Prison life is NOT a cool hip-hop video …

It is no secret that prisons in many countries are literally exploding with inmates. The US has one of the biggest prison populations on this planet (almost 2,5 million). But also Russia and China have huge numbers of people incarcerated (each over 1 million).

The numbers are huge, but the real important statistic is how many people per 100.000 citizens are locked up:

USA: 738 prisoners per 100,000
China: 701 prisoners per 100,000
Russia: 611 prisoners per 100,000
UK: 148 prisoners per 100,000
Italy: 104 prisoners per 100,000
Turkey: 91 prisoners per 100,000
Sweden: 82 prisoners per 100,000

Needless to say that the numbers of the US, China and Russia are staggeringly high and perverse. One could understand that politically depressed nations like Russia and China would be on top of this sad chart - but the US?!

While we are here, let’s start a nice prison gang to support each other later.

The main problem for such huge numbers of inmates is actually not prison, but freedom. Most of these people have a hard time getting reintegrated - and when societies imprison such huge numbers of people they also lack the funds and patience to do the necessary socialization process.

It is easier and cheaper to simply throw these “criminals” into prison again when they fail - and fail they will, because neither society nor the government is willing to invest into their “freedom”.

Build prisons, lobby for tougher laws, get loads of prisoners and loads of government money!

Security is big business these days - not just since 9/11. Prisons are money printing machines and a safe investment. Since many societies rather lock away the unwanted people instead of dealing with them prisons are booming.

So there is a huge lobby for the “security industry”, but hardly a well paid and oiled lobby for prisoners. Fighting for prisoners rights and better reintegration is a hot potato nobody likes to touch. Companies who run prisons have only an interest to make money - that is why so many things including prisons shouldn’t be privatized at all.

Plus nobody really cares what happens to minor and major criminals once they are “justly” sentenced for a few months or for life. Out of sight, out of mind.

Many countries have followed the US lead and sentence repeated offenders to harsh long time sentences or even life. The “three strikes rule” locks even minor offenders up for life or most of their young lifes. There is no interest to make them productive members of society - instead they are treated like inferior genetic material that has to be stored in a special place to keep society “healthy”.

Yeah, evil people deserve to be tortured and locked away forever - even when they are just minor offenders or mentally sick.

But torture and mistreatment of prisoners is not just happening in Iraq and secret CIA prisons. It is pretty normal in most US prisons - and obviously considered almost normal in Russia and China.

Any society has to ask itself of civilized it really is - and how it treats and “invests” in their weakest members: kids, the sick, the left behind, the hookers, the mentally retarded and those locked away.

It just shows which societies are pressuring it’s members to conformity via the law, police and the “justice” system - while others can live with offenders and differences.

The police and courts become social cleaning services - getting rid of unwanted people.

Watchamean “protect & serve”?! Serve whom?

If there is one huge difference between EU on one side  and the US, Russia and China it is this: lower prisoner rates, more social reintegration and less severe sentences for offenders. And don’t get me started on the death penalty …

It is no surprise that in many countries prisons have developed into parallel societies, where the inmates have created an alternative social system - since nobody really wants them on the outside anymore.

Sure - there will always be criminals and prisons. But such huge incarceration rates are indicators that there is something wrong with the host society - there is either political, economic or social injustice at work.

Keep Justicia smart and well funded - otherwise she might one day unjustified strike out at you …

And as much we all have to support the justice system - we also have to have an eye on injustice within our societies - because a human and fair system is something we all should aim for.

Even criminals of all ranks and deeds deserve a fair treatment, a chance to get back into society and a decent treatment while behind bars.

The criminal is the one who has misbehaved - societies should never misbehave.

Watching the underclass, the addicted and the stupid getting busted. Doesn’t that make you feel superior?

It is amazing how many shows there are on TV that deal with justice, law and order. It doesn’t matter if it’s reality TV like Cops or fiction like those many CSI shows (all these different offspring of the same formula are a phenomenon in itself). Each country seems to have it own mixture of court TV, forensic documentaries, lawyer dramas and car chases …

In all these shows one topic prevails: the law wins, the bad guys are caught and punished.

One would think that we would want to watch something relaxing in the evening or ignore other people’s problems - instead murder and minute details of investigation seem to be more interesting than some simpler forms of entertainment.

I’ll give you blood, you give me better ratings!

But behind all this is our natural (?) desire for social porn: to participate in what’s going on and staying informed about the newest gossip of the global tribe. It doesn’t matter if it’s a real event like O.J. Simpsons trial or such trivial crap like Paris Hilton going to jail for being a drunken pussy. We want to be informed and we want to ‘relate’ - and it doesn’t matter if it’s a petty criminal or a superstar - or even fictional character.

It doesn’t matter if it’s other humans killing each other or making love to each other - we love to watch and learn intimate secrets behind it all.

But there is another layer to this lust for justice. It’s a double sided affair of the same mechanism of ‘violence’. We all have been victims of social, emotional or even criminal violence - so we want justice, revenge or just the reassurance that we will receive justice and protection. But deep in our fantasies we are also thieves and murderers - we all had the impulse / moments in our life’s to cause mayhem to others out of anger or a simple case of road rage.

Science and bad scripts to the rescue - we bring justice on a weekly basis.

So on one side we want protection from violence - but we also love to explore and participate when others were violent or even killed. For a few minutes we can dive into the mindset of the killer, the victims and the justice system - and compare it to our own inner world. It a mental carnival in which we can play every role and explore their good and bad sides while munching potato chips.

Scientists have shown many times that we mentally and emotionally emphatize on a deep level with other people - no matter if we watch something happening in reality (like driving by a traffic accident and everybody gloats) or a fictional event (we cry when made up characters die or model our lives on their behavior).

Especially in our hysterical media world plus criminals and terrorists at each corner we welcome ’security’, ‘justice’ and ‘protection’ - even when it’s just artificial. Soothing our minds is almost as important as real justice, protection or security.

So watching violence and how others deal with it or are doing terrible stuff helps us to cope with violence in our own lives and shows us new, different or frightening ways to deal with this topic.

But real crime and real violence is no ‘game’ to explore. Especially in fictional crime the dead always return in another series and lethal injuries can be overcome with a good script. Even court TV, recreations or documentaries do not really show the blood, pain and horror or real crimes. So can’t really emphatize, we always only get a filtered nicer version of reality.

Even celebrity victims are pretty dead after being murdered by their celebrity husbands.

Before I finish the empathy aspect of the Justice Porn: it is amazing that we do not really hunger for justice. In many fictional and real stories we are rather fascinated by the dark and evil characters. Some murderers have become celebrities or have a weird cult following. It is more of a social consensus that the bad guys have to loose, not because we love justice, but because we don’t want to be on the receiving end of a bad persons action without protection and the moral high ground against ‘evil doers’.

Since we all can relate to pain and suffering we all agree / empathize that we don’t want to suffer from it. This has nothing to do with justice, this is simply egoism and self preservation.

It’s good to be the king …

One last aspect is the God-complex in all of this. Sitting there and watching the crime like God watches masturbating sinners - we ’see and know’ more than the real or unreal protagonists. We are TV Gods, we know it all - and we also judge the people in the stories and events we watch on screen.

It’s truly pornography of power for the powerless. It’s an illusion of power and simpler version of sitting on a jury bench yourself (just without any responsibility). Most of all ‘all of our couch potato opinions’ don’t have any serious consequences. The law and justice are thankfully no longer bound to popular opinions or people’s anger and rage - at least in most countries.

And that’s a good thing. Instead of ropes for lynching and stones for stonings give them TV.