Tag: Denmark

Posted on

McPrisons

Congratulations America– you just passed a remarkable milestone this year. Well, actually two years ago. First time, more than one in every 100 adults in the United States is… what? Smart? Rich? Single? A heroin addict? Alcoholic? Educated? A member of the Tea Party? Mexican? Dutch? Drives a BMW? Bikes to work? Has a PHD? Works for the government? What?

In prison.

That’s not one of every 100 males. It’s 1 of every 100 adults.

I would suggest to you that any nation that would incarcerate 1% of it’s population, barring the most ridiculously extreme set of circumstances, which I can’t even imagine, is collectively psychotic. This is an unsustainable circumstance, a cesspool of repression and denial, a cancer of social and political malignancy.

One in every 100 adults is in prison.

This is a society that has completely failed to deal with crime and justice in a responsible way. It is the path of a third world dictatorship, a tin pot fiefdom, a colonial outpost, a medieval manor with witches and heretics and plague.

Put it together with the empty factories and warehouses and plants in Detroit and Buffalo and the mid-western states… this is a country that needs to go back to the drawing board and redefine what it understands as the social contract between citizens and government, between workers and employers, between police and suspects.

So, America, what is the meaning of this? Bad luck? Godless atheism? Religious fanaticism? You are among the most repressive, authoritarian states in history on this issue: you love locking people up.

One in every 31 adults in the U.S. is either in prison or on probation or parole.

Yes, the rate of incarceration in the U.S. probably far exceeds that of any other country on the planet, with the exception of North Korea– and nobody knows for sure about that.

What’s different about Minnesota? It has the lowest incarceration rate in the U.S. at 171 per 100,000. Louisiana has the highest at about 700 per 100,000. I know– the figures don’t jive (“over 100” means 1,000 or more per 100,000, which obviously is not possible if the highest state only has 700). Not sure why. The “over 1 per 100” number is supplied by the Pew Center on the States.

Iniquitous Denmark has 59 people in prison for every 100,000, which is lowest in the world. That’s less than 1/10th the rate in the U.S.

China: 117.

Posted on

Denmark: Copenhagen, City of Dreams

Copenhagen is a city of about 1.6 million people. It is the capital of Denmark. It is the capital of the country that gave us the charming women’s curling team that finished second at the Nagano Winter Olympics.

During the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, you might have heard the following argument, in one form or another:

Liberal: “In Europe, an affair like this would been regarded as ridiculously unimportant.”
Conservative: “That’s because European morality is lower than ours. If we don’t impeach Clinton, it will show that we are just as perverted as the Dutch, or Danes, or French.”

Gee. Who’s right? Well, Danish women sometimes leave their offices at lunch time to sunbathe topless in the city parks. I guess that’s pretty bad behaviour.

On the other hand, Copenhagen has about seven murders a year. New York City has about 1500. Of course, New York is ten times the size of Copenhagen, so let’s make it a fair comparison. Copenhagen would have 60 murders a year, if it were the size of New York.

Which leaves you with a puzzle. If the Danes are so decadent, and so unchristian, why aren’t they out stabbing, robbing, shooting, raping, and bombing each other into oblivion, like all evil people do? And if America is the last bastion of Christian morality in the so-called civilized west, why are American cities so violent and lawless?

I’ll try to argue like a conservative for a minute.
1. Just because the Danes don’t rob, murder, rape, or beat each other doesn’t mean they’re not leading lives of pernicious debauchery, and, therefore, actually leading more sinful lives than Americans do. They probably have more illicit sex than we do.
2. The population of Denmark is fairly uniform ethnically and socially. They don’t have the class divisions that America has.
3. What do we care? We’re bigger and stronger, so we’re right.

Besides, we don’t believe you. You’re probably playing a statistical trick on us. We can’t prove you’re wrong, because we don’t know anything about Denmark and we’ll never care enough to know anything about Denmark, but we’re Americans, so we can be as stupid as we want to be.

Argument 1 implies, of course, that illicit sex is just as bad as robbery and murder, so can we dismiss that one as silly? The only argument that makes any sense, of course, is argument number 2. The trouble is, you have to ask yourself whether a nation that prides itself on its Christian heritage should go around bragging about it’s class divisions and its inability to resolve them. So when Americans say, “You Europeans— the reason you find our obsession with the Clinton scandal so laughable is because you are morally inferior to us!” the accusation rings a little hollow.

Conservative churches in the U.S. never tire of reminding us of how God blesses those who obey Him and follow His commandments. If America really is more faithful to Christian morality than continental Europe is, then why is its prison population bulging at the seams? Why does it have the highest infant mortality rate of the developed world? Why does it vote the same way on international treaties as China and Libya do? Why does it have so many more poor people, as a percentage of the population, than any other G7 nation?

Americans are generally a likeable people. They are generous, on a personal level, to a fault. They can be moved by compassion when disaster or misfortune strikes. They seem to have a strong sense of fair play.

And on the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, they (the people, not the Republicans) consistently see things the way Europeans do. They don’t believe that what Clinton did is worth all the trouble of impeachment. And they’re right.

The funny thing is, if this really was an issue of Christian morality, why is it that Christian “leaders”, like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and James Dobson, are so utterly devoid of the quality of mercy? Why are they so unwilling to forgive? Why did Jerry Falwell sponsor a video “documentary” on Clinton that is filled with lies, exaggeration, half-truths, and distortions, including ridiculous allegations that Vince Foster was murdered? (You have to ask yourself what kind of resources Jerry Falwell would have that Kenneth Starr didn’t have?) Why are these leaders filled with so much hatred for the Clintons, especially Hillary?