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September 27, 2015
VICE special prison report, "Fixing the System," to premire tonight on HBO
Tonight on HBO will be the first full premire screening of this special report, "Fixing the System," done in conjuntion with VICE. A partial preview is available here via YouTube, where this summary of the show also apprears:
VICE and HBO's upcoming special on criminal justice in the US: 'Fixing The System' will air September 27. Watch the full trailer [at this link].
In the first clip to go live from the special, we see the moment that President Obama meets the inmates and sits down with them for an in-depth conversation. Stay tuned for more prison coverage in the weeks to come, and watch the full-length special this Sunday on HBO.
The special offers a panoramic perspective on crime and punishment, and will follow all the key characters in America’s sprawling justice system, including prisoners and their families, members of the judiciary, and community reformers.
It will be hosted by VICE founder and correspondent, Shane Smith, and will also feature President Barack Obama's historic tour of El Reno Federal Correctional Institution in Oklahoma in July, where he met with inmates and prison officials.
"There's an emerging consensus in this country — on both the right and the left — that the way we treat criminal offenders is utterly broken and weakening our society in profound ways," Smith said, explaining the significance of the documentary.
In filming the special, President Obama became the first sitting President to visit a federal prison, signaling that criminal justice reform is a top priority in the final stretch of his presidency. At the medium-security prison for male offenders, Obama met with six inmates. He said the men's stories and the mistakes they made were not dissimilar to those the president made in his own youth, when he admittedly smoked pot and used cocaine.
America needs to distinguish between violent criminals and people "doing stupid things," Obama said, adding that many young people who end up in prison for nonviolent drug crimes grew up in environments where drug trafficking is prevalent. Giving those people decades-long sentences is what is contributing to the country's overcrowded prison system, and more resources should be directed to education, support, and rehabilitation, he said.
"I am really interested in the possibilities, the prospect of bipartisan legislation around the criminal justice system," the president told reporters on June 30. "And we've seen some really interesting leadership from some unlikely Republican legislators very sincerely concerned about making progress there."
The special is the latest in VICE's ongoing coverage of what has become a major civil rights and reform issue in the United States.
September 27, 2015 at 12:45 PM | Permalink
Comments
i am looking forward to the HBO documentary. Meanwhile, however, my little town in Mass is running background checks, not only on all prospective town employees but on all small business license applicants...so...how are those with any kind of a record supposed to support themselves?
Posted by: Patricia williams | Sep 27, 2015 1:39:04 PM
Without watching this left wing propaganda quackery, I can bet, no one is proposing to actually end crime by ending the criminal.
Each commits 200 crimes a year, and each spawns 10 spawns who will commit 200 crimes a year. So end a criminal and you prevent 200 crimes a year X 50 years X 10 spawn X 200 crimes a year X 50 years. That's a billion crimes over 100 years.
The likely damage from each is likely $10,000 if one includes the 40% devaluation of property within a thousand feet of its occurrence, medical costs, trauma, and deterred activity, such as education, business startups, upgrades in real estate, and all the jobs these activities generate. The losses do not include the lost productivity of murder victims and trauma victims.
Why protect, privilege, and empower the criminal? To generate a few lousy lawyer government make work jobs.
The above 4th grade word math problem is self evident to everyone, including the lawyer. So the crime rate is intentional. It is herded into minority areas. The lawyer is promoting the bastardy rate, the single most powerful factor in crime. It is 70% in black, and now an astronomical 40% in whites. Only immigrants, with family values are keeping the crime rate from soaring.
The central city is far more valuable than the suburbs, being closer to work. If crime were to end, real values would shoot up, and suburban prices would plummet. It has been government policy by lawyers to falsely prop up these values, with subsidies to highways, banking regulations, and the maintenance of crime rates making the central city unlivable. So the value of the house of the lawyer in the suburbs would plummet in value if crime were to end in the central city.
Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Sep 27, 2015 1:40:11 PM
Supremacy Claus: I think your formula should be:
200 crimes a year X 50 years PLUS 10 spawn X 200 crimes a year X 50 years.
Posted by: USPO | Sep 27, 2015 7:36:33 PM
USPO. Thank you for making that point. You are assuming that the offspring will refrain from having their own children. To be candid, those numbers are impressionistic guesses, and are subject to empirical research. Even if markedly lower, the value of the death penalty to eradicate a criminal remains extremely valuable, even if each costs $10 million.
I have repeatedly discussed the dose response curve, now used for drugs, but likely apt for all remedies. Too little does not work. Too much is toxic. In the case of the death penalty, we are using too little, too late, too expensively. So a miracle drug, penicillin, saves 90% of pneumonia patients, when 90% died before. Give a tiny amount, 7 years after the onset of pneumonia. Price it at $1 million. Not so miraculous anymore.
I estimate the correct dose of the death penalty to end the violent crime rate to have 4 numbers in it each year. Maybe it has 5 numbers. Use it too much, you have a scared, intimidated population. The innocence problem is also solved by 123D, since, even if the wrong guy the criminal has committed a lot of other violent crimes anyway. He is being expelled, not punished, for his character, not even for a single crime. Some convicted murderers may go home, for example, a normal victim of repeated abuse.
What is not included is that some of the offspring will come from the sexually abused relatives of the criminals, such as daughters, nieces, and grand daughters. That would intensify the genetic loading for criminality. The components can be measured, impulsivity, selfishness and entitlement, fearlessness, presentism, low reactivity (measurable by the cold pressor test, the sole reliable physiological measurement in behavior disorders). Why the DOJ is not funding the search for the DNA markers reflects their black racist politically correctness. There is no difference in the rate of antisocial personality disorder between the races. So the giant racial disparity in criminal conduct is mostly environmental, with bastardy at the top of the power list of factors.
I have accepted Rick Nevin's advocacy for lead levels after seeing a study showing prisoners had higher lead levels. That is true as a group.
However, I subscribe to the more modern, aircrash investigation view, of multiple factors converging in a place and in a time. The prevention of any one factor usually prevents the entire air crash. So it is valuable to not focus on single factors, but to address systems and as many factors within our ability to change.
In a giant social catastrophe, such as our super high crime rate, no doubt hundreds of factors, many unknown, are converging. I am also adding the obesity epidemic, video addiction, and marked increases in the value of welfare benefits, all of which coincided with the drop in the crime rate in the 1990's, along with, of course, the mandatory sentencing guidelines and our incarceration nation.
Question. If you and your colleagues were to lose their jobs because there were no violent criminals left, would you be upset?
Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Sep 27, 2015 8:26:00 PM
Doug, thanks for the update. I plan to use the President's line about we need to recognize the distinction between violent crimes and doing stupid things, in about a month when I argue an Eighth Amendment as applied challenge in court.
Bruce
Posted by: bruce cunningham | Sep 27, 2015 10:18:10 PM
People paying fines, people doing community service did stupid things. Everyone in prison worked really hard to get there. There is a likely small error rate, and those who are factually innocent should be released, perhaps, 5% (unknown).
The opposite of what Obama, a Harvard Law educated lawyer, let me repeat, a lawyer, is true. The overwhelming of totally out of control, ultra-violent super-predators are protected, privileged, and empowered by the lawyer. The overwhelming majority are on the street, to devastating effects on anyone and anything in their vicinity, like a mini natural disaster.
Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Sep 27, 2015 10:31:26 PM
Because the 5 million violent crimes a year have the foreseeability of planetary orbits, every one is the fault of the lawyer profession.
Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Sep 27, 2015 10:33:22 PM
