The second link has the story w/o a paywall. Not sure what your complaint is.
Says the law. Go live in Somalia if you don’t like laws. The societal contract is the subject here, violate it and you are subject to civil and criminal action. The law is the embodiment of the societal contract whether you agree to it or not.
No, it’s not a contract. It’s simply an aspect of imprisonment, just like denial of access to one’s loved ones except at specified hours and so on.
As Tom Tildrum notes, the statute authorizing this type of action has been on Illinois’ books for many years so the prisoners are legally on notice of the fact that they could be required to pay for the cost of their incarceration.
I think this practice is bad policy, but it is fairly clearly within the state’s powers.
And the law says such-and-such a person is sentenced to X years in prison, not X years in jail and the forfeiture of any hypothetical future income as payment for the cost of their incarceration.
The law does say that, actually. Did you think the Illinois Department of Corrections was just making it up or something?
ETA: it’s interesting to see you on the other side of an argument from the criminal justice system, for once, though even here you’re wrong.
No, I acknowledge that it’s legal in this particular case, but it’s bad law all the same, and it clearly doesn’t fit the intent or understanding of a jury being asked to decide on a sentence.
Then what “law” are you referring to? It’s not a sentence, so the “intent or understanding” that a jury should decide on a sentence are irrelvant. Though for the record the proceeding to recover the costs from the prisoner will be a jury trial, if the prisoner wants one.
That can be the law, it is the law in Illinois. Other than non-specific objections I haven’t seen any reason that it couldn’t or shouldn’t be the law. I think it’s a much better law than the one that says a prisoner pays his debt to society by sitting around doing noting while racking up more expenses for the public to pay.
Now I do think sentencing should be clear, new terms can’t be applied ex post facto, but I see absolutely nothing wrong with those convicted of crimes repaying their debt to society, not only the debt they owe their victims, but the cost of apprehending and convicting them and any additional costs incurred as a result of their sentence.
Imagine the restaurant example, you’ve eaten the food and you refuse to pay. What would the restaurant think of the idea of forcing you, the deadbeat diner, to stay at the restaurant and eat for free for some amount of time to make up for your theft? It makes no sense.
If you mean the summary, please reread what I posted. Or not, as you choose.
Regards,
Shodan
I notice you didn’t deign to comment on the ignorance-fighting of a recent thread where your collosal and laughable misconception of “investment” was exposed. Yes, there are thousands – maybe tens of thousands – of Americans who understand economics even less than you do, but they know their limitations and don’t prattle out little formulae they don’t understand. To see you “debate” economics would be hilarious if it weren’t so piteous.
If you had the gumption to admit that you were wrong and that you want to learn elementary economics I’d applaud you.
Instead you’re now my go-to example for the most extreme Dunning–Kruger effect.
I, and others, have posted different articles referring to the same practice. It’s unclear why you think someone has “left something out”. It would be nice to hear from the AG, but if he’s not issuing press releases on this, what is a person supposed to do?
The best I can say is that it does seem that the practice is limited. Do you think it’s good public policy? If so, why?
It shouldn’t be the law because it produces a negative incentive for people to make an honest living after they get out of prison. Why bother trying to be a productive member of society again when the state is just going to take anything you earn? Much easier to just go back to doing the kinds of things that landed you in prison in the first place. It’s hard enough as it is for ex-cons to reintegrate into society - it would be more beneficial to just keep them locked up for life than to release them and then punish them further for trying to do the right thing.
Except that that’s what most of them are going to do anyway, because they don’t have and never will have the means to pay back that “debt”. All you’re doing is punishing ex-cons for being successful and encouraging them to be indolent.
Which they do. By being imprisoned.
How is that in any way analogous to penal incarceration? I know of no state where the punishment for theft is being forced to steal more stuff.
Ignorantia juris non excusat, and all that.
If this has been in place for over a decade and a half, then the vast majority of people in prison were probably sentenced after the implementation of that law, and can’t claim ignorance. Sure, it sucks to be them once they get out, but I suspect most of them would have committed their crimes regardless. You pays your money, you takes your chances.
And as far as the sentencing aspects of it; that’s the job of the defense attorney to point that out to the jury, I’d think.
Good.
The policy doesn’t seem that much different in principle from charging those who get tickets court costs as well as the fine. But I agree with you that the selectivity of the charge could be a problem - though I’m not sure those who can afford to pay constitute a protected class.
Don’t worry about those people getting out. See the government forbids them to own guns so it will take them at least an hour to get one before they can start robbing the 7/11 again. On the other hand, if they had enough money and a little help getting jobs, they might not go back into crime.
Putting aside the ethical and constitutional issues (and I’ll admit I have serious concerns on these) there’s also the serious issue of how this will affect the legal system. We’ve already seen how forfeiture laws can influence police work; there are examples of law enforcement agencies making decisions over where to target investigations based on who has assets worth seizing. We could end up seeing the same effect in the sentencing system; a person might get sentenced to a longer prison term because he has assets the state can seize. (Although I’ll acknowledge the irony that we may have finally invented a court system which is biased in favor of poor defendants.)
[QUOTE=septimus]
I notice you didn’t deign to comment on the ignorance-fighting of a recent thread where your collosal and laughable misconception of “investment” was exposed.
[/QUOTE]
Here’s where we run into the problem I mentioned earlier, which is
[list=A][li]You are extremely stupid, and [/li][li]By the time you get this far you will have forgotten what A is.[/list]The trouble is that you aren’t smart enough to be worth much effort. It’s like trying to play bridge with a monkey - waiting for you to stop gibbering and flinging your own feces around so I can explain what trump is for the fourteenth time just isn’t entertaining. [/li]
You wouldn’t recognize a refutation if it kicked you hard in the nuts, not that that wouldn’t be a good thing anyway. So it’s real cute how you want to sit with the grownups, but wishing doesn’t do it.
Sorry.
Regards,
Shodan
Not to be too much of a dick, but how about they not rob the 7-11 in the first place? I mean, you seem overly concerned about the poor widdle ex-convicts and how awful life after prison might be if the Man comes and takes their money.
It was their choice to do these things in the first place, and maybe if there was unlimited money, we could do all this happy stuff AND do things like shelter the homeless and feed the hungry and heal the sick. But there’s not, and ex-convicts come in dead-last in terms of consideration, and rightly so.
Jeez, Shodan and septimus, just get a room.