You expect expert bank robbers to be saints?
You’re welcome. I do what I can.
Very interesting statistics at the second site. If you look closely you will see that violent crime, rape and aggravated assault, is actually up since 1980. Burglary, theft and property crime is way down, to the tune of 3 million less cases. So basically, according to these stats, we have, per year, incarcerated one million more people and saved 3 million cases of stealing something. How much does it cost to house a prisoner these days?
Cite I quoted earlier listed it at between $29k and $40k per prisoner per year.
As far as I am aware, the crime rate in the US is falling, as it is in the UK.
All sorts of reasons have been put forward for this, in the US the murder rate is down a significant amount.
You can choose your reasons why according to your agenda,
The change in demographics was predicted several years ago, one personal theory is that crime is infectious to a degree, if you make a dent in those who are in the main parenting age group, they don’t get the chance to pass their values on to their offspring, or create those offspring, hence it reduces the pool of likely criminals.
This current reduction does confound a lot of pet theories, depite recession crime has gone down, and yet it has been taken for granted for years that economics influences crime.
I could make a prison extremely cheap to run, it would probably not be acceptable, but you start on the premise that you don’t release the offender at all, from there you realise that you don’t need to provide any training, education, or any facilities except for medical and food, no visits, virtually no contact at all with the outside world - a prison like that would not cost much to run, keep the offenders locked up in their cells, and you dont need large excercise yards which need to be observed and manned, you dont need to worry about gang violence or any of the violence reduction measures, since its is incredibly difficult for a gang to operate without social contact.
This might be a controversial prison, but it would be cheap.
So basically you’d have one penalty for everything, life imprisonment with a strong chance of being driven insane?
No, the attitude of moral superiority offends me.
I’m not seeing where my arguments have met so much as an attempt at rebuttal.
Just sayin’.
Blacks have a rate of violent crime that is nearly eight times the white rate. The stereotype is more than a stereotype. It is an explanation of the way things are.
From 1960 to 1970 the prison population declined. Poverty declined because of an expanding economy and War on Poverty programs. The crime rate doubled. Since 1980 the prison population has tripled. Poverty has become more severe. The crime rate has declined. A coincidence? I think not. Most of the voters agree with me. We are firmly convinced that punishment works. We want it to be more severe.
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/homicide/race.cfm
http://www.jacksonprogressive.com/issues/lawenforcement/punishment.pdf
Those who dislike the idea of punishing criminals, especially if they are black and poor, will always find ways to convince themselves that more and longer prison sentences are ineffective. Nevertheless, they have nothing to offer that works.
Punishment does work. The only problem with the high incarceration rate is the high cost. This can be reduced by laying on the lash hard, and forcing convicts to work at hard labor performing work that is painful and dangerous.
Criminals are useless, worthless, and dangerous. We would be better off if they had never been born. They have done nothing to merit remedial education and job training. They have debts to pay society.
Thumbs up for more (and more severe) punishment. Got it.
No; we have a “justice” system that is seriously prejudiced according to class, race and gender, so poor black men get the short end of the stick three times over.
Since this was offered in response to my last post, I’ll just point out that I have made no assertion that “more and longer prison sentences are ineffective.”
You’re just reading that in.
As I said to Sam, I would recommend that you take issue with what other posters actually say, rather than making shit up and slamming that instead.
I’m getting bored with asking this (of Moskos, of Jonathan Chance, and now of you), but if states end their hiatus of using flogging as a punishment, why on earth do you think they’d use it instead of rather than in addition to incarceration?
Agreed, I think they should all be executed at birth, or better still, all be aborted, maybe contraception would be better still.
If that’s your opinion, why even advocate flogging ? Why not go straight to capital punishment for every crime ?
Well if it was offered and understood to be done ONLY as a way of decreasing the cost of imprisonment, it presumably would not be done in addition to imprisonment, as that defeats the cost-saving goal. However, I am in complete agreement with you that it would invariably become an addition to prison, because in arguing these threads, again and again we see ugly reminders that some people see prison as strictly revenge. Preventing crime is not important to them. I think that would ESPECIALLY true of the dullards who watch Fox and vote Republican. And the politicos could use it as a way to bolster their image of being “tough on crime”: think about how eagerly Sherriff Arpaio and his fans would embrace flogging.
How many criminals have you ever spoken to?
Actually, I think people in this thread have been discounting the retributive aspects of our criminal justice system in favor of a “rehabilitation” standard. Punishment, for the sake of punishment, is a perfectly valid function of the criminal justice system. It’s why vigilantes are disfavored in our society; our government can punish criminals sufficiently for their crimes, thus obviating the need for mob justice or revenge. The idea that rehabilitation should be the primary goal for all but a select group of offenders is pure pie-in-the-sky.
Well, to begin with I just want to go on record as disassociating myself from New Deal Democrat in any way. Got that?
RT (and I still instinctively call you you-know-who in my heart!) I think you’re misunderstanding my position. You think that having flogging (I hate that word, by the way) as a separate means of punishment presents an inevitability of combination of the two.
I am, instead, postulating that our current form of criminal punishment isn’t working and something else, something that will replace imprisonment for the majority of convicted criminals, should be attempted. That something can be flogging or could be something else (though I am at a loss for what else might get there.
Right now we have a system that is:
- Inept
- Expensive
- Unfair
- Essentially a jobs program controlled by a set of lobbyists
- Deadly for a certain percentage of inmates
You seem to be arguing something along the lines of “It doesn’t work well but let’s keep it” rather than being willing to experiment and look at alternatives. That’s not a way to find solutions regarding the above problems.
Any argument about it being ‘cruel’ is, to my mind, specious in a nation that has the death penalty. Regardless of whatever you might like or not like about it corporal punishment it is NOT inherent crueler than death.
You are assuming that flogging will accompany long-term confinement over time. You may be right. But that’s a flaw in ourselves, RT. Remember, our politicians would not come out in favor of ‘tough on crime’ if the American electorate didn’t WANT it. For everyone who complains about ‘politicians’ and such remember that they respond to our votes (and campaign dollars from contributors). Coming out as being ‘tough on crime’ is a winner, vote-wise, regardless of the initial impulse.
I could see the switch being both a ‘tough on crime’ winner and a budget winner from a political perspective.
Oh, and I want to answer this directly.
Cost savings. A person out in the world is not being paid for by the state. I don’t know the figures for where you live but where I lived (prior to my recent move to the south) any cost savings is important. Ohio is cutting college and grade school funds as well as road and other infrastructure maintenance. You think they wouldn’t like to cut their prison expenses? Hell, Kasich is talking about SELLING the prisons to private entities to save money.