Yeah. Well, for anyone who isn’t sure that link comprises the sum total of knowledge of American ‘justice’ they will ever need, here’s a link to the story about the homeless guy, who took the $100 in the course of robbing a bank.
Most telling:
So basically someone was driven to extreme action out of hunger and socio-economic desperation, that he he owned up to, and we Americans wag our finger and send him off to be with murderers and rapists for 15 years, instead of seeing that he gets the help he needs to be a happy and productive member of society.
What a bunch of cunts we are.
It does seem a stark comparison, and perhaps undeserved. I would be very surprised if the guy doesn’t have a lengthy criminal history that influenced the severity of the sentence, though.
So its ok to rob a bank as long as you don’t take ALL the money. Got it.
Dude - robbery is robbery. Period. The homeless guy could have gotten help from hundreds of different places. Instead, he chose to jack a bank. It was his own stupid decision that landed his ass in jail, no one else’s.
And what is your rationalization for treating the $500 million fraudster so much more leniently?
Is anyone saying the robber should not be punished at all? The issue is the disproportion of the sentences to the crimes and the circumstances.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. I’m not going to argue with the general premise behind your statement but, still, a simple act of apparent desperation gets him 15 years? Please. Given no further information about his past history, I can’t come to a conclusion as to what he deserves or not, but, on the face of it, it seems overly harsh.
No dude, look at that AIG guy’s amount. It is better to rob a bank if you do take ALL the money. Lighter sentence.
I guess you could look at it this way: he won’t ever be hungry again in jail.
I’ve considered that, if I somehow end up homeless someday, I’ll pull off something petty but criminal so I would at least have a bed to sleep in and 3 squares a day. Because sleeping under bridges fucking SUCKS.
Could he have? Your statement seems reasonable, but I’ve run into a disproportionate number of people who fall through the cracks – who manage to make enough not to qualify for programs X, Y, and Z, but not enough to handle reasonable expenses without help. A LOT of them – people with back problems doing heavy labor that they really can’t handle, just to keep the wolf from the door; people with pensions of like $350/month trying to pay rents raised to $250 and utility bills over $100, plus buy food and other necessities.
Just for kicks, look up and tell me at least 3 likely sources of help that man in particular could have turned to.
In my area we have homeless shelters, food pantries, food stamps, programs to help with utilities, subsidized housing, programs for child daycare, programs for retraining, medicaid…
There are many programs out there to help people with different needs who are struggling to get by. We as a society do what we can to help people but ultimately we cannot control how people live their lives.
For whatever reason there will always be people who fall through the cracks. If they choose to rob a bank the laws still apply to them and circumstance does not negate the penalty.
I lived in a neighborhood with a homeless shelter about half a block from my house. Everyday they’d start lining up in the early evening because there simply were not enough beds to serve the number who needed it. To stop people fighting for a space in line they instituted a lottery for the beds so your spot in line did not matter. Every night many would be sleeping in the park or alleys.
My church (or rather my mom’s…I am not religious) provides meals to the poor everyday. Everyday they do not have enough food for all those who want it.
In Chicago I can drive you past areas where you can see the homeless sleeping on the street (I am thinking on Lower Wacker Drive smack-dab in the Loop business district so not some seedy part of town although there are other places of course). In the morning, driving down Lake Shore Drive (beautiful drive, also not a seedy part of town) it is not uncommon to see people sleeping in the park.
Either there are not enough services to help them all or they are choosing to do that for some reason I cannot fathom.
And yeah, the issue is not that the guy went to jail for robbing a bank. It is the disproportionate sentence. Both men stole. One $100 the other $500 million. The guy who stole $100 turned himself in when he did not have to. Seems to me the punishments should be reversed.
I’ve had the same thought. In fact I tried to write a screenplay about it - some guy who, due to circumstances, decides that a few years in a low security prison will be better than being chased by creditors, scratching for money to pay rent and eat. That maybe he can get his shit together while he has nothing but free time.
If only he hadn’t kicked that quarter into the gutter…
I have to wonder if this isn’t one of those stories where a just-released long serving convict is so institutionalized that he can’t function in the outside world, and so commits some crime and immediately surrenders so that he can go back to the world he knows.
No, people in desperate situations do desperate things.
Including stealing to stop the gaping hunger pains in their stomach.
The problem is this man obviously needed and wanted help, but for whatever reason, whether ignorance of local programs, or their unavailability/inadequacy, he could not get it.
But way to join the cunts and wag your ignorant, judgmental finger, shriveled, and decrypted Scrooge style finger.
Most of the things you mention require having an address, something the homeless are occasionally noted for not posessing.
As noble as it seems to you to crap all over your country you seemed to miss the fact that the robber stole the money to stay in a detox center. It is likely that he put himself where he is because of his own actions. It is not possible for a society to stop someone on a self-destructive course. This man didn’t wake up one day under a bridge out of the clear blue. There were a series of actions and events that occurred to put him there. There were also as a series of social programs in place to help him along the way.
We as a nation invest a great deal of money trying to help people. However, at some point there is a responsibility of individuals to themselves.
WTF??
The guy is clearly trying to get clean, sort his life out. How the fuck can you be so callous?
Also, if he stole a wallet with $100 in it he probably would have gotten a much lighter sentence. Why is it worse to steal from a bank than a person?
The US justice system is fucking despicable.