While the the prison population is disproportionately “ethnic” in make up is is made up almost totally of people that truly violated the law of the land. Do you suggest we may lock up poor people of color just to make the economy look better? Why have a trial at all?
Another look at the prison population shows you that a good number of inmates are functionally illiterate, thus not really employable in most jobs. If they were free they’d be 'jacking your car or robbing you to get along in short order since they can’t even fill out a job application to be a fucking shoe salesman.
Have we let them down? Maybe. I don’t know of any schools that don’t try to teach students to read but there might be one. I do know of communities that have a stronger expectation that incarceration will be a part of life than ever reading the classics. If that’s the expectation of your social group you’re one screwed dude.
Who made it that way? George Bush? I don’t think so. I think there are social and some economic factors well out of the control of the government, whether they it’s a liberal one or not. I suppose we could pay these poor illiterate guys to sit on the stoop and it would cost the same as locking them up.
Is that what they do to the First Nation people in Canada or do they lock them up in disproportionate numbers? I mean if you guys up north have a handle on this social welfare thing and it works we could use it, right? A place that was so socially just and took care of it’s citizens well wouldn’t be locking up the darker ones in a higher proportion than the rest of the criminals I wouldn’t think. Hmm. In Saskatchewan 75% of the inmates are natives while only 10% of the general population is.
Looking into it I found that violent crimes are 6 times more prevelant among the aboriginal people in Canada than the population at large. Funny, we have similar crime numbers in some of our ethnic groups too. So for the sake of honest unemployment figures we should turn some of these violent pricks out of jail to even up the numbers. You go first and let us know how it went.