The USA has the highest incarceration rate in the world. By comparison, England is one-hundred places further down the list. In a very real sense, incarceration is the lowest rung of the social safety net, or lack thereof, in the USA. Rather ironic that it calls itself the “Home of the Free” and spouts “freedom” in opposition to socialism, when no other G-20 nation, including Russia, comes close to locking up such a high proportion of it’s people.
With freedom comes responsibility.
They gradually spend through any savings, sell belongings, burn through friends/family, they can become homeless, eating and sleeping less and less well making them even more unemployable. They may turn to panhandling, begging on the streets and sometimes to crime.
Being convicted of a crime by a jury of your peers and sentenced to prison has nothing to do with whether you live in a free society. In fact it strongly indicates you do live in a free society, it is unfree societies that lock people up without that troublesome bit about being tried for your crimes by an impartial court where the government has to prove its charges.
Each country gets to decide how it punishes crime, one country choosing more incarceration than another does not affect at all whether that country is more or less of a “free society.”
I think the point is that those who are sick and those who are unemployed are left with few choices in the US. I mean, illness and disability can strike anyone, and unemployment is inevitable - there will always be folks who can’t find work.
So the question is, what’s to be done? The US system drives them to crime and then incarcerates them, at huge public expense. So what the US saves on welfare it spends on imprisonment. And people cheer.
Are you under the impression that in the US, you have to be white to qualify for welfare?
I’m not sure your point.
Sure, the US is divided by class and race, but that’s true in many European countries and some are vastly worse.
I certainly want to throw up whenever I hear some right-winger try and argue racism isn’t a problem because “we have a Black President” but at the same time, I think most Frenchmen and Germans will admit that the idea of having their countries led anytime in the near future by an ethnic Algerian or ethnic Turk is preposterous.
For that matter, I can’t see the UK having a Pakistani PM anytime soon.
Freedom from opportunity, freedom from help, freedom from forgiveness of one’s failures; and most importantly, freedom of the dominant culture to lock you out of sight and be free of seeing your panhandler ass.
“Freedom” isn’t good or bad, it’s merely a modifier of something else.
That’s not really parallel to Obama. He doesn’t come from a recent and “outsider” immigrant community. He’s descended from and raised by WASPish white people, and American blacks like his wife have been here longer than many white people.
Meanwhile, when are we going to pass the Schwarzenegger Amendment again?
I disagree with a lot of American welfare and criminal justice policies, but the number of people who are in prison because they had to commit crimes to feed their children is almost non-existent. In my experience, (and I’ve worked in criminal justice for 20 years ) inmates do not say they committed their crimes to feed themselves and their children. They say they committed crimes to finance their drug use , and many of them were on welfare and living in subsidized housing when those crimes were committed. There were more people going to prison 20 years ago, when both jobs and welfare were easier to get.
If Turks, Pakistanis and Algerians are still considered “outsiders” despite living there for 2-3 generations in Europe then it’s safe to say that yes, in some ways, blacks do have it better in America.
Mind you, I don’t think that’s something that Americans should be proud of. I think it’s something that Europeans might want to improve upon.
Beyond that, I seriously doubt that Americans voting for Obama did so because his mother was was white. Also, the places he grew up in, Indonesia and Hawaii are hardly “WASPish”.
I think, perhaps, we may be talking at cross-purposes. I’m not arguing that there’s no racism in Europe, far from it. Obviously there is. I can’t find any point of disagreement with you.
Well, I dispute that there were more people going to prison 20 years ago.
But my point was not that US jails are full of kindly people who stole loaves and potatoes to feed their families. They’re full of people who’ve been written off. That’s why I pointed out that it’s much easier to move off welfare in Europe than it is in the USA.
I’m not disagreeing with you at all. I was disagreeing with people who were trying to imply that the US is vastly more divided along class and racial lines than most of the western world.
Your source indicates that the percentage of people in prison now is at best marginally higher than it was in early 90s when the economy was in vastly better shape and Clinton hadn’t yet, IIRC started welfare reform.
As to why the US has such high incarceration rates, I think it’s more complicated and it’s for a number of different reasons.
Oh, right. I see. Then I do not disagree. The US does have racial divisions but, as you point out, so does Europe.
So rates of incarceration do, in fact, reflect the wider economy, yes?
My point is straightforward - the US welfare system offers a choice between dependency and jail. Or criminality. You claim welfare (if you can, and you probably can’t) or deal drugs, in which case you likely end up taking them as well. We all know unemployment is inevitable, and not a result of laziness. We do all know that, yes? If anyone doesn’t, look it up.
And in the end, many Americans are horrified that they might pay someone $800 per month in SSDI. But $25,000 per year to imprison them? That’s just fine.
Actually, that tells you the current population up to 2008. The current prison population in my state is lower than it was 13 years ago ago. In fact, a number of prisons have closed in the past 20 years and more are slated to close. But I was talking about people entering prison - there are far more alternatives to incarceration now than there were before and in my state people who twenty years ago would have been sentenced to prison are now given alternatives such as drug treatment followed by a period of supervision.
No, if the rate of incarceration reflected the wider economy it would be a hell of a lot higher than it is. Because the economy is that much worse than it was 20 years ago
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And my point is not that the US welfare system is great, because it’s not. But there are an awful lot of poor , struggling people who manage to get by without committing crimes and a lot of previously comfortable people who end up in prison. It inaccurate to say that our higher incarceration rate is due to welfare policies when there are so many other cultural differences. BTW, nobody is horrified about paying someone $800 in SSDI - that’s for disabled people who have worked. Some people are horrified about the possibility of people collecting welfare indefinitely without ever working or looking for work or paying someone who is not actually disabled SSDI. I personally don’t think eliminating that possibility is worth the cost, but that’s where the horror lies.
Well, let me give you a clue. In a housing complex I once lived in, an apartment caught fire. The residents were unable to pay for their electricity, it was shut off, and they used candles for lighting.
Often they can’t afford housing, its expensive here even with all the empty homes from the real estate collapse. So they go homeless, live in cars, go to food banks and missions to get food if they have no friends and family to help them. There are homeless shelters, but the lines tend to be long.
So they suffer, that is what they do. Sometimes they die because if you don’t have insurance and 48 million Americans don’t, your only recourse is free care at an emergency room.
Most Americans who are homeless have mental or drug problems, they say. But I have read harrowing accounts of Dopers who have been rendered homeless and had to go to food banks.
America: it was once a great country!
It’s still called JSA while on the ‘Work Programme’, (cite- my bank account).
Anyway, I need to go tell the job centre that after 2 years out of work (through illness, then being unable to find anything else for freakin’ ages) I finally got a job at the weekend 
The system ain’t perfect here in the UK, (especially when it comes to availability of useful training), but it could be a lot worse; I didn’t become homeless, I had good access to health care, I could afford to eat reasonably well- I even managed to keep my car running (albiet with a bit of help from my parents, but I could probably have just about afforded it without).
Just to correct a couple more errors in the OP, in case anyone takes them as true:
The UK does not have free housing for poor people. We do have social housing - council housing, housing associations and housing co-ops, all of whom charge rent. Tenants can receive housing benefit if their income is low enough, but so can tenants in private housing. Becoming or remaining a tenant is not dependant on income.
The rent is cheaper because, in general, the landlord has no mortgage to pay. Council housing receipts are a net benefit to the exchequer - council housing is not only not subsidised, but profitable.
Child benefit was, until this year, not dependant on income at all. Now, if one parent earns more than 50,000 quid, they can still get it, but it will be taxed. http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17854937 Two parents earning 49k each do get it. So it’s not limited to the poor even now.
DLA is disability living allowance. It is completely unrelated to income and many recipients work. It is available to children as well as adults.
For example, David Cameron claims child benefit for his children and claimed DLA for his disabled son.
Unemployment benefit recipients are strictly monitored once they’re on income-dependant JSA or ESA (JSA is for people who can work, ESA is for people who can’t due to health reasons). JSA claimants, in particular, have to meet strict and sometimes nonsensical jobseeking targets.
A family with two able-bodied working-age parents and three kids would find it difficult to live on the money they get and would be frequently (as in, weekly, for JSA after a year) checked to see if they still merit the benefits.
It does still sound better than the situation in the US, but that’s not saying much. And talking about “Europe” as a whole on this topic is pointless, since each country has very different rules.