1 in 30 in US part of the prison system!?

[Select]

This place is much better than those over-moderated, watered-down, dumbed-down sites where everyone pretends to be civil.

Where the fuck are those places? Facebook?

Wasn't it proven that child molesters can't be rehabilitated? They might be able to suppress urges, but they never go away? Or they turn to child porn? Trying to remember what I read/watched, whatever informed me awhile ago.

[Ddrak]

Wasn't it proven that child molesters can't be rehabilitated?

Uh, no. You can't make a generalization like that. Ever.

You do know that most of the "child molesters" in the US are 17 year olds that shagged their 15 year old girlfriend, right?

When he was executed, you're damn right I celebrated, because that meant that someone else's life was saved in the future. Another prisoner, a guard, an innocent civilian when he escaped?

It didn't mean any such thing. Come on, Partha, you're smarter than that.

Dd

[Select]

You do know that most of the "child molesters" in the US are 17 year olds that shagged their 15 year old girlfriend, right?

I thought you'd know that I don't ever count those unfortunates as "child molesters". Stupid how the system does.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

Where the fuck are those places? Facebook?

Well, I got a moderator warning on a chihuahua website a few months back for saying 'holy cow'. It was deemed culturally offensive!

I could name quite a few forums where if I said "dude, you can't say pig fucker in front of Jesus", I would take a ban

[Ddrak]

You do know that most of the "child molesters" in the US are 17 year olds that shagged their 15 year old girlfriend, right?

I thought you'd know that I don't ever count those unfortunates as "child molesters". Stupid how the system does.

Which is exactly my point - unless you only define "child molesters" as the ones that can't be cured in which case your argument is circular.

Dd

[Harlowe]

as long as we can re-word that to say "Lets kill the people we've found guilty more quickly" which is what I was trying to say...

Yes I know perfectly well what you were trying to say, which is why I said

"Let's kill more guilty people quickly to save cash" is a pretty barbaric and naive way of looking at a very complicated situation. Even if you agree with the death penalty, our justice system is by no means good enough to be cavalier about putting people to death.

Your addition of "we've found" to it doesn't change a thing. It's precisely the mentality I was talking about - which is barbaric and naive. Our justice system isn't foolproof enough to just go ahead and kill people quickly that have been found guilty. Taking a life is a serious enough matter that they should have ample opportunity to appeal it to ensure that all the evidence has come to light and that their case was fairly processed. You want to kill them more quickly to save money, which is ridiculous. Presuming you can never rehabilitate a certain type of criminal is also ignorant and barbaric. Each individual became the way they did because of various sets of circumstances. Some of those can be overcome, others are more difficult to overcome and some maybe not at all. To make a blanket statement that "all X type criminals should be killed" is arrogant & ignorant.

What deems someone as a non violent offender, versus a potential violent offender

Oh come on, there are legal definitions. Use some sense here. If someone is saying "non-violent offender" there is a legal definition of what that is. You're just trying to babble yourself out of a bad argument to begin with. Everything isn't black and white, all or nothing. If a person is a repeat drug offender that is operating machinery, driving etc, it's not the same as having possession of illegal substances.

Another wtf.....

Isn't it all about contribution, or lack of, to society ?

The answer is no. It's not required by law that you are a contributing member of society to live. World of Warcraft (and any other game people play like a fulltime job) would become criminal if that were the case.

[Ariannda Kusanagi]

Another wtf.....

Isn't it all about contribution, or lack of, to society ?

The answer is no. It's not required by law that you are a contributing member of society to live. World of Warcraft (and any other game people play like a fulltime job) would become criminal if that were the case.

Oh come on , those people aren't HURTING anyone, nor do they have the potential to as relating to this thread. In the case of a criminal the object is to make them productive members of society instead of destructive. We're specifically talking criminals not 21 year olds living in mommy's basement playing video games. It's not a law that says you have to be a contributor to live, but it IS required by law that you NOT commit crimes, hence the problem to begin with, when you're committing crimes you're breaking the law, and when you're playing video games you're not.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

Ari wasn't making a very concise point, but I think I see where she was going with this, and lots and lots of people feel the same way.

Lots of people think, incorrectly IMO, that the system should be much much harder on criminals, and that we're fucking around when it comes to justice. It should be swift and brutal and anything less is essentially a mockery to the victims, and the whole system as well. There's large swaths of the country that think we should have some "Texas" style of justice.

Borne of frustration or helplessness maybe, this mode of thinking is the same thing that gives rise to extremists like the Taliban. With them, 3 witnesses (?) see you commit a heinous crime, and that's it, you're dead. And if there weren't a certain appeal to this mode of thinking, it wouldn't exist. And the really interesting part is that if you take it to the extreme, you probably do have a socieity with not much crime. Like I've said, there will always be mentally defective people who will not give any thought to the consequences of their actions, but anyone with half a brain is going to be well behaved. And the Taliban style deterrents probably work better than the Western style, because a criminal's family could be recipients of swift justice as well.

We should be honest with ourselves, this "hang 'em high" mode of thought has some appeal. So we probably need to address that part of our nature that instinctively craves revenge. What is the rule of law if not the antithesis to our animal impulses. If we can't overcome those impulses then we are animals ourselves. That to me is the promise of law, and the triumph of rational thinking.

Animal impulse says: take that guy's food if you're hungry, pinch that pretty girl on the ass, hurt someone back if they hurt you, etc.

So my response to that mode of revenge-based, thinking has always been: We're supposed to be better than that. Maybe we aren't, but we're supposed to be, and we should strive to be.

[Ddrak]

One of the primary reasons the US has a lower rate of non-violent crime than most other first-world countries is the same reason it has six times the prison population - the US is much tougher on crime, especially petty crime (refer to the IHT article I linked at the start). On the flip side, the US has a significantly higher rate of violent crime than those same nations so there's also factors involved that are increasing that rate at the same time it decreases non-violent crime.

Prison isn't the only factor here - the availability of guns in the US is also a factor (one way or the other), as is the increased wealth differential, the existence of the death penalty, population densities and plenty of other stuff. As Freecare also pointed out, ultra-totalitarian societies are virtually crime-free, but is that worth freedom?

Dd

[Freecare Spiritwise]

I did mean to sum my post up with "the cost of justice" before I got distracted.

I think we do a disservice to society when we measure justice in dollars. It's supposed to sacred, and what's sacred worth?

And I don't think a system like the Taliban is true justice. It may be swift but I wouldn't call a society where everyone is scared shitless of getting their hands chopped off is a just society.

[Harlowe]

Another wtf.....

Isn't it all about contribution, or lack of, to society ?

The answer is no. It's not required by law that you are a contributing member of society to live. World of Warcraft (and any other game people play like a fulltime job) would become criminal if that were the case.

Oh come on , those people aren't HURTING anyone, nor do they have the potential to as relating to this thread. In the case of a criminal the object is to make them productive members of society instead of destructive. We're specifically talking criminals not 21 year olds living in mommy's basement playing video games. It's not a law that says you have to be a contributor to live, but it IS required by law that you NOT commit crimes, hence the problem to begin with, when you're committing crimes you're breaking the law, and when you're playing video games you're not.

You ignored everything else said, but I'll play - the 21 year olds living in mommy's basement caught with weed or growing weed aren't hurting anyone either. They aren't "destructive" members of society neither are entire ethinic groups that are targeted because of their skin color, god forbid you are a muslim man in this day and age. Breaking the law doesn't necessarily mean a person is a "destructive member of society". Besides there are plenty of adults ignoring their children over their video game playing that are more destructive to "society" than some of the non-violent drug offenders that we jail.

[Lurker]

As Harlowe pointed out, do you want social policy to be an accounting one? If so, we can eliminate a lot of tax burden by cutting off any type of social aid.

Don't you advocate for doing exactly that?

[Ariannda Kusanagi]

Another wtf.....

Isn't it all about contribution, or lack of, to society ?

The answer is no. It's not required by law that you are a contributing member of society to live. World of Warcraft (and any other game people play like a fulltime job) would become criminal if that were the case.

Oh come on , those people aren't HURTING anyone, nor do they have the potential to as relating to this thread. In the case of a criminal the object is to make them productive members of society instead of destructive. We're specifically talking criminals not 21 year olds living in mommy's basement playing video games. It's not a law that says you have to be a contributor to live, but it IS required by law that you NOT commit crimes, hence the problem to begin with, when you're committing crimes you're breaking the law, and when you're playing video games you're not.

You ignored everything else said, but I'll play - the 21 year olds living in mommy's basement caught with weed or growing weed aren't hurting anyone either. They aren't "destructive" members of society neither are entire ethinic groups that are targeted because of their skin color, god forbid you are a muslim man in this day and age. Breaking the law doesn't necessarily mean a person is a "destructive member of society". Besides there are plenty of adults ignoring their children over their video game playing that are more destructive to "society" than some of the non-violent drug offenders that we jail.

I didn't ignore everything else, I picked a specific point. And thats exactly the point Harlowe. The kids with some pot aren't hurting anyone, aren't killing people over it, so why are we wasting space in jails with them ? I'm specifically talking about the destructive members of society being the ones who should be in jail, not the ones that are fairly harmless, like the Muslim man just because of his religion, or the 21 year old with his joint. I'm talking about the rapists, and murderers and those who CAN be considered one or the other (like the guy with the 15 DUI's who's going to kill someone one day, it won't be intentional but he shouldn't be getting a slap on the wrist either). Again i'm talking about the criminals specifically though.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

The interesting thing about this lousy economy is that the lack of money is causing us to rethink things as a society that shouldn't have been about money in the first place. The money issue is just a symptom of our inability to solve issues like drug use. We tried to solve the problem by saying "lock 'em up" and that's no longer viable financially.

So maybe now that we as a society have more time than money, we can finally solve these issues in a rational and just manner.

[Embar Angylwrath]

As Harlowe pointed out, do you want social policy to be an accounting one? If so, we can eliminate a lot of tax burden by cutting off any type of social aid.

Don't you advocate for doing exactly that?

Nope, I don't advocate that. I advocate for allocating social expenditures in a restructured and more responsible way.

[Partha]

It didn't mean any such thing. Come on, Partha, you're smarter than that.

Ask how many inmates/guards have been killed by murderers after incarceration or after release. The figure's higher than you'd give it credit for. As it turned out, Ray Lee Stewart DID escape, and it was sheer luck that he was caught just a couple of hours after he escaped.

And, yeah, Harlowe, I WILL deal with this issue from personal anecdote, and it's balls of you to argue otherwise. How many issues have you argued on this board where you've claimed that a personal perspective has changed your mind or formed your opinions? Don't say 'none', either, because we know better.

[Ddrak]

Ask how many inmates/guards have been killed by murderers after incarceration or after release. The figure's higher than you'd give it credit for. As it turned out, Ray Lee Stewart DID escape, and it was sheer luck that he was caught just a couple of hours after he escaped.

For true life imprisonment the number is very close to zero, but that's irrelevant. You simply have no basis to claim any sort of definitive statement that you're saving someone else's life by killing this person no matter what the number was.

Hello, Minority Report scenarios?

There's decent arguments for capital punishment (which I find wanting, but still recognize as decent). The one you just tabled makes about as much sense as executing anyone who harms an animal because there's a correlation between that and serial killings later in life.

Dd

[Harlowe]

And, yeah, Harlowe, I WILL deal with this issue from personal anecdote, and it's balls of you to argue otherwise. How many issues have you argued on this board where you've claimed that a personal perspective has changed your mind or formed your opinions? Don't say 'none', either, because we know better.

Jesus that's histrionic. I certainly wouldn't make a case for killing others nor making killing them easier and taking away the rights of the accused based on some personal anecdotal information. A whiny argument trying to say "well you do too" is ridiculous.

[Partha]

And, yeah, Harlowe, I WILL deal with this issue from personal anecdote, and it's balls of you to argue otherwise. How many issues have you argued on this board where you've claimed that a personal perspective has changed your mind or formed your opinions? Don't say 'none', either, because we know better.

Jesus that's histrionic. I certainly wouldn't make a case for killing others nor making killing them easier and taking away the rights of the accused based on some personal anecdotal information. A whiny argument trying to say "well you do too" is ridiculous.

Bullshit. You make your value judgments from a position of what you know and what you've experienced. Saying you can do it for one thing and I can't do it for another is simply hypocritical. If you can't rebut, don't just wave your hands in the air and pretend you didn't hear the question.

[Embar Angylwrath]

Ari -

I hope you're noticing Harlowe and Partha going for each other's jugular. Remember this if think you're getting picked on.

Now, read this, and get back to us on the economics of capital punishment.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/ ... SECTION=US