TEDx Talks
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 8 months, 2017–2022
25:58 · 3.1M views · Jan 30, 2017
Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen explains in a TEDx talk why Germany has lower crime and far fewer prisoners than the US, and what American criminal justice could learn from German prisons.
HN recommends it as a comparison of German rehabilitative prisons with American retributive justice, backed by statistics.
9 comments from Hacker News
On the topic of prison systems in America vs. the civilized world, this is absolutely worth a watch: this video
Or this talk about one of Denmarks neighbours (Germany) by an American, Jewish, (grand-)son of Holocaust survivors visiting a German prison with a bunch of other Americans ("60 Minutes" reporter, some Governor, a DA, a convicted murderer etc.). A bunch of stats and comparisons to underline the effects of different prison systems: this video And the related segment from "60 Minutes": [LINK]
It's debatable if the police state was actually responsible for that drop in crime. Afaik Canada saw a comparable drop in crime, over the same time-period, without starting to mass incarcerate people [0] [0] this video (Relevant stats and discussion start around 6:45, but the whole talk is rather worthwhile to watch)
I'd recommend to watch this talk about the German prison system from an American perspective. The main point is the difference between European resocialization and US retributive justice. Although this may show the bright sides here in Germany a little bit too bright, they do exist. this video
> I think every society with lower crime has significantly smaller police brutality Crime-rates do not correlate with police brutality and mass incarceration. Canada locks up way fewer people, has way less harsh sentencing than the US, yet Canadian crime rates are not that different from those of the US [0]. It's also really weird to evoke HK in this discussion when the current police response in the US is way worse than anything reported out of HK. Particularly in the context that for the longest time the HK police actually had a rather splendid international reputation [1]. While US police had a "Dirty Harry" like reputation for several decades now, something that's reached its current peak with the whole "blueline" mentality and the glorification of comic vigilantes like the Punisher as a symbol for law enforcement. As such a whole lot of this is rooted very deeply in policing and incarceration culture and not some countries being inherently "more criminal" than others. [0] this video [1] [LINK]