Of bandits, laws and due punishment

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@ Chev

No, not regular burglary. Most burglaries qualify as petty theft. For example if you robbed a local convenient store, that's petty theft, not a felony. Forms of theft that are felonies include:

A. Robbing a bank, post office, or other federal institution.

B. Grand larceny, defined as stealing something worth in excess of $5,000.

So if the burglar was convicted of three counts that fit the above criteria, yes, it's life in prison. However, the above criteria do not apply to the normal cutpurse (unless you happen to snatch the purse of someone who happens to be walking around with $5,000 in it).

 

Well most people do not like to be forced to stay in a specific place so I don't know who would actually consider the prison a reward. Besides the crime will haunt you for the rest of your life when you try to get work and etc. Probably even when you are free you will not be able to forget for a second what you did.

That's pretty much how it's done here. You get what you need free but have to work and earn money if you want to buy something extra.

Name a poor society with next to no crime rate, and after that name a rich society with excessive crime rates. The US really does not work as an example because there the gap between the rich and poor is very large.

These cases are mentally ill and put in appropriate institutions from where they do not get out until cured.

The rest of the babble at the end I will just comment with this: A criminal is to blame for his deeds I do not deny that, but instead of condemning him as "scum of the earth" which is useless, the society should society concentrate on pondering why did the man do this? What could be done to prevent similar cases from happening in the future and how could this man be remade as a responsibility bearing citizen in our society? Locking the man away for a lifetime or ruining him further by hell-like prison conditions is utterly useless and will not benefit anyone.

 

Ah, I see. Well, here if you steal under 250 PLN (about 60 euro or 70 USD), it doesn't fall under the penal code but under the code of misdemeanors (other words than misdemeanor could be misconduct or trespass). But 250 PLN and more is normal theft, worth from 3 months to 6 years. Cases of lesser gravity (not necessarily equal to monetary worth) merit up to one year of prison, limited liberty or even just a fine. Burglary is always 1-10 years per the code, armed robbery 2-12 and armed robbery with a gun, a knife or similar device, or otherwise life-threatening is 3-15 (that's what we call "crime", the heaviest kind of offence). Of course, a petty burglar will probably get two years suspended rather than a bank robber who will probably get 6 or 8. The sad reality is that someone who shows you a knife and mugs you for like 100 USD or euro worth will probably get away with just probation. You won't likely have him ordered to restore the stolen goods unless you sue him in a civil court.

As for resocialisation: Yes, I believe the criminal must be offered a chance to make amends, "repent" and even clear his name and live happily ever after as an honest law-abiding citizen. Having him learn some skills or even a job in prison, or even providing the opportunity for finishing highschool, college etc or getting a degree, will only help the purpose of preventing him from re-offending. Giving him a job to do in prison will also help him escape boredom (boredom in prison can have criminogenic effects), give some sense to his existence behind the bars, and will also reduce the feeling of being unwanted trash dumped by the society for failure to conform. Allowing inmates to improve their conditions through work, from giving them money to spend in the canteen, through allowing them to stash it in the bank, up to the point of letting them go early, could also have beneficial effects.

But both we and the inmates need to remember that they aren't there for a holiday. A prison is not a holiday resort and not a therapy centre (well, it is, to some extent). It's still prison where you end up for wronging your fellow citizens or the community.

 

[snip]

However, I can help you to inform yourself instead of rambling. That has various advantages, one of them being that you, probably, can't post when you're reading. With that in mind, I will gladly provice you with lots of stuff to read, about the ultimate deterrence, the death penalty in the US:

The US statistics office has found this:

More on that here and here and here. It cannot prove anything, statistics per se can't prove anything, but they suggest that death penalty rates don't have the deterrent effect they are supposed to have.

If death penalty has a deterrent effect it is surprising that it doesn't work the other way around - that when the deterrence is scaled back through fewer executions - crime didn't rise again in response.

http://www.swlearning.com/economics/policy_debates/death_penalty.html - this one with very good links, trust me, it's best you click and read them all. Somewhat funny is that they actually bring up my argument, too:

http://www.aclu.org/library/case_against_death.html

http://www.wmin.ac.uk/ccps/DP-EuropeExperience2002.pdf

Have fun!

[ Warning pending ] - Beren

[ December 23, 2004, 08:59: Message edited by: Beren ]

 

Most killings are not even planned ones. I can't imagine anyone who is psychologically stable to murder anyone and ruin the rest of his life at the same time. Most killings (and rapes for that matter) here in Finland have alcohol involved and in most those cases the person who did it will be haunted by his deeds for the rest of his life. Locking these away for life does little to protect the society since it's quite damn certain they would not do it again.

Planned and cold murder is extremely rare and if it happens the person responsible is most often psychologically unstable and is put into a mental institution, not prison. And in that institution he shall remain until cured. In these cases the sentence has no difference because the murderer usually sees things short sighted and does not even consider the sentence.

What possible monetary gain is big enough? Do you mean something like contract killings? Contract killings are not that hard to find out. Or would it be easy for a poor unemployed guy to explain the huge amount of money on his bank account which can be frozen or confiscated if the money is suspected to have anything to do with criminal activity?

 

Well I have to say I'm suprised, but sentancing someone to "Hard Labour" does not appear to be against human rights, provided it's done by a competant court. However as Morgoroth stated, if someone refuses to do the work I don't know how you could actually force them to do it and yet not impeach their other rights.

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Article 8
3.
(a) No one shall be required to perform forced or compulsory labour;
(b) Paragraph 3 (a) shall not be held to preclude, in countries where imprisonment with hard labour may be imposed as a punishment for a crime, the performance of hard labour in pursuance of a sentence to such punishment by a competent court;

Without really thinking about it in detail I was kind of making the distinction based on somebody being taken forcibly against their will and somebody not resisting due to inebriation. (Drunken fumblings leading to sex after one passes out for example - still rape as consent was not granted, but as it was not refused either then it's not a violent attack as no force is required) I think that at this point a decision on how pre-meditated the attack might have been needs to be made. (Therefore I do not include use of date rape drugs under inebriation.) Actually, I guess this could be left open to the discretion of the judge, assuming they are given guidelines as to when castration should be an option.
I hadn't considered, and much prefer your choice of using drugs to remove the sex drive but have no idea of their efficacy, long term effects, or whether you would need to include sterilisation as part of the process. (As far as I know, sterilisation (by means of the snip anyway) does not reduce the sex drive as the hormones continue to be produced.)

[ December 23, 2004, 11:55: Message edited by: Carcaroth ]

 

Well, I would see it as a prison with only basic provisions (maybe not bread and water per se, perhaps a step above), and if the inmates wanted anything better, they'd have to work to get it.

 

This is called chemical castration. Estrogen is injected via a needle directly into the testicles, which lowers the male sex drive. The problem here is not with the efficacy of the estrogen, it's that the effects wear off after a week or so, and a new injection has to be given. Presumably, someone who does this isn't going to get just one injection, and is likely going to have to get the injections for years. It may be difficult to make someone keep coming back if this is part of his sentence once he gets out of prison. Of course, if there was a stipulation that someone had to keep coming back every week for the injections, or undergo surgical castration, it probably would make people more inclined to stick with the program.

You're talking about a vasectomy. And yes, this does nothing to alter sex drive, it just prevents sperm for being ejected with the semen. It would prevent a rapist from getting someone pregnant, but it wouldn't make him any less inclined to commit the rape. Sterilization really doesn't make sense for rapists, as it doesn't stop the cause or prevent the main result (someone getting raped), it just eliminates a possible secondary result (victim pregnant as a result of the rape).

 

I think it makes a lot of sense to render a convicted rapist infertile and prevent him from impregnating anyone he could possibly rape. No unwanted children, no abortion dilemma, etc.

A humanitarian side to such a solution would be the ability to allow the guy to have sexual intercourse with his partner, should any woman actually want a convicted rapist (and yeah, this should be public information, and a woman should be informed by relevant authorities that her husband-to-be has been convicted with rape).

A very good example. I wouldn't think of that. Perhaps because in the Polish criminal law this sort of thing could qualify as abuse of someone's helpless condition - an offence separate from rape. But if you ask me, it's still rape, plain and simple. Though, as you said, not a brutal one.

Now that I think about it, another example would be deception. I'm not going to go into specifics because we have thousands of readers and someone could actually make use of my ideas.

I believe inebriation can serve as a mitigating circumstance only when you don't know the effect of alcohol, or are tricked into drinking something stronger than you think, or similar.

I can see a murderer never killing anyone again, but I can't really see a convicted rapist sticking to fully free and informed consent for the rest of his life. So long as the rapist did use force physically to break the victim's resistance, I believe he shouldn't be allowed to dodge a prison term. Perhaps if one drunken teenager took advantage of another drunken teenager who had passed out on the floor, maybe a suspended sentence, scrupulous probation, ban on alcohol and huge damages to pay could do the job without sending the idiot to prison. At least for a normal length term. But I'm still not convinced and I'd rather put him behind bars for some time. We can't just let him go on with his life.

Note: in Poland prosecution for rape is conditional on the victim's request. If the victim doesn't require prosecution, it won't happen (except kids, family members or people helpless because of their mental state, where it depends on the public prosecutor). If our teenager managed to convince the victim, he could dodge the trial altogether.

 

Well I do not know about the efficency of the Slovenian police to find out about such things but we do not have any reknowned unknown contract killings in here.

Well there is the problem that these guys won't find the opportunity to espcape with the money. They will have to hide quite a lot and have quite a big gang to keep it all secret from the police. I agree such thing would be theorethically possible but we have not had any of such cases and I've never heard of any such cases either. The problem is that your flights could be tracked almost anywhere and if the tolling officials catch you with a suitcase of money you're quite frankly screwed. The only way this could be done in theory is to deposit the money in some foreign country but that could be tracked too.

Well I agree that sometimes the time that a rapists sits in prison is outrageously low and also agree that some rapists are likely to repeat what they did. Rape is probably the most problematic of crimes but as I think you pointed out earlier it is very easy to be framed of too, and once being accused of rape even if the charges would be put down you will forever be recognized as a rapist. I also believe there is two kinds of rapes, the kind where the man simply is very drunk and does not seem to understand the word "No" and the cases where a man sees a woman on the streets, beats her up, drags her to some dark alley and violently rapes her. The latter case is way more outrageous and I feel the sentence for it should be higher than what it is now.

The twelve year sentence though I think is fairly reasonable. In here the rapist would probably get get 5-8 years, the 8-year sentence is ok but when some courts give 5-year sentences or even lower sentences for such cases it gets a little too low.

[ December 23, 2004, 18:52: Message edited by: Morgoroth ]

 

I think that's how it works in most countries. In the U.S. while the state can still prosecute someone without the help of the victim, it usually drops the case. (The most recent and famous example being the Kobe Bryant sexual assault case.) The reason for this is that the victim's testimony is very important in getting a guilty verdict. Basically, if you don't have a victim's testimony, it is very hard to prove that the sex was not consensual.

 

Sorry. I was going to answer that, but I apparently forgot. My apologies.

The answer is a bit tricky. In their case, they should be able to apply for conditional release (it's a means of probation) after they sit half the term. If it will be granted or not is a lottery. However, I meant to ask if the sentence alone you considered just - optional early release and probation being a matter of mercy more than justice in my opinion.

My guess is they won't probably sit the whole term but will have to sit more than just a half of it. Given how cynical and unrepentant they are, they aren't likely ever to meet the requirements for early release per the letter of the penal code, but the reality is those requirements aren't strictly observed in practice.

 

Yeah we do not have a lot of contract killings here but we've had a few though with a group called Natural Born Killers which has been pretty much destroyed by the police. Well I think you misunderstood by point. Contract killings are hard to find if the killer is never found but if the killer is found it is easy to determine if the killing was made for money or not. Of course catching the criminal is another matter but we have only few unsolved murders in the past thirty years so It's not that big of a deal in here anyway.

 

Yeah, and the chance for a shop-lifter to steal again is about zero if the guards are allowed to shot them on sight, so why not implent that as well?

 

If you catch a contract killer they will often confess to being a contract killed in order to possibly lose some time off their sentencing by informing the police who hired them to kill who, at least this is with the rational ones - there might be some who have some kind of honour or their clients might have friends in prison.