And yet as the above example illustrates, not high enough.
Obviously we have a more unruly population less inclined to obey the law. Unsurprisingly this seems to have become more of a problem over the last 50 years.
HAHAHAHAHAHA! You’re killin’ me, Smalls! Prison sentences!!! Since when do prison sentences in this country mean a friggin’ thing?
Yeah, well, they aren’t rare here. There are literally tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of guys in the U.S. just like the one above who are out of prison while still in their twenties and thirties after a lengthy history of violent and/or serious crime convictions and continuing to present a threat to the public. A literally untold and uncountable number of people have been raped, robbed, assaulted, tortured and murdered over the years by these people who rightfully should have been kept in prison.
And just for the record, the U.S. is not other countries. We have exceptional advantages, exceptional achievements, and exceptional problems. It really isn’t smart to drag out the ‘but other countries’ meme. Doing so is indicative of a small and agenda driven mind.
But I digress. I take it then that the discussion to be had in regard to the policies that resulted in the cop-shooting bad guy being out amongst us is to point how trogloditish the U.S. is and that if it were properly ‘civilized’ we’d have let him out much sooner or maybe not jailed him at all. Is that about right?
No, the proper thing would have been to evaluate him, and find the best ways to rehabilitate him if possible, and how to best keep him separated from society if not.
With the way we treat criminals, we take someone who commits a minor crime of desperation or passion, and instaed of giving them other options, we throw them in a cage with a bunch of career criminals, and then are “surprised” by the results.
With the exception of rare individuals with serious mental disorders, people turn to crime because they were not able to find a productive way to work with society. That is not always the individual’s fault. Society has a responsibility to its citizens, even the ones who it has failed.
Did this individual require a higher level of supervision and rehabilitation than was offered? Sounds like it. We should spend more time with individuals who have broken the social contract not only to help them back on a path towards responsible citizenship, but to understand where things went wrong, and help prevent others from turning to criminal behavior in the first place.
Just locking people up and throwing away the key doesn’t improve society, it just further punishes those who society has forgotten.
In order for your story to be all that important to the scheme of things, you’d have to show that people who will commit murderer have always spent time in jail before hand, and that criminals that are released always reoffend. Since this is not the case, this anecdote, while sad, should not be used to condemn those who, if given a second chance will make good on it, especially as doing so won’t actually prevent murders.
I’m starting to think that the chances of getting some evidence of Starving Artist’s calm rational Phase 1 and 2 periods are tending toward the remote.
Remember how I talk about how thanks to liberal soft-on-crimism people get robbed, raped, assaulted and sometimes killed by violent criminals who get set free time and time again while still in their twenties and thirties? Well, here’s a real life example right now. If this asshole had been in prison where he ought to have been several times over, this poor woman would have been spared the horrific attack she was subjected to and likely will never completely recover from.
But we can’t just keep 'em locked up forever, can we, Kimstu?
I have a crazy idea! How 'bout we keep violent offenders locked up for at least 85% of their original sentence. A 15% reduction should be considered enough in a sane world to encourage good behavior. And if not, tough, they get 100%.
I’m sure this will make me a big 'ol meanie in the eyes of wolfpup and his ilk, but hey - fewer rapes, fewer robberies, fewer assaults and fewer murders, and of course fewer real-life victims like this poor young woman! Pretty good trade-off, I’d say.
Ah, here’s another article from the same site. (I didn’t go off looking for these, I’m just catching up on the news after having gotten home for the evening and happened upon them.)
This asshole, Herman Bell, murdered two police officers in 1971. Instead of being executed like he should have been, he’s been allowed to spend the time since his conviction reading books, watching tv, hearing and telling jokes, making friends, having visitations, etc. You know, things his victims haven’t been able to do all this time and never will, and things that their families and loved ones have never been able to do with the same sense of joy and happiness that they had before.
So now the New York parole board has recommended this guy for parole. The widow of one of the officers has brought suit to try to prevent her husband’s killer from being released. A key issue the judge is considering is whether the widow has legal standing to bring her suit in the first place. Naturally Bell has supporters who claim that the suit brought by the slain officer’s widow should not be allowed. Predictably, one of these ‘supporters’ is a Democrat politician, Assemblyman Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn), who argues not only that the parole board made the correct decision in determining that this guy should be set free, but that the widow’s suit is frivolous and has no legal basis. Now, I know that these are legal terms and in a legal sense Barron may very well be right, but his interjecting himself into the issue on behalf of the killer of two innocent men serves once again to illustrate just how passionate and determined those on the left are in trying to see to it that as many criminals as possible get set free.
That you “truly believe” those on the left are trying to see to it that as many criminals as possible are set free, in a thread started because the right is attacking victims for wanting to prevent the circumstances that led to the murders of their friends, is laughably moronic.
Okay. At what point would you say, “This person is of no further use to society, and is not worth the effort it would take to rehabilitate them, they should be locked up and have the key thrown away”? The first assault? The third assault? Maybe we can have a points system, like german driver’s licenses, - you start with 100 points, assaults are worth 40, rapes are worth 60, murders are worth 90, and once you get past 100 you no longer get to go free? And at that point, why not just take them out behind the courthouse after the trial and put a bullet through their brain? Why spend the time and money to send them to prison?
I mean, do you think it’s possible that someone can become a very different person in, oh, let’s say, 47 years of living, to the point where keeping them as a ward of the state simply is no longer necessary? And if it isn’t, then why not just kill anyone who commits a murder? Or a rape? Or aggravated assault? They’re clearly going to be the same person no matter how much you lock them up, and that person is a danger to society! Maybe we can find a word for these people. Like, I dunno, “Criminal”.
Also, in your philosophy, what is the point of prison? I feel like this is part of the problem - I don’t see “punishment” as a purpose worth pursuing within the prison system for the most part; I think the only goals it really should serve are rehabilitation and protecting the citizenry - and I think it does a poor job of both at the moment. I think there’s a distinct lack of clarity between you and the people you’re arguing with as to what values are being upheld. But if you legitimately think that your opponents are passionate and determined to release as many criminals as possible (how does one stop being a criminal in your view of the world? Can you spend enough time in prison for it? Is 47 years enough?), chances are good you’re not particularly interested in “clarity”.
Y’know, I can’t shake the feeling that a statement like this deserves a little more examination than the basic logic of “If we locked up repeat offenders right the first time, we wouldn’t have to deal with repeat offenses”. Like, maybe a comparison of how the US stacks up with other countries when it comes to the harshness of sentencing and how common recidivism and crime in general are. I welcome you to search for that data, Starving Artist, because I fundamentally refuse to put so much work into making a point when you clearly put next to zero fucking thought into your counterpoint.
Pretty simple really. If they commit a crime that draws a 15 year sentence, then they should serve at least 85% of that time. If they re-offend, then they serve 85% of whatever sentence they get for that offense. And so on. This does a pretty good job of keeping people with multiple violent felonies from preying on people over and over and over again while still young, and it ensures that repeat offenders either stay in prison most of their lives or until they age out of the inclination to engage in violent crimes.
Ideally, murderers should be executed. Failing that, they should be kept in prison all their lives. They deprived someone (or multiple someones) of a lifetime of birthdays and Christmases and movies and football games and summer nights and lovemaking and children and grandchildren, etc., etc., etc. And they permanently ruined the lives of everyone who loved and lost the people they killed. Murderers don’t deserve to walk free and there’s no justice if they do. And releasing them back into society to live freely again further intensifies the pain of the family and loved ones of the people the murderer has killed. So no rehabilitation, no parole. They stay in until they die. This also has the added benefit of ensuring that they murder no one else once they’ve been released, as has most certainly happened at times in the past…and may be happening at this very instant for all we know.
I’m more curious about the “sealed” rape case from three years ago. What does sealing it entail and why was it sealed? Perhaps if it hadn’t been sealed this poor young woman wouldn’t have been raped and robbed last night.
Also just noticed that I forgot to include a link to the article about this guy. Here it is:
Participating in online forums is part of one’s real life. If you behave towards your meatspace acquaintances in such a way that they think you’re nice and likeable, while you behave towards your online acquaintances in such a way that they think you’re hostile, disingenuous, bigoted and willfully ignorant, that doesn’t mean that your true character is nice and likeable while your online environment is causing your bad behavior by being horrible and loathsome.
It just means that your true character includes the attributes of deceit, hypocrisy and ducking responsibility.
As for “why you’re so different here”, i.e., why you deliberately frequent an anonymous messageboard for the purpose of indulging in asshole behavior that you wouldn’t want your meatspace acquaintances to know about, I can’t say. Clearly it’s serving some kind of need for you.
On this we agree, at least.
Now that you’ve made it clear that you’re only talking about “things” that relate to social behavior—i.e., “day to day societal life and the way people interact with and influence each other”, leaving out everything like medical breakthroughs and other advancement of knowledge, technological improvements, etc.—this attitude of yours has shifted from the incomprehensible to the trivial.
Okay, you don’t care very much about things like non-discrimination and acceptance of diversity and individual liberty, and you do care a whole hell of a lot about things like swearing in public and immodest costumes on pop stars and young people having sex before marriage. OF COURSE you’re going to believe that the country’s gone to shit over the last fifty years.
Yeah, see, this is what I’m talking about with regards to “difference in philosophy”. I fundamentally disagree. I think that responding to this with vengeance isn’t helpful, and wasting more life is a bad idea, because much of the cause of murder is situational - and I reckon that if you or I were put in the situation of many of these murderers (including potentially their mental disorders and indoctrination), we’d have pulled the trigger in the same way.
I realize this is weird. Or at least not ubiquitous. But This is the kind of difference in philosophy that will very much cause problems in the discussion if not addressed up front.
Please DO forgive yourself, ETF; I aided and abetted the attempts to acculturate SA into the SDMB community. I was most welcoming, and tried everything I knew to persuade him to treat the community as individual people, and not as a solid block of liberals-whose-viewpoints-are-WRONG-because-they-identify-as-liberals.
Eventually, I found myself forced to realize that if he ever had anything to say that was both factual and useful for me to know, it would be pure coincidence that resulted in it being posted by him, and that information meeting those qualifications would certainly come to my attention from another quarter eventually. Under this rubric, placing him on my ignore list would not deprive me of anything other than an opportunity to be frustrated by his obstinate refusal to accept objective reality when presented with it.
Isn’t a significant driving factor in reduced sentences that there aren’t enough prisons and the ones you have are overcrowded? Maybe you could relieve a lot of the pressure by, say, legalizing drugs to reduce prisoner populations, or just bite the bullet and pay higher taxes to build and maintain more prisons. If you want to lock up a lot of people and not pay for it, that makes you kind of a whiner.