I often find Americans abroad to be quite charming in how American they are. Certainly, there are some that are obnoxious (and even their friendliness can be obnoxiousness in a way), but it can be quite endearing; Americans (especially the ones you meet while travelling) are so outgoing, and they’re so keen to make connections with people. Like, is it cringe when an American says “oh my great great grandfather was Scottish”, as if makes any difference at all that they are 1/16 Scottish? Yeah, somewhat. But after a friend explained to me that she sees it as coming from a deep desire to connect with other people, I began to see it as quite sweet.
It’s part of why I grieve for what’s going on in America right now. “American-ness” is a messy, mixed concept, and it would be unreasonable to ignore how much of that concept is deeply problematic. However, I feel that there is goodness within that concept, and the people in power at the moment seem hell bent on destroying or undermining what goodness exists there.
Plenty of us are just entitled psychopaths who ate too much lead paint as children, but I think you are correct that the rest of us are looking for connections. We come from a place where our traditions are shallow and our heritage is mostly just awful. We are not only looking to connect, but we are also essentially a bunch of orphans trying to desperately figure out who we are and where we belong.
I know most other people find it obnoxious, so I never really bring it up, but I do, it’s also an invitation to tell me more about who you are and where you come from.
It has little to do with Americans being violent. It comes down to population density. The US has a ton of places without the population density for pick pocketing to be effective.
The pickpocket has already failed if the mark sees them, so not sure what was happening here. And people who are not used to pick pockets would not likely be looking out for them. Were they going around in groups wearing “Official Paris Olympics Pickpocket” hi-vis vests?
This is definitely a win for the Americans, beating the shit out of pickpockets is awesome.
Unfortunately it has an unintended consequence of criminals being more aggressive. If you as a potential pickpocket know they will throw hands regardless, you might as well start with maximum violence, save yourself some trouble.
Parisian pickpockets are quite unpleasant but at least you know they will not go beyond stealing your wallet while you’re distracted.Yes, of course, capitulation always works…
Or just deciding your wallet wasn’t worth getting punched in the face.
They have the advantage here. The alternative is getting blindsided with a haymaker.
Nah, the whole advantage of pickpocketing someone is you’re away before the victim realises they’ve been robbed. If you use violence, you then have to deal with bystanders, as well as an irate victim.
sidenote, the reading of a thread on twitter is hellish. Top to bottom be damned, it’s like 3 different UIs in one.
Especially if there’s a little addon from Tumblr at the end of something.
why isnt the reddit type formatting good enough?!complaining on lemmy about twitters UI somehow earned elon musk two dollars
the only time I ever see it in the US is music festivals
It is, your just not gonna find pickpockets in rural places and most people don’t leave their county, let alone state so people are clueless how the world at large works. Go to any big city and you’ll find pick pockets at work. Further to that, many of their tourist places are far apart and remote so less likely to find them in the same kind of places as Europe, which draws large volumes of people reliably to the sames places from all over the world.
For the record, American’s don’t like anything.
I grew up in New York City and now live in Boston and I’ve never encountered a pickpocket. I’ve been mugged three times and had a mentally unbalanced homeless guy punch me in the face unprovoked, but I’ve never been pickpocketed.
Agreed. Grew up in dense East Coast cities in the 80s and 90s, pickpocketing was not a thing that happened.
While you will find pickpockets in major tourist spots in the US, they are not nearly as common as elsewhere. Here we just prefer the good ol’ stick-up.
American’s don’t like anything.
I’m offended sir, now if you’ll excuse me, I need to attend to my hamburger!
I’m going to go eat my hamburger in my truck! Good day, sir!
We do seem to enjoy locking up and deporting the people who do the actual work around here.
In São Paulo it was a little mini-assault.
You’d get shoved from behind, maybe bumped into from the side, while yet another guy is actually taking your shit. Extra credit if you’re at a curb so you stumble.
Then everybody splits, your instinct is to turn around to see the guy who shoved you, by the time you’ve done that and realized what happened, your shit is goooone.
What are they doing in Paris that the mark has a chance to grab them? I guess if you’re in a reasonably athletic pack of 4-5, but at that point surely there are easier targets?
I suppose people who don’t watch American sports don’t appreciate that there are many obese Americans who can still run 40 yards in six seconds and expertly smash you into the ground when they get there.
I was almost pickpocketed in Paris when I was out late at night and stupid drunk to the point I was seeing double. I had sat down on the curb because standing wasn’t great. They came up behind me and crouched down without me noticing until they made their move. I instantly went into fight mode and almost stabbed them. Super dumb but I was very drunk and it was just like instinct that they were trying to steal my knife so the only option was stab them in the face with it before they could use it to stab me. As soon as I got the knife back I had the blade open and they jumped back looking terrified like I was a wild animal about to attack, which is kind of what I felt like. Super weird experience. I think they were really just grabbing what they could and happened to get my knife instead of my wallet but being a drunk American my first instinct was kill or be killed.
In my city in the UK, there have been a lot of thefts recently where someone will grab a phone out of someone’s hand and then escape on a moped or bike. Sometimes they start out on foot and hop on a vehicle, but sometimes it’s a “drive by” pickpocketing, so to speak (though calling it pickpocketing feels a tad erroneous if there are no pockets involved).
In big European cities, a more subtle version of what you describe can be quite common. Like if a suspicious person bumps into you (in a manner that’s fairly common in a big city), people who suspect that they have been pickpocketed may pat the pocket that their phone or wallet is in to check that things are still there. This is then observed by someone working with that first person, and they watch and wait for an opportunity to surreptitiously swoop in. When it happens, even if you immediately feel that you have been pickpocketed, it can be difficult to discern who it was.
people who don’t watch American sports
I’m gonna go out on a fucking limb and say people playing professional sports are not representative of the average obese assholes who have to walk around with a fucking oxygen tank lmao.
expertly smash you into the ground
Seriously, why do Americans all think they’re the best fighters around? Is it too much television and action movies? You’re in America, you really think an American pickpocket isn’t going to be packing some kind of weapon and if they clock that they’re being chased they are afraid to use it or something? I dunno, it seems to me the vast majority love just fantasizing about this while in reality they’d be bleeding out on the pavement before they had a chance to touch the person who swiped their shit.
Pretty sure they were talking about football players. Not really a fighting thing. That’s literally half the game.
Football players still very often fail to actually tackle someone even when they try.
This isn’t about standing up and doing axe kicks and shit, this is about chasing somebody down and getting the ball back from them.
I’ve personally chased somebody down who assumed they could outrun me because I was fat, ten years after the last time I played gridiron.
My knees were wobbly and I was a little lightheaded afterward, but it’s the one athletic ability your stereotypical dumbass American will have. We’ll literally break our own ankle trying to do a stepover. Or maybe that’s just me. 😄
This assumes that you can do it perfectly every time, not that you’ll sometimes be outclassed by someone who is actually in shape, actually faster than you, or has better control over their motor skills and can dodge or jump to escape you. Your little anecdote about the one time you tackled someone without breaking your body trying to do it doesn’t prove anything.
Sure.
I totally agree that absolutely anybody with current training in anything would have made me pay dearly for my stupidity.
However, because I’m a random American who played football, I was the one with the scintilla more experience, and I got to keep my teeth.
The American dudes who played sports in high school and are now in their 20s and 30s haven’t had their health collapse yet.
European cops are way more intimidating than American cops, by and large. I’m not trying to be jingoistic, I’m just saying that running after someone who is carrying something is the version of the national sport the vast majority of us actually play.
Your national sport is walking from office to a car to drive home to sit on a couch. Average American walks three hundred meters per week, the second you stop training for the sport you played once a week as a child 10 years ago, you stop being able to run any reasonable distance.
I guess another national sport of yours is overestimating how strong and powerful you actually are.The average american walks about 2 miles a day. 22km a week is definitely not 300 meters.
The average american has never walked a meter in their whole life. We’ll be dead in the cold cold ground before we measure distances in things easily divisible by 10.
I think what you’re missing is that waaay more Americans than you think played sports as a kid (well over 60% of the population iirc), and still know how to tackle someone. Football is huge here, and baseball can get pretty nasty too (source: other kids would see the armor and think ‘well if I can knock the ball out of his glove I’m safe!’)
Yes, there are a lot of obese assholes, but it turns out lugging around an extra 100lb of weight is actually pretty good strength training for the legs. Yes, they’re going to be gassed nigh instantly because their cardio is shit, but they’re probably fast off the mark and weigh enough that just running into you will slam you into the ground pretty badly.
Weight classes exist for a reason, and most Americans are going to be in a much higher weight class than the average pickpocket. Absent any weapons, as long as they can catch them, the American has a decent chance of winning, statistically speaking. Paris pickpockets found that out to their detriment.
Reading shit like this, I am no longer surprised so many Americans think they can overpower an elephant and outrun a bear. Yeah, buddy, the fact that you occasionally run on a field as a child, 20 years and 100 kilos ago, makes you superhuman now. I
Nobody ever said anything about superhuman. Put the strawman away.
This all continues to rely on an erroneous set of thinking that because you’re the victimized party that automatically you will come out on top. It assumes that the pickpocket isn’t in any way considering that they might need to deal with someone catching them in the act, and that they won’t have a knife or a gun that they could pull far faster than some obese fuckwit can run them down. It also assumes that “they still know how to tackle someone” even matters. Plenty of people “know how to tackle someone” in professional football and still fail to do it regularly because their opponent is either faster than them, stronger than them, or more agile and can dodge. Every single suggestion from my fellow Americans in this thread rests upon faulty assumptions that the other party is somehow unable to defend themselves or is unable to escape a tackle. It’s fucking absurd. Everyone in this country thinks they are fucking John fucking McClane. Well yippee ki-yay motherfucker, guess what none of you are.
None of that was an assumption I made, and I also very clearly stated that all of what I said was absent a weapon, like the knife you’re referring to.
Pickpockets typically aren’t trying to run, because that’s INCREDIBLY suspicious, they’re trying to slink away, and they certainly aren’t trying to slip or break a tackle that they probably don’t even see coming- again, they’re not going to be staring at the person they just pickpocketed.
Nobody is trying to pretend Americans are john mcclane. I’m simply pointing out a possible explanation for what has already happened. You can argue all you want, but the fact is, american tourists regularly do catch and win against pickpockets. That’s literally the entire point of this lemmy post.
It’s not going to be a MMA fight between an american and a pickpocket, except the american has to run down and catch the sprinting pickpocketer first, it’s probably going to be some 250lb dude wheezing for breath blindsiding him out of nowhere in something that is more accurately described a high-speed trip into inadvertent body slam, but it’s still gonna work.
american tourists regularly do catch and win against pickpockets
I’m gonna need a lot more evidence than a single article posted on… *checks notes… medium.com, a site where literally anyone can post a story.
It was a Whole Thing on tiktok, with people filming the altercations/aftermath, to the point of where it became a meme and trended during the olympics.
I live in Canada, there’s surprisingly little pickpocketing here too, and we don’t have the same gun/weapon laws.
Like the Americans, we’ll straight up beat you to a pulp if you try some shit, and we’re very sorry about that… You motherfucker.
If you want to steal shit, at least be moral about it and go to a walmart or something. I’m sorry but I’m not even going to pretend to be sorry about a pickpocket targeting normal people getting his (or her) ass beaten.
Though, on that note, is it harder or riskier to shoplift in Europe? Maybe that’s why we have fewer pickpockets because stores are much easier and safer targets. Unless you get a particularly enthusiastic mall cop after you, even if you get caught, it’ll probably be a fairly polite interaction involving more disappointment than rage, all the way from capture to sentencing, at least in Canada.
Plus these days the odds of getting cash is low and the expensive device everyone carries has gps tracking built in, so the reward might be too low for the risk.
If you see someone shoplifting, no you didn’t.
Edit: to clarify, I agree with you, and that’s part of the intention of leaving this quip here
I’m sorry but I’m not even going to pretend to be sorry about a pickpocket targeting normal people getting his (or her) ass beaten.
What about American tourists in a foreign nation that has been historically violently repressed via the American Military and economic shock treatment by American institutions? Those American tourists enabled their government and businesses to do that, via their votes and their labor for said businesses. In this respect they are not just “regular people” in a place like Mexico, Chile, Iran, Iraq, and so on.
There’s no pickpocketing in the US because thieves will shoot you before taking your wallet. At that point it’s murder with a motive
No, it is because pickpocketing can be argued as being an assault in the US. If you catch someone pickpocketing you it is legal to defend yourself and your property.
…and that’s why they start with maximum violence out of the bat. If for you as a criminal the outcome is the same, why risk it and start with random pickpocket, when you will be tried as if you assaulted a person, start with an assault, safer for you, same risk.
I am flabbergasted you think that a petty assault charge for pickpocketing is even in the same building as pre meditated murder with a lethal weapon.
The us is bad sure, but not the only nation with a similar system (I know here someone will take a swing at a pickpocketer) and yet the murder rate is not higher then average in the world.
That is entirely dependent on the state you live in, and not all states have the same kind of interpretation.
I was thinking it was because, in many places people are carrying in public, and if you steal from the wrong person, you’re dead.
Yeah that’s why crime has plummeted /s
I mean, its not like thoae fascist pigs will do anything to help. Shoot first ask later is the 'Murican way.
Four ruffians break into my house. “What the devil?” As I grab my powdered wig and Kentucky rifle. Blow a golf ball sized hole through the first man, he’s dead on the spot. Draw my pistol on the second man, miss him entirely because it’s smoothbore and nails the neighbors dog. I have to resort to the cannon mounted at the top of the stairs loaded with grape shot, “Tally ho lads” the grape shot shreds two men in the blast, the sound and extra shrapnel set off car alarms. Fix bayonet and charge the last terrified rapscallion. He Bleeds out waiting on the police to arrive since triangular bayonet wounds are impossible to stitch up. Just as the founding fathers intended.
Well, I imagine this culture change happened a long time ago, and it never came back because of… well the implication.
Change happened alright. The murder rate in my city rose 20% after the outgoing republican governor permitted conceal and carry by executive order on his way out the door after losing reelection (2007)
I went through paris in a jacket with a vertical zippered breast pocket. I was bumpchecked so damn many times, I just wanted to get a little baggie of grease it put it in there, give me a little fun for their trouble.
when was this? i was in paris in november, and had no issues. granted, i heard pickpockets were an issue, so i just used my phone for payments, but no one bumped me or anything.
, so i just used my phone for payments
Let’s just say long before mobile phones could be used as payments :)
I kept my cash and passport on one of those neck lanyards underneath my shirt.
My wife and I were Honeymooning in Paris, purchasing subway passes from an automated kiosk, when a guy who was pretending to be really interested in his phone started getting uncomfortably close to her. She felt him touch her, so she elbowed him real hard, knocking the phone out of his hand, and yelling, “Oh no, are you OK, I’m so sorry, I broke your phone!” real loud (which was true, she cracked his screen). I don’t think he was expecting a 5’2" woman to assault him, because he grabbed his broken phone and started booking it before I could react.
A very nice Parisian came over and told us we needed to be more careful and watch ouf for thieves. We thanked him, but my wife was laughing a few moments later because she just assumed he was a pervert. I thought maybe the phone screen had already been broken, and he was trying to run some sort of, “Hey, you broke my phone, give me money!” scam but chickened out when he saw how aggressively my wife reacted. We live in a major American city, so we’ve experienced crime before, but it never occurred to us that he was trying to pick her pocket. Felt almost quaint, like a Dickens novel.
I live in a tourist trap area of the US and got pick pocketed once shortly after moving here. So I am real cautious of strangers getting close. After doing to Pokemon go rounds one night some dude started following me, and the girl I was dating at the time, from the gas station. I come from a much more densely populated area of the US so I immediately recognized it as a threat, and told her to keep walking and I would catch up. I’ll admit I was a little too aggressive given the situation, cause I saw a “come to God” moment in homie’s eyes when he realized how big the dude he was stalking was(I’m easily two standard deviations to the right of bell curve in terms of largeness, but I’m also proportional so most don’t realize it on sight).
I would say I felt bad, but after getting my walker taken and having to go through the bullshit involved, I wasn’t about to take a chance. Funny thing is, the girl actually broke up with me cause of that incident and immediately got with a meth head who took her and her family for what they could.
This story, much like life, has no point other than keep your wallet in a very noticable area.
It’s weird moving to places where the relative danger of different crimes vary.
I grew up in a place where I was mugged at knife point a couple of times. It was a pretty socioeconomically deprived area where this wasn’t normal, but it wasn’t super abnormal either. One of the times I was mugged, I was in a pretty bad place with my mental health, and I said “if you want my phone, then just fucking stab me for it, because I don’t give a fuck anymore”. The guy mugging me seemed to recognise me as someone going through some shit, and became super sympathetic. He even asked me if there was anything he could do to help. A friend who was mugged (at knifepoint) in the same rough area one responded by saying “oh come off it, mate” and continuing walking. It’s like there was a weird sense of solidarity, because we all knew we lived in a shit hole place with no prospects.
I later moved to a much safer city, where being out at night felt tremendously safe. Now, I live in a larger city, and none of my previously cultivated instincts for safety are the right fit. I know that I must be more cautious here than I was in the small, posh city I lived in, but also I feel that the kind of caution I need here is quite different to what was necessary in my home town. Without a calibrated sense of risk in this new city, I often find myself being overly cautious. I suppose that’s a safer side of caution to err on.
You know what’s funny? I got robbed at gunpoint in front of my house. I was wearing a knock off Ulysse Nardin watch, and they didn’t even touch it. They got about $30 from the wallet before being arrested. And no, the cops never gave me my $30.
If I had my wallet stolen, the worst part of it would be having to renew id and stuff. It’s a lot of faff
As we say in the USA:
“The police don’t protect us, we protect us”
There are 7 police officers in my town of 13k. We say “Sometimes there’s justice and sometimes there’s just us”
Whole lee shit this is good! I’ve always heard the adage “when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.”
And that’s true for both where I’m from(Miami) and where I moved to(the corner of bum fucked & nowhere)
I mean sure, it do be like that but also my old roommate, who never locked his car and kept weed and his work tools in it overnight, every night, walked around our neighborhood with a pistol “looking” for the guys who stole the aforementioned tools and weed.
It happened 3 times…there’s something wrong with alot of us
Did he think that gave him a legal precedent? Like isn’t owning weed and a gun a felony in and of itself?
In my jurisdiction, yes. Any drug offense combined with possessing a firearm is an automatic felony. Even if the drug offense by itself would have been a misdemeanor. It is a very bad idea, legally speaking.
Owning the gun is not a felony weed yes
That’s kinda cool seeing how apparently you guys do put your money where your mouth is 😄 I wish we talked about that kinda stuff more and not just about the bad. I feel like remembering that not every aspect of being American sucks might give people a better reason to resist too.
Americans are naturally anarchist, we just have a shitload of bootlicker propaganda shoved on us at all times and too many people buy it
What reaction were the French pickpockets expecting? Ope, lemme get that for ya?
Certainly not assault. Most (french) people catching a thief inside their pocket have a bad enough day to not risk getting injured while winning a prison ticket.
I think it’s harder to die from poor in France.
Oh. That makes sense
Omg, this turned out to be a thread with plenty explanations to USians that societies have laws, police, judges…
You can blame the orange guy all you want, but your culture is completely derailed. Murder (under whatever “reasons”) can’t be a national sport.
Weapon manufacturers really did a good job in the land of the free…
USian checking in, and you’re absolutely right. We somehow have the biggest police budget, while simultaneously having the most violent crimes & incarceration rates of all the developed nations.
The other day, I was learning about the private prison system in the UK. It was grim seeing how that whole process leads to the proliferation of crime. Things are a damn sight better here than in the US, but it’s clear that our current trajectory is taking us closer to the US on that front.
It’s a self reinforcing cycle, because the rhetoric of crime leads to the proliferation of prisons, and a system that finds it profitable to criminalise people. I’m not even talking about prisons in terms of rehabilitation Vs punitive justice here, but almost the stage before that — people who probably shouldn’t be considered criminals at all. I suppose what I am positing is that we should be applying preventative medicine" lens towards crime and criminals. But of course, where’s the profit in actually addressing socioeconomic inequities?
there’s no “somehow” about it. police don’t stop crime.
Right, they punish ex post facto & not judicially
When seconds matter, the police are only minutes away.
And now the police (ICE) are disappearing people. Can you blame people for wanting guns?
I mean obviously the gun laws are insane but the act of collectively beating the shit out of pickpockets has my respect.
Violent retribution as a core principle might contribute to your completely insane murder rates.
Man, people should have a right to defend their shit. The idea that someone should be allowed to take your things in front of you and you should be charged if you beat them up is pretty unhinged tbh
I fully disagree and enjoy living in a society free of such barbaric tendencies.
Make your people happy and maybe they’ll stop stealing your shit.
There are people who steal no matter how wealthy or comfortable they are. Theft is not stopped by making people happy. Reduced significantly, yes. But absolutely not stopped. Wage theft is the largest form of theft in the world, done exclusively by the better off and rich. Never forget that
(And yes, I’m saying that people should have the right to beat up their employers to get back their stolen money)
Also not really a thing here, and that’s fucking insane
It is a thing there, in fact.
Where do you live? I want your shit
Not rhetorical, I personally want your shit
I bet you would, but assuming you’re American, you’ll never get anywhere close to it
Where is that? Turkmenistan? Russia? Bhutan?
Man, it’s just shit. Life should be of higher value than an object, even if it’s a really cool object or useful. You beating someone for taking something is a bigger problem then things being taken. You can’t commit a crime because someone else also committed a crime first. Get it?
Quite simply, that should be the thief’s decision to make. It’s their risk to undertake, it was their decision to make that choice to rob and steal.
You can’t commit a crime because someone else also committed a crime first. Get it?
Legality is not morality.
What’s really lost in this whole conversation is how its… 2025 and almost nobody walks around with cash anymore?
You can literally call your bank and credit card companies and have all your cards cancelled and locked within minutes? Any money spent by the thief will be returned to your accounts?
If it’s your phone stolen instead of your wallet… You didn’t have it set to be locked or auto-lock when theft is detected? You didn’t have find your device set up? You don’t have it set to be able to be remotely wiped? Pretty sure you can also get your phone insured for theft.
One of the few valuable things Tyler Durden said in Fight Club was “You are not the contents of your wallet. You are not the car you drive. You are not your fucking khakis.” Yet Americans still love to extend the concept of who they are to the things they own.
People are fucking unhinged, man.
Pretty sure you can also get your phone insured for theft.
No individual should be expected to use insurance to protect themselves from theft as a solution to it. That’s a crazy take.
That’s literally why insurance exists and is a foundational principle in most modern societies, but uhm, go ahead and keep living in the stone age.
What about a pickpocket that stole a stupid iPhone from a rich teen who would get a new one the very next day? And, in some less frequent cases, the pickpocket may have had actual needs like buying medicine…
That’s the reason we have a judicial system. Not even police are supposed to do harm, only prevent harm and bring into justice system.
I know the system has many flaws. That’s beyond the point. Those who prefer to go vigilante are calling for making it worse. Specially if we take into account the effects of inequality on a hands-on self-service judicial approach…
And, in some less frequent cases, the pickpocket may have had actual needs like buying medicine…
Likewise, a pickpocketing victim may also need to buy medicine.
Are you actually defending thieves?
Why can’t the pickpocket go get a job and buy his own damn iPhone. My stuff is mine, you try to take it and I’ll hit you. This is like basic human behavior.
What about a pickpocket that stole a stupid iPhone from a rich teen who would get a new one the very next day? And, in some less frequent cases, the pickpocket may have had actual needs like buying medicine…
Fuck Em.
But the judicial system famously doesn’t differentiate between people doing what they need to for good reasons and those doing it for bad reasons…
Wouldn’t that be factoring in motive and mitigating circumstances during sentencing?
How’s the pickpocket to know the person in question’s situation? That’s one of the top justifications scammers in india use as to why they pretend what they do is reasonable. But reality is they don’t know, and they don’t care. They’ll steal from anyone.
I know the system has many flaws. That’s beyond the point.
That isn’t beyond the point. That is the point.
Also you can make up sob stories about those people all day if you want to. Got nothing to do with reality but if you like to feel sad for them knock yourself out.
My most American belief is that society fell apart when we got rid of dueling. Assholes need the threat of violent retribution to contain their assholery, and without that, they just shit everywhere.
Of course, that belief falls apart the minute that you realize that assholes can be good at dueling, too…
It also falls apart when dueling did not generally cross classes. If you were a rich guy your “defense of your honor” was either petty or eliminating competition, sometimes both. No poor person was going to take out a “rich asshole” by any other means than being charged with murder. The only violent retribution available to the masses is revolt accompanied by a guillotine.
Very true.
The public largely supported the abolition of duelling. The reason it disappeared was because it was largely associated with slave owners in the south and it disappeared after they lost the Civil War.
Watching 60 days in is an absolutely insane thing to watch as a non american. People living like cockroaches in moldy shit stained rooms. People just sleep on the floor because they are over capacity, violence, food that looks just downright like a hazard to eat. And people in there are like: yeah, i’ve been here 10 times. I can’t get a job so i do crime and then i land here again. Or guys like: i grew some weed, so obviously i’m in this slave hole for 10 years.
What I find worse is how many Americans refuse to accept that our society can and should treat prisoners better. Like I’m not advocating for luxury hotels or unrestricted freedoms for them, just humane conditions, reasonable sentence lengths, and a focus on rehabilitation. What we’re doing isn’t working and is a stain on our collective soul.
Though I will say most Americans have odd understandings of quality of life. Owning a car is seen as so fundamental that people feel attacked at the idea of building cities where it’s not a necessity, while the idea that we should provide free meals to schoolchildren or providing medicine to prisoners is seen by many as government waste. Even our fundamental and foundational rights such as state appointed lawyers for the indigent accused of crimes are nickel and dimed to uselessness, and the idea of providing these lawyers for all accused who want them is seen as radical.
This is hardly a bright side to the fucked up cloud that is the modern prison system, but something I have found notable is that some of the most interesting stuff about restorative justice has come from American scholars and activists. It’s notable to me because whilst America seems to distill all the things I hate most about how society treats crime and prisoners, I recognise a heckton of these things in the justice systems of other countries too — including my own. However, there does not seem to be as much appetite for digging into these problematic aspects in countries where things are perceived to be on the more moderate side.
Like I say, it’s hardly a “bright side”, but I think there isn’t an easy answer to “how do we respond to people who transgress against society?”. Even if we agree that we should focus on rehabilitation, the question of how to do that is a pretty complex one. It would be wrong to say that I’m hopeful when there’s so much fucked up stuff deeply entrenched in modern justice systems (especially the American one), but I do feel bolstered by how much I have personally had my perspectives challenged by the aforementioned scholars and activists resisting unjust “justice” in the US.
have they tried not doing crime?
The saddest/funniest thing to me about this whole bit is how every. single. US. person defending their right to righteously beat the shit out of someone for picking their pocket never, ever, even considers the idea that they might lose.
It’s just like gun owners in general. They all think they’re a perfect shot and the other guy must be like a Storm Trooper in Star Wars and can’t hit the broad side of a barn.
Everyone thinks they’re the hero and that they don’t need cops and laws until they’re the one bleeding out in an alleyway on the verge of death because they were stupid enough to “fight back.”
US Americans are completely fucking unhinged and live in a fantasy land where somehow every single one of them is the biggest and strongest with the biggest dick and will always win because their cause is righteous. What a crock of shit.
Willingness to stand up for oneself is not necessarily the same as one overestimating their ability to fight.
I was bullied regularly as a kid. I was no match at all for most of the bullies, they easily had strength, size, numbers, and fighting experience over me, but since the schools wouldn’t or couldn’t do a damn thing to protect me, especially when the bullies followed me well away from school grounds, the only choices I had were to either endure it, or to try to change the situation by standing up for myself. Even if I got my ass beat even worse just for standing up for myself, at the very least it made it clear to them that I was no longer guaranteed to be a frictionless target and that sometimes changes things for the better.
It’s not about winning. It’s about putting up the fight, because the potential outcomes of not fighting back aren’t always much better than standing up for oneself.
That said, I personally wouldn’t want to put a foreign trip in jeopardy by assaulting anyone if it wasn’t an actual self defense situation, much like back at home. I’m just responding to this idea that willingness to fight is not the same thing as being overly confident that one will come out on top.
and that sometimes changes things for the better.
And a lot of times it changes it for the worse, too. What even is this argument?
I don’t think you understand what it’s like to be constantly bullied and constantly on guard. At some point there is no concept of “worse”. At some point there is only the sense of “literally anything in the world except this.”
And I think you’d be shocked to find out how wrong you are. You’re describing my high school years. Guess what? Fighting back made it worse.
I’m genuinely sorry to hear that and I’m glad you made it out of there. But I stand by my point.
As do I. Sometimes the bullies genuinely have the upper hand. Like the Nazis versus the people in their concentration camps. Fighting back just lead to more violent retribution against those who were already being mistreated. You can’t magic your way into suddenly winning a losing battle. It’s absurdity after absurdity in here.
I think it’s actually a symptom of a small penis. Huge truck, big gun, itty bitty peepee.
People!! Ugh. Downvoting me is letting your internalized opression taking over your moral!
I don’t downvote much. I logged in today just so I could downvote you.
Not sure why other folks did it, but for me, you seemed to like the attention.
