this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
750 points (97.2% liked)

News

23287 readers
4022 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 248 points 11 months ago (2 children)

American prisons ARE meant for torture. Don't get it twisted.

If they were for rehabilitation or treatment, then we would see to that, societally. But we don't.

This is a small piece of why our justice system is so absolutely fucked.

[–] [email protected] 97 points 11 months ago (8 children)

American prisons ARE meant for torture. Don’t get it twisted.

naw. not really. Prisons are meant to provide cheap domestic labor to the corporations running them. it's all profits.

[–] [email protected] 98 points 11 months ago

Well both those things can be true.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Never forget, it’s actually legal to enslave prisoners according to the 13th Amendment.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 11 months ago

yup. And there is a reason why laws are written to disproportionately affect certain groups- like how crack cocaine gets more jail time than powder, or marijuana convictions...

[–] [email protected] 22 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

That's a part of it, yes. It's the slavery loophole in the 13th amendment.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Less of a loophole, more of an intended feature

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Loopholes are things intentionally built into structures with the purpose of allowing something through. I find it weird so many people think loopholes aren't something intentional.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I'm having a lot of trouble finding a source that backs up this position. Everything I'm reading says that loopholes are typically oversights, not intentional inclusions.

That being said, the 13th amendment's allowance for prisoner slavery is not a loophole at all, it's an explicit allowance. Loopholes are not explicit, that's kinda the whole point of them. It's a bit like saying that the standard deduction on your taxes is a loophole. It's just an explicitly defined feature.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

While that, in fact, does happen, when a large portion of loopholes benefit corporations are written by people employed, or otherwise invested in, those corporations you would have to be lying to yourself, or ignorant of the situation, to believe loopholes are generally unintended.

https://publicintegrity.org/politics/state-politics/copy-paste-legislate/you-elected-them-to-write-new-laws-theyre-letting-corporations-do-it-instead/

The above is one example of how this is done. Bills are written to model what the industry wants to get out of legislation. Then they use LLMs to construct legislation after being trained on those models. They then collude to push these bills to as many places as possible, greasing palms the whole way. Sometimes these are just out-right legislation for the purposes of enriching the industry, more often though they are bills written with carefully designed language to allow for specific technicalities, or for stipulations of compliance to be so vague as to be unenforceable, or to use a bunch of jargon and complex linguistics to make a law read one way to the laymen, but another to the professionals that will actually be interacting with these laws.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago

The torture is just a fringe benefit in the cops' eyes.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

FWIW the vast majority of prisons in the US are not corporate run (>90%), but those majority government-run prisons still provide a lot of free/cheap manufacturing labor to private companies.

The government itself is to blame, not just private prisons.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

Cheap domestic labor isn't torture?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

lesser of two evils

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

13th amendment

[–] [email protected] 44 points 11 months ago (3 children)

i think you’re responding to a normative statement by making a descriptive statement.

for those unaware, here’s a quick explanation from wikipedia: a normative statement is “meant to talk about the world as it should be”, while a descriptive statement is “meant to describe the world as it is”.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago

If we could read we would be very upset.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

i wasn’t trying to talk about grammar at all, i was only trying to focus only on the meaning of what was said. but i probably could’ve made my point more clearly, so ill try to do that now.

here’s an “example”: one person says “things should be done this way” and the other person says “well things aren’t being done that way”. these two statements aren’t in opposition to each other. in fact, it’s perfectly possible both people agree with each other. maybe things aren’t being done a certain way, and they should be done differently.

the terms “normative” and “descriptive” might seem overly complicated to someone who hasn’t seen them before (they did the first time i saw them), but i thought i’d use them because they’re useful concepts to keep in mind. they’ve helped me communicate and resolve conflicts in my own life. i’ve been both people in the example above, and it’s helpful to be able to know when it’s happening.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

The most based discourse nazi, singlehandedly preventing what could become a 30 comment deep argument where both sides fully misunderstand the other

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Lemmy cannot read one word of your comment

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Edit I'm fuckin stupid, leaving this comment up as a monument to my illiteracy

Making a comment like this about basic conversation and debate concepts is like driving and saying you can't read the speed limit signs. Like, maybe you should avoid actively participating altogether until you're actually able to

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Huh? My point was many Lemmy users very commonly reply to someone's descriptive comment with a normative complaint, and freak out when it's clarified.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Wow I misread Lemmy as literally, I fuckered that one up bad lmao

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

i made the same mistake you did the first time i read their comment. your confusion helped me too!