If you want to understand them to any extent you have to understand a few things that don't tend to hit the news a lot. I'll try to touch on a couple quick.

http://www.prisonsucks.com/

Those racial statistics are as real as it gets. Part of the reason for them I explained a bit in another post here a fair time back. Additional reasons I didn't get into there include the 100:1 disparity between the way we sentenced powder and rock cocaine, and yes that's 100:1. 5 grams of rock bought the same 5 years as 500 grams of powder, we put stupid kids in cells with real dealers then we wondered why they came out like they did.

That's almost one young black man in eight between 25-29 years of age behind bars right now, today, with mandatory minimums and overlapping drug free zones rather than worse crimes playing too large a role in it. And we wonder at the single parent homes, low incomes and other issues and wonder why they can't get their acts together. We might want to take a real close look at the system we've built here. The problem isn't all on one side or the other but the faults of the system damned sure don't help them to solve theirs.

After they get through with all of that stuff we've got to consider the civil penalties drug convictions carry such as loss of eligibility for education loans and other types of aid as well as housing and other stuff. That's been better and worse at times and in places but it's played a role as well. And too much of it isn't due to worse crimes so much as it is wrong places.

I've got to get some sleep so if anyone expects an answer to anything you'll have to wait a few hours at least. I'll get to it though.

*promote

Self promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Monday, March 23rd, 2009 12:44am PDT - promote requested by original submitter peggedbea.

Here is the whole documentary:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3947270279185928125&hl=en

*africa

Adding video to channels (Africa) - requested by longde.