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this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2026
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No, you're mistaken. In America, prison is about creating a permanent underclass (mostly) of ethnic minorities to use as slave labor. Scandinavia treats their prisoners like humans because, being fairly racially homogeneous, there's no visibly-obvious way to "other" them.
I mean there's minoritiles in scandinavia and they are still likely to end up in prison. They are just treated better.
The US was founded by the english who used prisoners as soldiers and ran a giant slave trade. Its less about homogeny and more about english colonial culture which is where the tiered society in the US originates:
The US added a level of racism that even upset the brits I should add but in 250 years it seems we still essentially have the british colonial system.
We've replaced the prisoner military with a form of wage serfdom and replaced kidnapped workers with prison workers.