ICYMI: John Oliver on the American prison system — racist, stupid, and nothing but a business

This segment was serendipitous timing for the two incarceration opinions that I wrote about earlier this week. Watch it and then argue that a TPR ground based on length of incarceration should exist at all. 

I lost my legal innocence in law school on the day I learned that there is a private prison industry, that it has lobbyists, and that those lobbyists actively seek and successfully obtain stricter sentencing laws to keep more people incarcerated longer. We, as law students, then study the doctrines derived from those systems as though they were natural facts or logically required outcomes. They aren’t. Says John Oliver, “Just think about that: we now need adorable singing puppets to explain prison to children in the same way they explain number 7 or what the moon is.” Except the moon isn’t a horrible choice some people have made to hurt other people for profit. Unlike the moon, it’s also something we can change.