Millions in prison, massively disproportionate to the rest of the world.
If jurors in Seattle have become skeptical of the claims that police and prosecutors make without evidence, the blame should fall squarely on decades of innocent people being sent to jail and minor infractions sending people to prison for years due to police lying, fabricating evidence, destroying evidence and prosecutors filing charges for far more severe crimes than what really occurred.
You're fortunate that your only experience of the failure of policing in America is in the most recent awakening against the unreliability of police and prosecutors. For many families, their lives have been destroyed after watching their loved ones be brutalized in prisons because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time and were victimized by the police and prosecutors.
The majority of people in prisons in the US are incarcerated for violent crime. 64% of violent criminals are rearrested compared to 40% of nonviolent criminals. It really looks like the US is being somewhat efficient here and just has a lot of crime.
In my hope that violent criminals serve longer sentences than nonviolent criminals, perhaps there is a correlation between time-served and recidivism..?
Living in a workingclass neighborhood, many of my most-favorite neighbors are felons of the nonviolent variety – nobody wants back in to their old prisonplanet – just keep looking forwards.
Yeah, the longer you're in, the less employable you are, and are more likely to reoffend. Our prison systems do fuckall for rehabilitation because in general, the public sentiment is "lock them up and throw away the key, I hope they get raped, prison isn't supposed to be fun". Our prison systems are basically set up amplify crime. It's good for the for profit owners, and conservatives eat up the dehumanization of it all.
Like I said in my other comment, some are more likely to reoffend because their prison time, but other were already more likely to reoffend, especially multiple felons who commit an extremely high percent of all crimes.
Just under 10% – which is certainly a minority, but still enough value that Michael Bury (Big Short investorguy) once had an entire fiscal quarter where his only net-increase positions were in for-profit prison operators.
Lots of money and facilities in private prisons, particularly in This South.
One such violent repeat offender wrote a book about his experience helping build Leavenworth Fed while serving time at Leavenworth State – he would eventually serve additional time at this newly-constructed facility.
Warning, I am not linking to the book (it's on Amazon) because no amount of #TriggerWarning can prepare you for the mind of P - A - N - Z - R - A - M [the name of the non-fiction collection of this prisoner's personal letters].
When Mr. P was asked what made him such a monster, he wrote honestly and practically about the upbringing of a serial-killing rapist. Mr. P's EVIL puts JWGacey in the safehouse.
> This anecdote may be true, but is certainly not representative of current life in America.
I live in Baltimore, where people have very negative attitudes towards police because of everything you describe.
Nevertheless, the perception here is that it's impossible to get police to act on nuisance crime, or really anything short of murder, even with video evidence. There's also a perception that it that this is a recent shift and represents the police retaliating after being prosecuted for the murder of Freddie Gray.
> Millions in prison, massively disproportionate to the rest of the world.
I recall a comparison that was done between incarceration in the US versus the UK, and the defining difference was length of sentences. The rates were otherwise similar, but the US justice system gives out sentences something like twice as long on average.
While the responsibility for the Texas grid failures, which led to multiple deaths and billions in damages, are diffuse across multiple people and organizations, if blame should be focused on one role it's the misleadingly named Railroad Commissioner who is primarily at fault (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_Commission_of_Texas).
Despite the deaths, shutdown economy, massive destruction of property and suffering that the grid failures caused, the position has continued to be held by Republicans and they have not fixed the underlying issue of gas power plants that have to shut down in the cold.
If Texas gets another large ice storm, the grid will fail again, people will die again, and then 51% of the state will go vote for another Republican who won't fix anything and campaigned about preventing Sharia law (this is a real thing they run on in the primaries).
The HN title matches the submitted article title, however, it should really say "racial diversity".
If removing the legacy preference results in a working-class white kid from the Midwest getting admitted instead of a upper-class white kid from Connecticut, that's still an increase in diversity of socioeconomic class, regional background, ethnolinguistic subculture, and more.
> Particularly given the alarming stories of people being prosecuted for having miscarriages
You need to delete your social media accounts and change where you're getting your news from. Nobody is "being prosecuted for having miscarriages". A few people have been investigated for drug abuse during pregnancy which led to the baby's death, which sensationalist news stories twisted into attention-grabbing headlines.
A doctor asking about cycle is just a core piece of diagnostic data like taking blood pressure and temperature, not some conspiracy to harm you.
I'm genuinely fascinated and confused by what's going on in this thread, as apparently British and American English speakers misunderstand each other.
If I understand correctly, we've got:
libraryofbabel says "maybe a little too uncritical" ... but that was supposed to be British snark that actually meant "it's a big problem that it's not at all critical"
Then, moab says "Bro" as a pejorative, because he took the original "uncritical" comment as literal rather than sarcastic...
And then libraryofbabel objects to "bro" not because it was used as a pejorative (which maybe she doesn't understand that it is in this context?), but because she interprets it as gendered (which maybe it is in British usage?)
I think libraryofbabel and moab are actually in agreement about the book, and but have both misunderstood the other's sarcasm. Maybe we really do need the /s usage.
Important to note that "banned" here means "a school chose not to have this book in their library".
It's an annoying abuse of language. "Banned Books" has historically meant people are getting arrested for possessing the books or stores are being prevented from selling it or publishers are being prevented from producing it.
This is essentially a clickbait title for "People disagree about what is age-appropriate content for a public school to provide to children".
>The report also found that challenges are becoming more coordinated and politically driven: 92% came from pressure groups, decision-makers or government officials, compared with 72% in 2024. By contrast, 2.7% were attributed to parents and 1.4% to individual library users.
So this isn't librarians, parents or even neighbours deciding something isn't appropriate.
The article also seems to refer to libraries in general, as opposed to school libraries alone, except on a specific paragraph.
The web site says: "The ALA defines a “challenge” as an attempt to remove or restrict access to a library resource, while a “ban” refers to the removal of materials from a library"
Page 10 of the report has a chart that breaks down what type of people are responsible for an 'attempt to remove' books from a library. Librarians themselves are not listed as one of the groups:
It seems they only count it as 'censorship' or a 'challenge' if it's someone other than a librarian taking the action.
If I've understood correctly, if librarians (alone or in groups) decide that certain books should not be procured, the ALA would count this as a censorship or ban.
> ALA defines a “ban” as the removal of materials from a library based on the objections of a person or group. A “challenge” is an attempt to have a library resource removed, or access to it restricted, based on the objections of a person or group.
Under that definition, it doesn't seem to me like it would be possible for a "ban" to happen without also being a "challenge".
Sibling comments have made their point. I'll just add:
“But the book was on the shelf…”
“On the shelf? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find it.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the book, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on a shelf in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
While true, that is the same reasoning when people said that it isn't censorship if government isn't one actor involved or it isn't censorship if you just de-platform people.
It fails to grasp the core issue, where some people have the ambition to act as a barrier to information. The implementation is secondary. You are correct that a school library is a very poor case or an invalid one of course. The general tendency for more censorship is probably real though. I wouldn't expect a Guardian article if the books were associated with different political leaning though.
I'd call that "not making publicly available" via the library system rather than banning. As parent said, you can still buy these books and share with or sell them to each other.
I'd call it "banning books from public libraries", since that's a clear description. Contrary to what GP claimed, this is indeed public libraries, not just school libraries.
Whatever you want to call it, IMO public libraries shouldn't ban books, especially based on some radical PAC's opinions about what jesus would want or whatever.
If I 'choose not to let you post on my website' would you consider this a ban? This reads like a really dishonest shifting of the goalpost for what is effectively censorship of literature. And, if you look at some of the books that were "chose not to have this book in their library" it overwhelmingly focuses on books that feature queer characters, or discuss these themes. Any honest observer knows exactly what is going on here, and as others have noted, this was not limited to school libraries.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-65794363
The author John Green who was top of a recent list said that the Bible was number 6 on the list.
As other comments have pointed out, a "ban" is where a library has chosen not to stock a book for reasons including response to a complaint. If school library serves children up to the age of 13, then certain explicit fiction is not appropriate and would be expected to be removed.
There's a political backlash because Fox News and some Russian propaganda social media accounts told people to get angry and they did.
We have mandates against leaded fuel and excessively tinted windows and for child seats. We have mandates for airbags and seatbelts and bumper heights and crumple zones and turn signals.
EVs are better than gas cars in every way - less noise, less pollution, less dependency buying oil from the Middle East. Our policies, regulations and incentive structures should mirror that.
If this statement was generically true, nobody would smoke, nobody would play lotteries*, we'd all eat plenty of fruit and vegetables, everyone who was able to would exercise.
And some of the issues for EVs, like availability of chargers, go away by automatic action of the market when there's a good reason (e.g. government mandate for more EVs) to expect more demand for EVs.
* except on the occasions where the rollover boosted the expected value above the ticket price, but this would never happen if nobody ever played lotteries.
I worry the narrative here is going off the rails.
A huge part of the Epstein saga was that he had connections to everyone, everywhere across finance, academia, entertainment, non-profits, etc and that he was constantly cultivating relationships, making and requesting introductions, giving and asking favors, etc.
Only a tiny percent of the connections ever had any interaction with sex workers or exploited girls. In many cases, Epstein was clearly using the girls as bait, to later blackmail or otherwise have leverage over men in positions of power.
The mere fact that someone interacted with Epstein shouldn't be treated as a smoking gun, if the emails are just related to regular business, fundraising, networking, etc, the odds are the person had no clue about Epstein's criminal activities and that they were in fact just 'marks' Epstein was using to grow his network of influence.
Obviously we all want the criminals to face judgement and the victims to feel justice has been done, but we can't accomplish that by just declaring the thousands of people who met Epstein to all be guilty by association.
When I was a kid the Detroit automakers bought air filters manufactured at a factory in Kenosha, Wisconsin and brake pads manufactured in Peoria, Illinois and lubricants from Fort Wayne, Indiana.
And the people working in those places provided the customer base for local and regional financial services, along with the rest of the commercial base that made small towns and provincial cities good places to live and raise a family throughout the 20th century.
And of course, a household only needed one person employed, so there was less pressure to move to a bigger city that could provide opportunities for two different careers.
Take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...
Millions in prison, massively disproportionate to the rest of the world.
If jurors in Seattle have become skeptical of the claims that police and prosecutors make without evidence, the blame should fall squarely on decades of innocent people being sent to jail and minor infractions sending people to prison for years due to police lying, fabricating evidence, destroying evidence and prosecutors filing charges for far more severe crimes than what really occurred.
You're fortunate that your only experience of the failure of policing in America is in the most recent awakening against the unreliability of police and prosecutors. For many families, their lives have been destroyed after watching their loved ones be brutalized in prisons because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time and were victimized by the police and prosecutors.
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