This mischaracterizes both the goal of the article and the position of liberals on criminal justice. Fair and equal treatment is a big part of it, but it’s also this – treating people like animals and monsters makes them more likely to behave like animals and monsters. Treating people like they’re humans who have the potential to become good citiziens means that at least some will rehabilitiate. Not all convicts are monsters or otherwise hopeless. But many who are reachable have no chance of becoming good citizens if they’re sent to privately run hellholes for years and years of inhumane treatment.
Well said. The US has one of the highest recidivism rates in the world; Norway has one of the lowest. It’s hard not to conclude that the Norwegians care far more about the victims of crime than Americans do, because they work to create fewer victims, and we work to create more of them.
No, I didn’t read the article. My complaint has to do with the liberal activism on behalf on criminals that has been going on nationwide since the sixties. There is literally no way to know how many people have been raped, robbed, assaulted and killed in the time since by criminals that liberal-minded activists/lawyers/judges have gotten off on technicalities, pled down to lesser offenses or released from prison prematurely. They left is so het up about gun deaths these days, but the number of people victimized and killed by criminals who should have been behind bars far outweighs it, and I’m wondering why it is that the left is always so blasé about this.
A specious argument. Norway has fewer social issues and a much more homogenous population than we have.
Wow, that’s a mouthful. Your talking points don’t match reality, so I guess it’s hard to get worked up about the “victims” of a non existent problem.
Technicalities" usually means upholding constutinal rights, something I thought left and right agreed on.
“Pled down to lessor offenses” usually means a compromise when the defendant is either overcharged or there are proof problems. I have never seen a prosecutor take a strong case with a violent offender and let them plead to a non-serious crime. The prosecutor’s I worked with were quite willing to hold firm when they had a violent offender in their mitts.
In our state, and many others, people don’t get out of prison “prematurely” anymore. We have determinate sentences and only 15% maximum “good time” early release.
Aha, the “we have to put the black people in their place” argument.
I’m shocked! SHOCKED!
Well, not that shocked.
Norway expends great effort in trying to rehabilitate criminals, with great success by their statistics. That seems like a worthy goal to me,especially because it could reduce crime significantly if it worked. It’s a shame that you don’t seem interested in learning from their success.
That happens so that room can be made in the jails for all of the drug hoppers. Gotta keep them locked up.
Hey, everyone! Starving Artist blamed the hippies for everything he hates about modern society again! DRINK!
Have you not been paying attention the last 20-30 years? The only constitutional rights the right-wing agrees on is the 2nd Amendment and that money=speech.
Isn’t this the latest code for “They don’t have black folk there messing things up”?
It’s amazing that you can predict that, given the great complexities of the issues and the dearth of reliable data for international and inter-jurisdictional comparisons, and even more amazing considering that there is at least some data suggesting that a focus on rehabilitation is associated with lower rates of recidivism.
Maybe because when you’re planning policy, the focus is on improving the future, not on emotional knee-jerk retribution for the past regardless of the consequences. There’s nothing wrong with focusing on the balance between punishment and rehabilitation as a tool for crime prevention. Unless of course you’re suggesting that anyone who commits any crime should be executed on the spot.
Starving Artist, if there’s literally no way to know how many people were hurt as a result of such policies, then you can’t exactly use that as a basis for an argument against them, can you?
This isn’t the first time you’ve taken an ad hominem attack on Starving Artist, Jayjay. This time it’ll earn you a warning.
Stay on topic in the future, please.
Maybe start a thread about this, then? The subject of the OP is reforming victimless crimes and trying to get rid of officers with a history of misconduct. Unless that’s part of the alleged activism on behalf of criminals that creates more victims, it’s a non-sequitur.
Well, one social issue we struggle with and they don’t is that we do a horrible job of rehabilitating criminals, to the extent that we even try. Given a choice between brutalizing criminals and preventing crime, we go with the former every time. Clearly, we don’t care about victims all that much, but not for the reasons you believe.
Thank you for this post. It completely validates liberal views of justice reform. There’s no way a person who has done something like selling an ounce of marijuana or offering their genitals out for rent can hope to be treated fairly by who holds opinions like yours. There is no way a person who is a victim of an unethical police officer can hope for justice. You see a thread about a DA’s reforms. You didn’t have any curiosity about the proposed reforms. You just jumped into the standard stereotypes of “liberals” and “victims” and “violent offenders” and “justice reform”, but this isn’t about any of those things.
This is about human beings, who, once they go to prison over something like selling marijuana or their bodies or who fall victim to corruption, spend the rest of their days paying for it. This unjustified cost is because some people behave as if all criminals are basically murderers.
Just show the simple respect of differentiating between people who make a minor mistake versus people who deserve severe punishment and talk about the topic of this thread.
Any time I see someone making an argument that a “homogenous population” has fewer social issues, I read it as “all white population” and judge the person making that statement accordingly.
I daresay it’s fair to take it as a tacit admission that the disparities are environmental, i.e. “we’re not homogeneous” means “we have a large black population and systematically discriminate against it.”
Judge me all you like. Diversity breeds conflict. So does racism and a history of slavery. Both require time and deliberate effort to overcome, and until that happens both breed crime.
These are facts that everyone knows but which few of a certain ideology will admit out loud, and stating them is in no way racist by any reasonable and honest definition of the word.
Whenever I see someone condemning someone else for stating indisputable fact, and insisting we turn a blind eye to it and pretend it doesn’t exist for PC reasons, I judge that person accordingly.
Or we could just view all humans as human, therefore concerns about too much diversity fall away, since we’d be a 100% human society. But I guess we’ll never get to that point when some can look at specific humans that happen to have a different skin color and only see them by that difference rather than who they are as an individual human persons.