Happy Freedom Day...I guess.

Largest prison population both in absolute size AND per capita. Also, random fact, their constitution allows prisoners to be forced into slave labour. Also, another random fact, their prisons are run for profit. None of these facts are related of course!
- Next you’re going to tell me that these for-profit prisons lobby the government for harsher prison sentences for things like cannabis possession.
  
  Only for people that are black or poor.
- Not to nitpick but not ALL prisons in the US are for-profit. They should be illegal though.
  Fun fact - other countries that have for-profit prisons include the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Chile, Jamaica, Japan, Mexico, Peru, South Africa, South Korea and Thailand.
  This won’t do much since most of these prisons operate under state jurisdiction, but in 2021, President Joe Biden issued an executive order to stop the United States Department of Justice from renewing further contracts with private prisons.
  
  True, however there are bs for-profit elements to even the non-for-profit prisons. Predatory costs to calling / commissary / etc. that still benefit companies when the US imprisons more people.
  
  Even "not for profit" prisons are lining millionaires pockets with infrastructure and maintenance contracts.
- And house arrest is being used for mass incarceration of people being ACCUSED before conviction. The punishment can be more severe before conviction.
  
  And many states let private companies charge accused people up to $40 a day for the ankle bracelets.
- Only about 8% of the US prison population is in for-profit prisons.
  
  That's still about 96,344 people. Which is nearly double the total prison population of Spain.
  
  Listen I live in the USA, but if thats your best pushback to all those facts - should tell you what a dire state we are in. And prisons that aren't for profit still send out prisoners to for-profit industries to work, so it's kind of a moot point.
  
  And how many of these other prisons offer up their prisoners as extremely cheap labor to businesses that ARE for profit?

Reminder that the US have never abolished slavery for prisoners and have one of the largest slave population in the world.
- Yep... And every time there's an employment issue for the agricultural industry, they whip out the prisoners...
  However to the prisoner's credit: They do an absolutely terrible job at whatever it is they're doing.
  Why? What are they going to do... Fire you? Jail you? You have no incentive at all to do the job well as a prisoner.
  Bonus is by doing a horrific job it makes employers less likely to actually request prison workforces.
- Tha fuck are you talking about?

Nice to see that even here - a shitposting forum - whenever anybody posts anything negative about America, yanks can't handle it.
- I love how it's full of people whining about having left reddit to escape this shit like bruh this is the fediverse

And an huge colonial empire ( europe/japan/korea )
- The US isn't a colonial empire.
  
  You wut mate?
  Look up, hmmm what's a good one... Oh oh, Northern Marianas Islands. Go go go
  
  The US is one of the biggest colonial empires in history.

They made it a business. How many places in the world have private incarceration facilities?
- Many countries have private prisons.
  
  Oh! Many countries do it, so it's fine! Noted.

I’ve heard some prisons have minimum prisoner requirements, which is incredibly fucked up
- How does that play out? Do they try to extend sentences? Can they try to influence intake?
  
  I remember there was a scandal in Pennsylvania where a judge was paid to funnel juveniles into a private detention center
  https://www.npr.org/2022/08/18/1118108084/michael-conahan-mark-ciavarella-kids-for-cash

And potentially somewhere around half of that population is in there for non-violent crimes, with alot of inmates in for drug offenses, it's absolutely ridiculous. Focus on the people that need to be in prisons, the violent sociopaths, stop trying to turn more people into criminals.

- Would you be surprised to hear that nobody forces you to break the law and go to prison in the US?
  
  Would you be surprised to hear that some people are desperate and resort to gangs and theft because other opportunities have been closed off? How about that we have mass untreated mental illness and people resort to drugs to self medicate? How about that mental illness is still misunderstood even now, leaving people to commit "crimes" such as loitering and being threatening even though what they just need is healthcare? How about that the war on drugs is really what made our prison population sky rocket and the massive increase started in the 1980's? How about that mass incarceration does nothing to affect violent or property crime?

Is there a community that exclusively shits on the US on the threadiverse?
- -be the "first in the world" -everywhere you go yell "USA! USA! USA!" -sparking people's curiosity and they look into your garden -they find a dystopian horror show, a land where billionaires are kings, millions deprived of liberty, hundred millions depraved of healthcare, an ever increasing tumour of fascists group that wish for some women and minorities to have fewer rights
  -ohshit.jpg
  You can't have the biggest running circus without everyone starring and complaining and debating.
  
  Tell me you've learned everything you know about the US from 13 year olds online without telling me you learned everything you know from 13 year olds online.
- Lemmygrad as a whole enjoys it
  
  Is that in between trips to the gulag or starving or?

How can America have 25% of the world's prison population of the entire country doesn't make up even 10% of the world's population?
- I have a bag and in it are 100 coloured tokens. 90 are black and 10 are red. What percentage of tokens are red? 10 out of 100, which is 10%.
  Now I pull two tokens at random. In my hand is 1 red token and 1 black token. I can say red tokens make up 50% of the tokens in my hand. But wait? How can the red tokens make up 50% of the tokens in my hand if they only make up 10% of all the tokens in the bag?
- Well see, that's kinda the point of the post.
  We're "the land of the free" but also the land of the most non-free people.
  
  Non free people with the best Free speach laws

I left Reddit to escape bullshit like this
- You came to the wrong fucking place then.
- And I left reddit to escape idiots like you. If I can handle being disappointed, so can you. Shut the fuck up.
  
  Ahh there it is
- You came to the wrong fucking place then.
- Me too. The “America bad” thing got old on Reddit. I Hope it doesn’t take off here too.
  
  See most places are bad but America should be better. It presents itself as the better. It does not always live up to that better and so those people who want us to be better keep reminding us we have a lot of work to do. I can tell you personally how horrible America can be but I don't think you want to hear that from a Lakota.
  
  Hi. As a not American, I can say Americans get made fun of a lot by not Americans. We like to share these jokes with each other online, as not Americans also use the internet.
  
  If you don't want to hear about America being bad, don't go to the same places as people who live in reality.
  
  It will, because leftists love to cry and moan on the internet.

We have that percentage because we actually lock up our criminals, unlike Sweden or Germany.
- Ah yes, Germany and Sweden. The last bastions for criminals all around the world. Oh wait, I'm 6-7 times as likely to be murdered in the US then those two places (Source).
- Are you stupid?
  
  You didn't have to ask
- Sure. Definitely nothing to do with the fact that in your country, locking people up is SUPER profitable for prisons and a few other industries so certain institutions lobby to make sure more people keep getting locked up.