Stephen Fry on American Prisons Facts

Click on the description for all the facts listed here
Stephen Fry on American Prisons, from the TV show QI
The prison facts mentioned here,

I'll start with a fact everyone(well nearly everyone) knows.

1. Three "strikes" and you get life in jail. Even for trivial crimes, Leandro Andrade is serving 2 consecutive life sentences for shoplifting 9 video tapes with a value of $153
2a. 1% of Americans are in jail(2.3million)
2b On a per capita bases this equates to twice as many in South Africans, more than 3 times Iran and 6 times China's prison population.
3. No society in history has imprisoned as many people as America.
4. 1 in 30 men aged 20 - 34 in in prison.
5.1 in 9 black males are in prison.
6. There are more 17 year old black males in prison than in college.
7. 5% of the world are American...25% of all prisoners are American.
8. America prohibits importing goods made through forced labor or prisoners...
YET...
...American prisons produce 100% of all military helmets, ammunition belts, bullet proof vests,
9. 93% of domestically used paints, 36% of home appliances, 21% of office furniture, which allows America to compete with factories in Mexico.
10. You get solitary confinement if you refuse to work!

11. Thus America has successfully reinvented the slave trade.

Prison watch link
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Pri...

And another link
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/ind...

11 Stunning facts link
http://thinkingaboutphilosophy.blogsp...

Keep up with Jim Rogers latest project to create a system that will hold politicians feet to the fire, and to put shackles on lobbiers so that they can no longer control the system. One day we might have a system that controled by the people and is for the people.

http://www.govathome.com/

• Category

  Education

[NicosMind]

Just discovered a fact there. 1 person in 6 that are jailed in in prisoned in America are there for marijuana possesion watch?v=wWWOJGYZYpk

[LaPlumeDeMaTante1]

Amazing.

Just put the word 'American' in a video title and you'll attract the bible quoting freaks.

[Eoaiyer21987rhei]

Slavery.

[audas]

Deprivation of freedom is what a prison is - you are locked up, deprived of your freedom - that is your punishment. Being forced to work as a slave is ridiculous.

The US has over 20% unemployment in college graduates, 27% under thirty and over 40% of black men - remove prison slavery and people have jobs.

No one in a modern civilised western nation does slave labor like they do in US prisons - they are educated instead- prison is treated as reform, not retribution.

You're an idiot.

[Oliver Hodgkiss]

I don't see how you got to talking about deprivation of freedom, but you bring up the only point that i would consider is bad about prison labour. However I think it would be difficult with current laws to find ways to put people in prison when they didn't deserve it, especially with overpopulation. Also many enjoy the fact that they're not sitting around doing nothing with their lives, and it makes them more employable when they leave with the skills they've learnt.

[audas]

You don't understand slavery then - slavery is not the absense of wage. Slavery is a vast mixture of things - many slaves were provided a living wage - you have clearly never read anything on the subject and feel your childhood American stereo-type of a black man in rags covers the 5 thousand years of slavery in every continent on earth. From Rome to Australian convicts.

The primary definition of slavery is forced labor - paid or not. Food is pay, board is pay. Serfs were considered slaves.

[audas]

So spastic - the punishment is being deprived of your liberty. Being in Jail is not some free for all to commit any further act of deprivation against someone that you can come up with - your punishment is deprivation of your freedom.

There have been laws against this type of activity in America for decades - for a very good reason, similar to all other modern civilised nations.

Finally try and keep up - incentive is being provided to incarcerate people to provide more labour - comprendo ?

[Oliver Hodgkiss]

oh not to mention that the workers there get paid, very little admittedly but more than they deserve nonetheless and resulting in something that could not by any means be defined as slavery

[Oliver Hodgkiss]

ok now you're being an idiot comparing proven criminals to innocent slaves and iraqi civillians. Slavery is wrong because it was punishment based on the colour of the person's skin, this is simply another form of punishment- and we know that the punishment is going towards someone who did something wrong

[audas]

You absolute retard - the same thing can be said about slavery.

The subject in discussion is in regards to Americas massive prison populations - which is mainly black - it is so large due to lobbying by prison industry - got that ?

It is slavery via the back door.

The ends dos not justify the means - the US could invade Iraq which would mean thousands of jobs for weapons contractors, reconstruction companies etc - thats what happened - and its totally wrong.

Grow some morals

[Oliver Hodgkiss]

it makes your goods internationally price competitive, so all those not in prison benefit indirectly from the demand for the prisoner's goods and jobs are in fact created, who transports the goods? who sells them? who stocks the shelves with them?

[mybestbuddy100]

Wow, "freaks"? Really. I'm betting you're one of those who believes we should all be more tolerant of each other... as long as they agree with you. Classic liberal.

[ziggy8392]

Assuming you're serious, it's because we still have a huge number of unemployed and instead of paying them for labor we have prisoners do it for free. That's fucked up