Germany: Low Crime, Clean Prisons, Lessons for America | Jeff Rosen | TEDxMountainViewHighSchool

I'd recommend to watch this talk about the German prison system from an American perspective. The main point is the difference between European resocialization and US retributive justice. Although this may show the bright sides here in Germany a little bit too bright, they do exist. [VIDEO]

I'm not sure that incarceration (and the circumstances under which it usually happens) in the US is increasing the "freedom". See i.e. [VIDEO]

> I think every society with lower crime has significantly smaller police brutality Crime-rates do not correlate with police brutality and mass incarceration. Canada locks up way fewer people, has way less harsh sentencing than the US, yet Canadian crime rates are not that different from those of the US [0]. It's also really weird to evoke HK in this discussion when the current police response in the US is way worse than anything reported out of HK. Particularly in the context that for the longest time the HK police actually had a rather splendid international reputation [1]. While US police had a "Dirty Harry" like reputation for several decades now, something that's reached its current peak with the whole "blueline" mentality and the glorification of comic vigilantes like the Punisher as a symbol for law enforcement. As such a whole lot of this is rooted very deeply in policing and incarceration culture and not some countries being inherently "more criminal" than others. [0] [VIDEO] [1] [LINK]

It's debatable if the police state was actually responsible for that drop in crime. Afaik Canada saw a comparable drop in crime, over the same time-period, without starting to mass incarcerate people [0] [0] [VIDEO] (Relevant stats and discussion start around 6:45, but the whole talk is rather worthwhile to watch)

Or this talk about one of Denmarks neighbours (Germany) by an American, Jewish, (grand-)son of Holocaust survivors visiting a German prison with a bunch of other Americans ("60 Minutes" reporter, some Governor, a DA, a convicted murderer etc.). A bunch of stats and comparisons to underline the effects of different prison systems: [VIDEO] And the related segment from "60 Minutes": [LINK]

> He stated "modern policing," which I would guess is since the 1980s and the drug war, then 9/11. All this is fairly new, and started within my lifetime. This is "normal" to the younger generation, but it's horrifies me. Yup, the US incarceration rate started rising to these insane current day levels around the 1980s [0] Interestingly enough, the incarceration rate kept rising even while crime was going down, but crime going down wasn't a US exclusive phenomena, Canada saw the same trend without mass incarcerating people. [1] [0] [LINK] [1] [VIDEO]

> That social stigma will not work in big, diverse and marred by identity politics countries like the US or even Canada (in my opinion). The social system analogue to the US is not Canada, Canada's policies in that regard are way more resembling of European systems than the US's, that applies not only to welfare systems, but also crime and incarceration [0]. As such, Canada is very much an example of how at least part of these policies can also work in North America, even with its allegedly exceptional scale and diversity. [0] [VIDEO]

When you design for the "edge cases" you end up with a bunch of Supermaxes were people vegitate 23 hours a day in solitary, which is btw commonly considered torture [0] Maybe the goal shouldn't be to design for "unchecked edge cases to apply maximum punishment" but rather a fundamental change in US prison and incarceration policies [1] [0] [LINK] [1] [VIDEO]

On the topic of prison systems in America vs. the civilized world, this is absolutely worth a watch: [VIDEO]