Senator Tom Cotton who, boy,
he's had some kind of year.
He says that America has a problem,
he has diagnosed what it is.
The problem is we have a major
under-incarceration problem in
America, and it's getting worse.
So in layman's terms,
America of all places,
doesn't lock up enough people.
Which is weird,
when you think about it through
the lens of the sane.
Take a look at these numbers
comparing us to other comparable
countries in terms of total numbers
of inmates.
For 100,000 people, there's
basically nobody else that's close.
It is just insane.
And by the way, if you look at
world incarceration rates, if every
US state were a country, it's
really high there too, many states
way higher than entire countries.
Now, look,
you can believe one of two things.
You can believe that Americans are
just uniquely criminal despite all
of our resources and all of that.
Or we do things differently in
terms of criminalizing people, and
hunting them down, and putting them
behind bars, and keeping them there
for as long as possible.
I personally think that one is
a little bit more likely, but
Brett, what do you think?
>> I think yeah,
I mean that's, obviously if it's
per capita, the state breakdown is
going to be comparable.
Arkansas is impressively ahead of
the norm.
If you're wondering which state is
[CROSSTALK] the police-iest, that's
your boy Tom Cotton's hometown.
We don't do enough- >> So
Brett, question.
The people in Arkansas, and
maybe Arkansas represent,
if you're in the YouTube or
Twitch chat and
you're in Arkansas right now,
let us know.
But put away the gun,
you criminals!
Because apparently, you are 30
times as criminal as Icelanders.
Now, I understand Icelanders don't
have a lot of time to
commit crimes.
They're always soaking in natural
hot springs and all that, but
I don't think that that's true.
I don't think that they're 9 times
more criminal than the French.
I don't think that they're just
about 9 times as criminal as those
in the UK, all those hooligans.
It just obviously is not a supply
thing.
It's a demand thing, if you get
where I'm going with that.
But anyway, it is convenient for a
Republican senator to imply that we
need to be locking up more people.
Especially considering how they
addressed the social movement of
last year, the attempt to get our
country focused on criminal justice
reform actually with the target of
producing justice, saying that no,
we actually don't lock up enough
people is convenient for
some people.
>> Yeah, and so I mean, in criminal
justice, if you want to have
a serious conversation about it,
there are different heads of
prosecution, whether it be district
attorneys, or attorneys general, or
US Attorney General.
Who make decisions like this all
the time about how many folks to
incarcerate.
And there are a lot of conflicting
approaches to it.
Many of which are dependent
on what, I mean, there's a lot of
conversation to be had about folks
who are just chasing stats so
they're lowering the incarceration
rates, folks that actually want to
fund things that solve it,
disingenuous politicians,
genuine activists, money
in politics, it all comes together,
legacy of racism.
But if you say legacy of racism,
automatically Tom Cotton and
his group are going to be like, so
it's always racist?
So here's stats
about disproportionate
incarceration rates.
Stop it, you said racist.
This is where I get to go,
why is it always racist?
Instead of defending myself and
explaining why it's not racist,
I just want to say you're calling
me racist too much.
But I will say, he's right that
there's been a spike in violent
crime during coronavirus, right?
And why has that happened?
A bunch of reasons
about violent crime is,
one, there's no money anywhere.
We have essentially created
a situation where despite giving
$1400 every two cycles of maybe
when we need it,
way less than anyone needs it, we
have essentially cut off the lower
classes from everything in America.
There's a lot of crazy stuff
happening in the economy, but
below a certain level,
you're on your own.
So all the areas where the income
is around there, there is no money,
so what spikes robberies,
gang violence.
And then there's also, I mean,
people are wearing masks.
I've talked to people in law
enforcement who have said,
well, people are wearing masks and
they think can get away with it.
I was at a supermarket where people
were wearing masks and stole stuff.
because they knew they wouldn't get
caught, that's it.
And what are we going to do, say
not wear masks during a pandemic?
We have to have to.
Police departments are- >> Don't
put that out there, because they
will start saying that.
[CROSSTALK] They'll say, basically,
we want people to not to wear
a mask. >> But the thing, what I'm
trying to drive at is there
are serious conversations to have,
honest, genuine conversations to be
had that are reasonable. And where
we can cross-reference risk of one
policy with risk of another policy,
and come up with a series of
policies that mitigate the most
risks, while not opening everyone
up to dying of coronavirus.
They just don't want to have that
conversation. And that's what's so
frustrating about stuff like this.
And since it's Twitter and
Tom Cotton just got done
taxidermying a bunch of animals,
which is what it seems like
he probably does in his spare time.
[LAUGH] >> because he is
Anthony Perkins in the movie
Psycho. This dude goes a little mad
sometimes and writes tweets like,
it's only getting worse,
there's not enough people in jail.
That's not the solution for
the problem you're talking about.
>> Yeah, it's also potentially
caused another problem,
because it's bad in general to
throw more people in prison.
We have seen over the past year
that at this particular time,
lots of people being in prison is
a particularly bad idea. [MUSIC]