Alabama says it’s tough on drug crime. It just perpetuates it.

The vast majority of those drug prisoners are minorities. They are now required to work for little or no pay with no rights or protections. The state has their slaves back. This is working as intended.

It's just that they don't mean "crime" so much as "criminals" and then proceed to define "criminals" as "unpaid laborers" (aka slaves).

And the concept that Alabama is tough on its slaves is not a new one.

Legalize drugs and addictions will go down, and the prices will plummet. The hard drugs will get much softer as well. Alcohol, Prohibition taught us this much. Who drinks moonshine these days? Nobody I've ever heard of. They sip a beer while watching the football game.

I would kill myself if I was to be locked up in Alabama. It's one of the most barbaric prison systems in the USA. And while there may be worse in other countries, the USA prison system is very awful.

Compare it to that mass shooter who has what amounts to an apartment in another country (I think Nordic). Was posted on Lemmy a few weeks ago.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The Prison Policy Initiative last week issued a national report about this very topic, saying cops, lawmakers, even family members worried about the addictions of their loved ones, often believe a stint in jail might be the thing that saves their sons or daughters or fathers or mothers.

The inability to pay drug debts leads to beatings, kidnappings, stabbings, sexual abuse, and homicides.”

People are attacked, like a Bibb Correctional Facility prisoner cited by the feds, who was stabbed as he was sleeping, over and over again, by a man who said the victim owed him money for drugs, so he “got it in blood.”

Like a man at Draper prison, also cited by DOJ, who blacked out on meth, and realized only after he woke up that he had been raped.

But few things come at a cost as substantial as a stint in Alabama prisons, where paroles have been nearly stopped, where violence is a constant, where lives are destroyed and redemption denied.

This project was completed with the support of a grant from Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights in conjunction with Arnold Ventures.

The original article contains 1,073 words, the summary contains 194 words. Saved 82%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

I just can't behind this 'let's go easy on drug users and drug sellers" mentality. I'm in California, and I swear the whole drug use and homeless crisis is getting worse, because we aren't really punishing drug users. We're just leaving them alone,...meanwhile, they're robbing stores, building homeless camps where they can use drugs..etc...it's just crazy. Look at places like Kensington in Philly...where it's literally zombies walking around half dead...and no one seems to care.