.

white college drug dealers are given a much cushier time of things than poor black ones. Crack has historically carried much stiffer sentences than cocaine, despite being the same drug. The black panthers -were- intentionally disrupted by a COINTELPRO effort to get crack into the ghettos. Leonard Peltier, a native american activist, is behind bars, life in prison, for a crime that another man has admitted, in court, to have committed (and -that- man was found not-guilty by way of his actions being justified).

Do people really believe that 1 in 100 people belong in prison? That other countries simply don’t have the resources to lock up their 1% or they would do so?

The prison system is an industry, as well. Increasingly privatized, prisoners are making products in what amounts to slave conditions. Of course those in power don’t want to see the prison system abolished or reformed.

In this increasingly “progressive” age of america, why are so few people questioning the War on Drugs, put in place by that cowboy ass-hat Reagan? It’s simply taken for granted that people should spend 30 years for dealing, mandatory minimum.

Some people see it only in terms of black and white… i.e., “it’s racist and everybody should go free”. This is naive and would lead to much suffering.

Should the system be reformed? Probably. Even Definitely. Is the system just plain “wrong”? Probably not. Are there population discrepancies? It depends upon who you ask. Ask anyone IN prison, and I can almost guarantee that they will think that they should be on the outside, regardless of race, guilt, or innocence. This would include serious, real child molesters, rapists, murderers, robbers, etc., as well as victims of consensual crimes.

If you want to see a racist system, let some nice white-supremecists out of prison and see the results. For that matter, gang-bangers would be just a dangerous on the streets. Face it, there are some people who just aren’t human enough to function on the outside.

The key is to tune the system rather than destroy it.

I personally think that life imprisonment is cruel and unusual, and would rather see more death sentences than life sentences for the real animals.

What does this have to do with steam-punk? For the anachronistic time period, people would have very strong and probably severe beliefs about justice and crime. And punks? They are always outsiders and want to over-turn the system. So we have a rather illogical joining of ideas. Like peaceful, vegetarian Nazis. Were there peaceful national socialists? To their own kind, I am sure. Vegans? Now that’s just plain un-natural.