Alabama Sheriff Legally Took $750k Meant to Feed Inmates, Bought Beach House (2018)
The problem is that it&#x27;s legitimately what the people want. And the people want it because the police are very, very powerful especially in the South, and criminals are very, very much an outgroup. John Oliver did a story on &quot;Air Conditioning&quot; in jails, and how there is essentially no will to fix what is clearly a human rights violation. What he did not explore was the fact that nearly every ordinary citizen in those areas believes that whatever the criminals must endure in prison is better than they deserve, as being arrested and convicted of a crime means you may as well be dead.<p>This sentiment <i>also</i> reflected in laws that make it difficult to impossible to reintegrate into society, by taking away voting rights, and allowing employers to screen prospects based on previous convictions, and arrests.<p>What it means is that, in reality, any individual police officer exists in what I call a &quot;Marshall Law Bubble&quot; that allows them to do whatever it is they want to you. It&#x27;s true they still have to pay lip service to the law, but that&#x27;s very easy: they just have to memorize a few phrases like &quot;I felt my life was in danger.&quot; I&#x27;m sure that many ordinary citizens resent the fact that these noble officers have to debase themselves with such a lie, and would prefer those powers to be overt.<p>My theory is that this is prevalent in the South because speaking truth to power is simply not a cultural value. If you talk back, or challenge authority, it makes you a smart-ass trouble-maker, and that&#x27;s coming from the people themselves, who elect the judges, the sherrif&#x27;s who themselves reflect those views.<p>Only the worst excesses get reported in the news. Sherrif Joe Arpaio was and <i>still is lauded</i> by his community for his overtly racist and illegal behavior, despite a rare conviction (and then pardon by Trump). It&#x27;s the same story in 2014 with the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, near St. Louis Missouri, and even after Obama&#x27;s federal team found blatant abuse of power everywhere in the city government. Those in power want it, and no-one who doesn&#x27;t like it is allowed to speak without severe repurcussions to them personally.<p>It&#x27;s tempting to say that if you have democracy in areas with bad people, you get bad government. And there&#x27;s truth to that. But it also means that democracy has to have a game mechanic that doesn&#x27;t give the winners ever more &quot;win more&quot; moves. The edge <i>always</i> has to go to the underclass, the losers, the smartasses, the rude and impolite, if democracy is to function.<p>As for why Southern cultures are particularly problematic around criminal justice, a system built to grind up a largely black underclass, I leave that up the reader.