Use of Imprisonment against crime

Poor example with Marijuana.

Replace it with meth, crack, heroin or cocaine and the situation for a consumer would still be the same in Germany - confiscation but no charges. As I understand it US law differentiates jail-worthiness after how dangerous the drug is.

 

I agree. And then to let them out and expect them to live under a bridge and not return to crime is nonsensical.

 

Beren, then what do we do with violent repeat offenders? I'm not talking about drug users or peaceful drug dealers -- I'm on record as being against their incarceration so as to free up prison space for the violent ones. I just don't see the benefit to society in releasing someone who has several violent acts on his record and shows no interest in taking steps to improve his behaviour. When do we, as a society, draw a line and tell these people that their behaviour cannot be tolerated, accepted, or excused away?

Chandos, my use of the term TLC is referring to the goodhearted but naive people who believe that serial killers and rapists need someone t listen to them and see their side of the story, and if someone just shows them some Tender Loving Care they'll all end up as happy, normal, productive members of society. All they need is a second . . . third . . . . 23rd chance, and they'll stop doing it! Another popular term is "hug a thug". I'm all for baseline humanitarian treatment, but when someone has several extremely violent assaults (or worse) on his record, simply saying "oh, you scamp, please try not to do that again!" isn't going to cut it. Yet in Canada that is what the intelligentsia is constantly telling us.

Which brings us to the liberal elite that has been discussed. I'm all for academics, but not when it dismisses the front line experience of workaday people. There are just too many examples here of people walking away from serious crimes with little to nothing done to deal with them, and then going on to commit more serious crimes. It's insane up here, it really is.

Bottom line, I think the liberal elite is too ideologically driven and is not giving enough weight to what is actually going on. That's the Canadian situation. I'm sure it's different in the States.

 

LKD, I have no idea what you are talking about. We were speaking of rehablitation for offenders who may have a chance to make it on the "outside" by means of education, and related job skills, rather than learning "better" criminal skills in prison. Many criminals have both poor job skills and a lack of education.

BTW, you "illustrated" your point with the wrong categories:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recidivism

Please note that there is not much one can do with someone who is a real "psychopath."

 

idea

Would be nice if we could just put all of the incurable criminals into a coma for the duration of their sentence.

 

Beren, please elaborate on your position -- I'm interested in what you have to say.

Chandos, tell me this. When you speak of

who do you mean? What sort of criminals are you talking about here? I ask because too many times here in Canada the sickest of the sick have been set loose on society by our useless criminal justice system, because we want to "give them a chance" -- so I'm asking who you think should be given these educational and job skills opportunities.

I'll strive to elaborate my position a little bit. A public legal / justice system takes upon itself the role of dealing with criminal matters. In so doing, it tells victims that they need not seek private justice against those who have committed criminal acts against said victims. In fact, seeking vengeance outside the law is illegal and a crime in and of itself. I get that and agree with it in principle.

The thing is, the system makes an implicit promise to the victims -- "we will punish the criminal for you." Now I understand that the system ideally takes a neutral, balanced position in these matters -- so we don't have angry shopkeepers chopping off the hands of people who steal $0.50 worth of fruit and such -- but my feeling, and the feeling of those in my camp, is that the system is NOT taking a balanced approach to dealing with criminals. An innocent man (I'll call him Ted) is murdered for the $20 in his wallet, and a sob story is told to the judge, and the murderer (I'll call him Kelly) gets 12 years (which in Canada actually works out to about 8 years, IIRC, as there's a 2/3 sentencing law in place, and that doesn't take into account parole and such nonsense).

Now, the man's widow and his children say "Ted's life was worth more than 8 years! The system failed us!" I agree with them. I think they have every right to be upset because this is a travesty of justice. The Liberal Elite in Canada, however, says "We feel sorry for your pain, but you need to understand that Kelly has rights too, and he is poor, and disadvantaged, and comes from an identifiable minority, and he never knew his father, and so you should be happy he got 8 years. You see, you people are just too stupid to understand all the nuances, so it sucks to be you."

Not in so many words, but that's what the family hears. As far as I am concerned, Kelly needs to understannd that what he did was in -- effing -- excusable, and that his <snipping> poor life does not give him the right to murder people like Ted. Kelly won't get that with a measly little 8 years behind bars. He needs 20, 25, 30 or so years behind bars as proper punishment. i don't care if he never does it again, the fact is he should lose something commensurate with what he took from Ted and Ted's family. No mediated meeting, with counsellors warning Ted's family "not to upset Kelly", no weekly meeting with a shrink, nothing will ever come close to punishing this guy enough, but the system has got to do more than it is doing right now.

Many people say I should try to feel empathy for Kelly. I'm sorry, but all of my empathy goes to Ted and Ted's family. God knows the current system does little enough for them, someone has got to stand up for the victims and the general populace of decent people and say that the current legal system is not adequately addressing their needs. And to be blunt, their needs and desires are a helluva lot more important than Kelly's will ever be. He lost that argument the day he decided to commit a serious felony like murder.

Does that give you a better idea of what I am talking about, Chandos?

 

Well, I still have to guess that you are zeroing in on a tiny portion of the million or so prisoners we have in the US. Most of them have never killed or raped anyone.

 

Those are the ones that piss me off the most. I'll reiterate -- the thousands of people who are incarcerated for nothing more than possession of MJ are a drain on our legal system and incarcerating them inhibits the system's ability to deal with the real criminals. I advocate educational supports for these sorts of "criminals".

 

LKD - We agree. Yay!

 

I've taken a long time to think about your post, Beren, and I want to be very careful in what I say so as not to be misunderstood. I hope I succeed.

I'll state first off that I have great respect for Native Spirituality and for religious belief in general. I am myself religious, and my religion is a relatively small and much-maligned one, so I wouldn't want to ever come across as doing to another spiritual belief what is so frequently done to mine.

That said, I find it very interesting that prisoners often miraculously "find religion" of some sort in prison. Be it Christianlty, Islam, Native Spirituality, Buddhism, or whatever. Some of them maybe do have an epiphany of some sort, but I think a lot of is is self serving horse dung that is an attempt to impress the judge and con the softhearted. Let me re-iterate that I am not confining this by any means to Native Spirituality.

An example is in order, and this time it's not just one of LKDs hypotheticals, but a real life example:

My friend Lily was walking out of a store on a popular street here in Edmonton. A young man came up behind her and ripped her purse off of her shoulder. He made off with a whopping $40 and sundry other items that were of great emotional / sentimental value to her and of little to no value to him. In so doing, he really damaged her arm, which is already somewhat injured. Now under our current law as I understand it, that doesn't count, because he had no forknowledge of her injury, and without intent, there's no crime there in that sense.

Now, I don't care if he's a Native, a Chinese, a Pakistani, an 8th generation White, or anything else. None of those things give this piece of crap the right to streal Lily's purse. Neither does his alcoholic father, cocaine using mom, perverted grandfather, or anything else. I have compassion for the possible trials this fellow has suffered, but I reiterate with great passion: none of those factors gives him the right to take her bag and set back 8 months of physiotherapy.

IMHO, he doesn't need to find Jesus. He doesn't need to meditate with a Hindi Yogi. He doesn't need to talk for hours with a psychotherapist. He doesn't need to pray five times a day toward Mecca. He doesn't need a few sessions in the Smudge Room. All of these things are good things in and of themselves, but they do not represent justice, to me. He should be forced to work like a dog for the rest of his life to pay the medical bills that Lily must now pay (and her physio isn't covered by the public purse) and he should do about 5 years of that time in a penitentiary so as to learn that when you violate the rights of others, you lose your right to freedom.

I find it insulting that some people want to make this loser out to be the victim and forget about Lily's rights. The moment he committed a crime against her he forfeited his right to play on my sympathies. He should not be put in some enabling program of any sort that lets him wander free to pass her again on the street and smirk at her, knowing that he dodged justice. And that happens all the time. For example, . . .

Again, real life example here in Edmonton, a young man killed another young man and got away with it due to "mitigating factors". He was ordered to stay away from the home of his victim, and yet he was driving past it on a weekly basis and taunting the grieving parents. Is that remorse? Was the "outside the prison" approach working with this kid? Not a chance. He needs hard jail time to teach him the severeity of his actions.

more later . . .