Category: struggle against torture
Black men get longer prison sentences than white men for the same crime: report

Black men get longer prison sentences than white men for the same crime: report

Inmates put their hands behind their backs as they return to their dormitory from the cafeteria Sept. 21, 2011, at Richland Parish Detention Center southeast of Monroe.
Inmates put their hands behind their backs as they return to their dormitory from the cafeteria Sept. 21, 2011, at Richland Parish Detention Center southeast of Monroe.(File photo by Scott Threlkeld)

http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2017/11/black_men_get_longer_prison_se.html

African-American men in the criminal justice system serve longer sentences than white men who commit the same crime, according to a new federal study reported by ABC News Friday (Nov. 17).

After a review of demographic data of the country’s prisons from 2012 to 2016, the U.S. Sentencing Commission found that sentences for black men are 19.1 percent longer than for white men. When the commission accounted for violence in an offender’s past, black men last year also received sentences that were 20.4 percent longer than their white peers.

“After controlling for a wide variety of sentencing factors, the Commission found that Black male offenders continued to receive longer sentences than similarly situated White male offenders, and that female offenders of all races received shorter sentences than White male offenders,” the report stated.

The full ABC News report can be read online.

RESPONSE TO: Americans Have Grown More Supportive Of Torture
| November 15, 2016 | 12:45 pm | Analysis, political struggle, struggle against torture, Struggle for Peace | Comments closed
By A. Shaw
In some countries, sectors of parties, electorates, and peoples are judged to be either swine or human based in large part on whether they stand for or against human rights.
Respect for human rights is a kind of gauge of being human.
There was a sector of the German electorate and people who supported Nazi swine.
There is a sector of Islamic people which supports the Islamic State swine.
The Nazi and the Islamic State are the same in the type of acts they committed or commit which reduce both of them to the level of swine.
The top four ways in which they violated human rights are:
(1) They kidnap people.
(2) They throw people into concentration camps.
(3) They torture people.
(4) They murder.
Kidnapping, concentration camps, torture, and murder are the things that turn on swine the most. Swine feel a powerful rush when they do these things.
Wait!
This doesn’t mean that all or most USAs are swine.
Citing Pew data, Brittany Lyte, writing in 2014 for the website Five Thirty Eight, said this.
“Data shows that popular opinion on the use of torture by the U.S. government has subtly shifted since 2004, when Pew Research Center began polling Americans on the subject. Pew asked whether torture used against suspected terrorists to gain important information is justified, finding a majority of respondents (53 percent) said torture could never or only rarely be justified. But over the next five years, public opinion slowly reversed.”
So, in 2004, the majority sector of the electorate and people opposed torture.
Apparently, there has been a change of mind.
“In Pew’s 2011 report its most recent  53 percent said the U.S. government’s use of torture against suspected terrorists to gain important information can often (19 percent) or sometimes (34 percent) be justified, marking a turnaround from 2004,”
Lyte reported.
So, 53% of the USAs are now pro-torture.
In only seven years, the swine succeeded in dragging down a large number of USAs to the moral level of swine.
The GOPs naturally are the most swinish of all USA parties.
“There are stark differences in opinion on torture along party lines. A large majority of Republicans (71 percent) said torture could be at least sometimes justified, compared with 51 percent of independents and 45 percent of Democrats, according to Pew research,” Lyte reported.
The conclusion is that a huge sector of the USAs favor torture.
We would be more civil if we substitute the term reactionary for swine.
How did the reactionaries win over so many USAs?
The capitalist press — or more correctly, the lying cappie press — presented the question to the USAs as: Should the USÂ regime torture suspected terrorists to get information?
Suspicion means there is no need to show probable cause that the suspect is a terrorist. It means that there is no duty to inform the suspect why he or she was kidnapped. It means the suspect is not entitled to counsel or trial. It means false accusations from snitches get innocent people tortured.
Even if the suspect is a terrorist he or she has certain limited rights under the Geneva Convention and the US Anti-Torture Act. Both laws are designed to prevent violations of human rights of prisoners of war and political prisoners.
The lying cappie press deceived most USAs into believing that troops, cops, spies, and mercenaries employed by the rogue US regime would only torture if they had a basis for their suspicion.
That’s nonsense.
Most reactionary degenerates in the US military, police, mercenaries, and intelligence agencies torture people to gratify their passion for sadism and malice, not to confirm suspicions about politics.
The gratification of foul passions is a kind of personal or individual motive for torture.
There is also a political motive for torture.
“Getting information” is not relevant to 95% of torture committed.
The rogue regime in the USA has the same motive to torture as the Nazi and Islamic State which is to paralyze the victims of aggression with absolute fear so that they will be easier to oppress.
In most cases, the Nazi didn’t torture Jews because the Nazi wanted information. The Nazi tortured to scare the shit out of the Jews while the Nazi oppressed and annihilated them.
If information were the motive, why did Nazi torture four year old kids?
The rogue regime in the USA tortures Afghans, Iraqis, USAs, and others not to become informed but to scare the shit out them so that they will welcome US oppression.
On Nov. 14, 2016, the International Criminal Court announced that it may indict and prosecute US leaders who presided over torture in Afghanistan.