There is this attitude, but there is also the other thing: economic and racial social conflict. It cannot be ignored that in California, which has only 6.5% black people, almost 45% of offenders sentenced under three strikes laws are black. Americans not only hate letting people get away with things, but they have particularly little sympathy for policies that disproportionately affect racial minorities. This is the legacy of segregation and suburbanization: it's hard to care about what happens to people in other racial and economic demographics when you're living in a racially and economically homogenous suburb and never actually encounter these people except to hear in the news about crimes in their communities.

That said, I don't think these attitudes arise because Americans are bad people. America genuinely has a crime problem. London's murder rate is about 1.2 per 100,000. Chicago's is 15.9 per 100,000, while places like New Orleans and Detroit are around 50-60 per 100k. It's not particularly surprising Americans are less sympathetic than Europeans when it comes to punishment.

Americans are fascinated with race. It's used as an explanation for practically every kind of social injustice. To me, economic situation is much more important here. After all, outside of a serious mental illness, a wealthy person will not go and try to break into someone else's house.

There are cultural aspects that have developed to support certain behaviors within an economic setting, there is plain ignorance, but all these can be addressed with proper economic support for the impoverished populations.

In California, LA stands as the biggest source of the 3-strikers[1], order of magnitude larger than other urban centers. Part of this is the sheer size of the population, part of it is the size of the economic strata occupied by the majority of 3-strikers. Of the 6.5% (is this even accurate?) "black people" you reference, what % live in utter poverty? Of the 55% of non-black 3-strikers occupy the same strata?

I don't have a source of these statistics, but to me it seems very intuitive that you will find that the vast majority come from the same economic situation, and race plays less of a difference than you might think.

As for the suburbs, I fail to see the reasoning - are you proposing that we limit the free choice of people of where they want to live? Most people I know who chose to live in suburbs and endure horrific LA traffic did so not because they do not want to be next to other races, they did it because they want their children to have a yard to play in and breath fresh air. Schools with a smaller classroom size are an issue too, but that goes back to the economic situation - large lots/more expensive houses result in greater tax income and therefore better schools.

Race is simply the most identifiable trait. Everything else, you have to actually work at finding root causes, this is why people gravitate to issues like that - it's easy, it's horrific and everyone immediately knows the solution. Unfortunately, that is also why we have made very little progress on the issues, despite making the subject socially-radioactive. Instead of feel-good/feel-bad rhetoric, it would be nice to see a tangible plan for improving the economic conditions in the blighted parts of LA for a change... If that happens, I'm willing to wager that crime will drop with poverty, and such horrific stories will become non-existent.

[1] http://www.lao.ca.gov/2005/3_strikes/3_strikes_102005.htm (2005 analysis, so a bit out-dated)

> Americans are fascinated with race.

Americans are fascinated with race because our cities look like this: http://www.radicalcartography.net/chicagodots_race_big.jpg.

Moreover, it's hardly unique to Americans. Racial and ethnic conflicts are common across the whole world. The U.S. is still dealing with a legacy of slavery and desegregation that ended only recently. When the Governor of Alabama promised "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" Bill Gates would've been about eight years old. He would've seen on TV when Governor George Wallace physically blocked two black students from enrolling in the University of Alabama, and had to be moved aside by a National Guard general under the orders of the President. This isn't ancient history, it's a sociological blink of an eye.

Other western countries have to deal with the legacy of their repression of particular ethnic groups, but the U.S. is unusual in that its repression of blacks was particularly brutal and long-lived, ended very recently, and left a very large number of disaffected people among the population of the country (12-13%). The treatment of the Irish by the British might come close, but is mitigated by physical separation. What would the politics of England look like if London was 40% Irish, confined largely to ghettos in the city?

> To me, economic situation is much more important here.

In the U.S., race and economic situation is inseparable. That's the legacy of segregation. When Bill Gates was a child and going to school in the 1960's, most of America's black children lived in the South where they went to segregated schools, ate at segregated restaurants, etc. Economic segregation is a natural consequence of this very recently ended racial segregation.

> As for the suburbs, I fail to see the reasoning - are you proposing that we limit the free choice of people of where they want to live?

No, my comment is descriptive rather than prescriptive. Suburbs are segregated, by race and socioeconomic status. Voters living in the suburbs never see the impact their support of particular criminal law policies have on poor people and minorities, who disproportionately live in cities.

This is a race map of Detroit and its inner suburbs: http://cdn.all-that-is-interesting.com/wordpress/wp-content/.... The Detroit metro area is 70% white, but the city itself is 80% black. How much exposure and insight do you think those red dots have into the lives of those blue dots? When those red dots vote to support criminal policies that disproportionately affect the blue dots, do you think they even get any feedback about the ramifications of their decisions? This is the impact of segregation and suburbanization. People naturally have trouble empathizing with people who are different from themselves. Suburbanization exacerbates that natural phenomenon. People have particular trouble empathizing with people who live somewhere else that they never see or meet or interact with on a daily basis.

I'm afraid you are missing my point. History is history, what happened happened and there isn't anything we can do about it. My point is simply that non-discrimination policies without tangible focus on economic wellbeing is meaningless and will have zero impact.

Yes, on average black population is at an economic disadvantage when compared to white. Yes, there are historic reasons for that. But the problem is not that they were disadvantaged, but that they stay disadvantaged, much of it through somewhat self-sustaining social processes.

What I mean by self-sustaining, in this case, is the cycles of criminal activities/violence many of these communities are gripped by. The three strikes law hurts these communities the most not because they are black, but because the economic situation is such that people are compelled to steal or commit other crimes. Not only that, but it is socially acceptable to be involved in criminal activity. Both make repeat offenses more likely.

On the flip side, the suburban voters are acting very rationally. It's all in how you ask the question. "Should a repeat rapist be prevented from hurting anyone else?" Most people will answer yes. "Should a person convicted repeatedly of serious violent crimes be prevented from hurting anyone else?" Again, most people will answer yes.

Now, break these statements into what lawmakers and law-enforcement can actually implement, and you get something a long the lines of "people that commit multiple felonies should be sentenced to life without parole". Then the same lawmakers start expanding what a "felony" is to include non-violent crimes, and so on... Everyone appears to be acting somewhat rationally, but the end result is a lot less clear cut.

What we really need to focus is changing the economic situation, then the cultural aspects will follow, and only then we will have fewer stories like this and fewer victims in general.

> History is history, what happened happened and there isn't anything we can do about it.

We can't change history, but that doesn't mean we can't look to history to understand how the present got to be the way it is. Moreover, just because history has happened and we can't change it doesn't mean it doesn't have ongoing repercussions.

> But the problem is not that they were disadvantaged, but that they stay disadvantaged, much of it through somewhat self-sustaining social processes.

The problem is that they were enslaved, and then actively repressed. Those are facts that have repercussions in the present. Anecdote: my grandfather was trained as both a doctor and a lawyer, and was a wealthy man. My family didn't inherit any money, but my mom inherited an education from a private tutor and I grew up hearing about him and being shaped by those stories. Well the grandfathers of black people alive today were systematically repressed, denied education and denied economic advancement. What kind of stories do black kids grow up hearing, and how do those stories shape them in the present? The problem goes far beyond economic disadvantage. It's one thing to prevent a group of people from accumulating capital. It's another to destroy their social structures, actively prevent them from bettering themselves, and use the authority of the state to segregate them from the majority population. That results in cultural devastation that goes far deeper than simple economic loss.

> The three strikes law hurts these communities the most not because they are black, but because the economic situation is such that people are compelled to steal or commit other crimes.

Crime isn't a simple function of economic status. There is a wide variety of crime rates within communities of identical economic status. Crime is a function of social cohesion, the vitality of social structures, community respect for authority, trust, etc. Those things are deeply tied up in race as a result of the legacy of segregation. You don't think there is a difference between a poor black community and a poor white community when it comes to respect for authority? When that authority was, until just a few decades ago, fighting tooth and nail to maintain segregation and repression?

All valid points, but the reason I disagree with race as the main factor, is that I have had the privilege of working with and befriending many people who are either black or mixed. All of them had made the choice to work hard and gain education. In the end, in today's world there are choices. This is why I focus on the economics - to enable more people to make better choice, black or white.

I think people's sense of personal safety is a bigger driver than revenge. In general, people want a hard line on anything that impacts their sense of personal safety. In order to feel safe, people want punishment to prevent others from committing the same crime.

(Of course the flaw in this thinking is that punishment does not always prevent criminals from committing a crime).

I think the flaw in this thinking is that it's emotional. An alternative would be to do things that actually reduce crime statistics as proved by evidence, rather than things that people instinctively think might work.

If you lock up a repeat offender, you can at least prevent that person from committing more crimes.

Unless it turns out that the statistics work out otherwise?*

I tend to think the answer is evidence-based reform. Check out what works and do more of that. As far as I can tell, the best results are had by rehabilitation type systems.

* What I mean by this is it might be a tautology that someone locked up in prison forever can commit no more crimes, but I'm not sure it's as simple as that. If you lock someone up:

a) You deprive their community of that person. Maybe their children will now become criminals.

b) You deprive their community of their spending power and work. Maybe it will become poorer.

c) They have the chance inside prison to share experiences with novice criminals and teach them how to become old hands, increasing crime when their cell-mates get out.

Now if that person is a negative on all the above values, maybe there is a point in not letting them out. Maybe they have broken homes, never work, and teach others about crime anyway. But that's not the person I'm comparing them to.

I'm saying the criminal in their community has a negative effect on society. Putting them in jail makes it zero. Actually rehabilitating them makes it positive.

If we could get rehabilitation to work, everything gets better. Personally, I think evidence from round the world suggests this is possible.

The problem remains that we have a prison system that serves to punish, not rehabilitate.

If you take a defective part & try to fix its deficiencies, it has a better chance of fitting back into the machine it was intended for.

If you toss it into a box full of other rusty parts and let it sit neglected for several years, it is more likely to come out rusty & more defective rather than useful. If we were discussing machine parts, no one would ever argue otherwise.

If your entire policy is based around putting that part back in the box over and over, then blaming the part for being bad & eventually throwing it away, then you're not being honest about trying to fix the part.

A country that is as full of smart people as the US is, that has accomplished as many things as that country has done, and that cannot come up with a system better than what it has, cannot be honestly trying to "fix its parts".

I say it is that way because people are not interested in fixing the parts; that they simply want to throw them away. They want punishment, not improvement.