[SPORK] US vs. China, who's more oppressive?

[Jeff Bone]

Since we're (tangentially) talking about internal mega-badness, I'll 
resurrect a post from earlier this month...

	http://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/2003-April/019890.html	
(Oh what a twisty Web we weave, when first we practice to...  make the 
FoRK archive self-referentially authoritative. ;-)

----

 From Kuro5hin:

	http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/4/11/4944/59085

----

The US Criminal Justice System Must be Reformed.

America now has in excess of two million of its own citizens in jail, 
from a population of 286 million (0.7 %). For comparison China ,which 
most would consider to be an authoritarian police state, has a prison 
population of 1.4 million from a population of about 1.3 billion 
(0.1%). This is the largest proportion of any country in the world. 
Twelve percent of all black American males between the ages of 20 and 
30 are presently in jail. A black person who killed a white person is 
40 times more likely than a white person who killed a black person to 
be sentenced to the death penalty. The changes I suggest probably go 
against popular opinion in the USA, but popular opinion and moral 
hypocrisy are largely responsible for the problems of the present 
system.

----

jb

---

When the government’s boot is on your throat, whether it is a left boot 
or a right boot is of no consequence.

	-Gary Lloyd