Well, most prisoners are in prison for nonviolent, drug-related offenses, and our drug laws are structured and enforced such that Black and Hispanic men wind up in prison at astoundingly astronomically higher rates than white men even though drug use rates are fairly comparable amongst those races. And if you think your kids being grounded is anything compared to actually being imprisoned, well, I guess I'm not sure what to say about that. All the TV in the world doesn't make up for the horrid conditions American prisoners endure. Nutrition is horrible, security is ineffective and corrupt, rape is rampant, violence is rampant, family visitation is inconvenient, and let's just take a minute to pause and think about imprisoning someone - forcing them to stay in a single, ugly place for years on end eating unhealthy food, under constant threat of violence, with no privacy ever, isolated from family and friends (including one's own children), with no choice over where you sleep, what you eat, where you go, who you see, all while performing unpaid or grossly underpaid labor. It's hardly rehabilitative. The American prison complex is a privatized industry, run by corporations, and like all corporations, the only goal is profit. And these corporations have a lot of influence within government as well - controlling what kinds of prisoners they get and how many, all based on how our drug laws are written, enforced, and sentenced. And the more we put minority men in prison, the more minority children grow up without fathers. It's a vicious cycle, and frankly, comparing it to grounding your kids without TV is... shocking to me.
