Creating Freedom Excerpts

Excerpts from: Raoul Martinez, "Creating Freedom" (New York: Pantheon Books, 2016)

p. 34 - "The incidence of recidivism in the US and UK hovers between 60 and 65 per cent. This is roughly 50 per cent higher than rates in less punitive nations such as Sweden, Norway, and Japan."

After reading 50 studies of recidivism, Canadian criminologist Paul Genheau could not find a single one that indicated imprisonment reduced recidivism. In fact, longer sentences were associated with a three per cent increase in reoffending rates, supporting the theory that a prison can function as a "school for crime." "In the US, almost seven out of ten males will find themselves back in jail within three years of release. And of the countries with the highest homicide rates, the top five that employ the death penalty average 41.6 murders per 100,000 people, whereas the top five with no death penalty average roughly half that number at 21.6 murders per 100,000 people." One explanation is that severe institutional punishment has a brutalizing impact on the general culture.

p. 37 - In "supermax" prisons, inmates are kept in solitary confinement 23 hours a day. It's estimated that 80,000 prisoners are currently living under these conditions.

p. 39 - Norway has a prison in which prisoners live in comfortable houses, six men to a house. That prison has a reoffend rate of 16 percent, versus an average of 70 percent for Europe.

One of the most effective strategies to stop criminals from reoffending has been to provide inmates with the opportunity to study and earn formal qualifications.

p. 41 - The U.S. Department of Education for the 2011 to 2012 school year saw 130,000 students expelled from school and seven million suspended (one for every seven students).

p. 44 - "The most established environmental determinant of violence in a society is income inequality."

p. 45 - "In the US, ten times as many people with serious mental illnesses -- such as Bipolar disorder and schizophrenia -- are in prison than in a state hospital."

p. 46 - "Across the US today, black people are more than six times as likely to be imprisoned than whites, 31 per cent more likely to be pulled over while driving than white drivers, and twice as likely to be killed by a cop (and more likely to be unarmed when killed)."

p. 47 - "A study from the University of Wisconsin in 2015 found that states with private prisons have higher rates of reoffending, and that private prisons are keeping inmates locked up longer."

p. 49 - "Today, a quarter of the world's convicts reside in America. In 2004, 360 of these [convicts] were serving life sentences for the heinous crime of shoplifting."

p. 54 - "The sea of inequality on which the legal system floats makes a mockery of the principle of equal rights before the law."

p. 64 - "For instance, in the US, only 9 per cent of students in elite universities come from the poorer half of the population."

p. 137 - The data shows that ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does in the United States. Economic elites and interest groups have a substantial degree of influence.

p. 161 - "That poverty reduces economic freedom has long been ignored or denied by the political right."

p. 167 - "Decades of studies have produced robust results confirming that advertising and the materialism it fosters is psychologically damaging."

"In the US, 10 per cent of children have moderate or severe difficulties in the areas of emotions, concentration, behavior, or being able to get along with people, and more than half of adults will suffer from some form of mental illness in their lifetimes."

p. 187 - "Two wire agencies, Associated Press (AP) and Reuters, provide the majority of the international news, pictures and video for the media."

p. 203 - "The forces that shape media output combine to create a structural bias which favors the selection of information and perspective that are supportive of elite interests. ..."
p. 274 - "Trillions of dollars rest in international tax havens while billions of people go without clean water, a nutritious diet, life-saving medicine or basic liberties."

p. 293 - "Even in the richest countries, the need for social spending is immense -- to reduce university fees, to increase the supply of affordable housing, defend adequate pensions and provide universal healthcare. To close the gap between rich and poor there is also great need for a living wage, capped incomes, comprehensive child support, stricter inheritance laws, and increased investment in deprived areas."

"In 1945, corporate tax accounted for 35 per cent of federal receipts; by 2003, it was 7 per cent."

p. 205 - In 2009, the top five health insurance companies increased their profits by an impressive 56 per cent, despite the  fact that 2.9 million Americans lost their health insurance that year."

p. 315 - "The world's fossil fuel reserves are owned by corporations and governments. In 2011, these reserves were estimated to be worth $27 trillion. Market valuations change, but, barring a miraculous advance in technology, if we are to stay within a safe carbon budget, we will need to write off trillions of dollar's worth of fuel."

p. 333  - "The optimum scale of the economy is one that enables the health of the ecosystem to be preserved, renewable resources to be extracted at a rate no faster than they can be regenerated, non-renewable resources to be consumed at a rate no faster than they can be replaced by renewable substitutes, and waste to be deposited into the environment at a rate no faster than it can be safely absorbed."

p. 335 - "For every $100 of global economic growth that occurred between 1990 and 2001, only 60 cents went to those living below the $1 per day household."

p. 356 - "As of November 2014, attempts to kill forty-one targeted individuals under the US drone program sacrificed an estimated 1,147 innocent people."