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Comment by locknitpicker | Hacker News Reader

> when you treat immigrants like they were not people with lifes, you are just one step away from treating poor people as they were not people and then too treat all common people as they were not people.

"The way that a society treats its prisoners is one of the sharpest reflections of its character." - Nelson Mandela

http://www.mandela.gov.za/mandela_speeches/1998/980625_dcshr...

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I did not know this but true. I would point out that when you are talking about criminals there is still a layer of judgment from society given the crimes. When talking about legal immigrants and refugees there is even less space.

The US is an outliner on prison terms and sizes etc. Under the surface it is hard to tell if the public lead the prisons or if the big prison business shapes public opinion but from the outside it seems crazy.

Different societies are at different places on the prison is for punishment to prison is for rehabilitation spectrum, and their reoffending rates reflect that.

> I would point out that when you are talking about criminals there is still a layer of judgment from society given the crimes.

That's exactly what the citation is about: how a society opts to treat its most vulnerable also shows what that society is truly about. Often times we see USians criticize Nordic countries because they lack cruelty in their prison system. How is that not a demonstration of the cruelty imbued in US culture?

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