You are correct. The official state motto is friendship. The phrase “Don’t mess with Texas”, did arise from an anti littering campaign. But which do you hear more? I assure you the “new” slogan refers to much more than keeping our highways clean.
If you think Texas justice is weak you should try it sometime. If anything it may be a bit too tough in some cases.
chowder you may have been referring to hard cases. If that’s so then you would have to admit we’re about as tough on hard cases as we can be. Or is death not punishment enough for you? Need a little torture too?
I mention the other crimes because they serve time in the same prisons as the hardened criminals. Only in rare cases are they segregated and there aren’t enough minimum or maximum security prisons for everyone. There are “boot camps” at many prisons now but many are still in the camp stage. Literally camping out in some cases.
Practically every couny and city in Texas jail is full and we’re building more as fast as we can. No frills no thrills. Concrete and steel with no luxuries. We use to put out in the fields and work their asses off but the courts determined this to be too harsh/cruel etc. The safety of the public was at risk so no more chain gangs. We still have a few working farms and you can see inmates working all over the state. Don’t be surprised if you’re ever here and see roadsigns the read, “Don’t stop for hitchhikers, they may be escaped inmates.”
IMO, the purpose of incarcertation as punishment for crime is neither retribution, nor rehabilitation, nor even deterrence. The purpose of incarceration is incarceration. It takes people who have shown themselves dangerous to society out of circulation for a while and puts them where they can commit no crimes, except against other criminals. But I see no reason to make their incarceration, while it lasts, any harder than is strictly necessary to protect others from them. For that matter, I see no reason even to deny them the vote. That is the one civil right we can safely allow them to exercise while incarcerated – and some states do. Prisoners are in effect wards and slaves of the state, it’s only fair they should have some small voice in how the state is governed.
Thanks, Guin. You’re 100% right. A bored inmate is a dangerous inmate. They’re the ones who will figure out how to make a knife out of toilet paper.
To adress some points I saw throughout the thread:
Cable TV: Yes, the inmates do have cable, but it’s not so they get extra channels over broadcast-- it’s so the prison can control what the inmates are watching. Violent or sexually-orientated programming can be blocked. The inmates in my local prison get four channels: ABC, CBS and NBC as well as one prison channel which runs menus, announcements and the like. Trust me: it’s not really “cable.”
They do watch movies, but the selection is limited and many movies don’t make the cut because of violence or sexual content.
Rebahbilitation: This is one of the most difficult issues facing the prison system today. Firstly, there’s the old lead-a-horse-to-water aspects and secondly, there are funding issues.
Most rehabilitative programs are run by over-worked prison employees who may or may not have had a training session or two in how to run the program. They use a “teacher’s guide” while the inmates fill out workbooks, watch videos, etc. Most prisons have psychologists on staff, but their case loads are enormous and there’s simply no way they can devote as much time as would be needed to really help the inmates with their problems.
Thirdly, the average sentence is so short that rehabilitative/educational programs have little time to make a difference in the inmate’s life.
To make really workable, effective rehabilitation programs there would have to be massive funding increases and that’s just not going to happen.
Recreational spending: Not a dime of your tax dollars goes to buying the inmates recreational equpiment-- all of the funds are generated by the inmates themselves through various fundraisers and the profits from commisary sales.
Computers: The only computers the inmates in my local prison have are a small handful of outdated machines which have only learn-to-type programs and instructional software on how to build a resume.
Radios: They have to buy them theirselves-- the only things the state gives the inmates is a cot, a couple of changes of clothing and rudimentary toiletries. Everything else, they buy with money they earn working in the prison or what their family sends them.
Or . . . we could drastically reduce the number of inmates by either legalizing or finding non-prison solutions for most “victimless crimes” like drug use. Perhaps non-prison solutions would be useful for many non-violent crimes as well. Other countries keep far fewer prisoners without collapsing into anarchy, so it’s not like our massive prison system is actually necessary.
That way, we could either put far more effort into rehabilitating prisoners, or just keep the truly “unfixable” ones in prison for life, using far fewer resources.
We could do those things, but the public is not in the mood for it. The majority opinion in the US in recent decades has been “punish those bad people” and that especially seems to include punishing the drug addicts and alcoholics, with availability of more treatment (which has been shown to be far more cost-effective than incarceration) being rejected by the body politic. The public has bought into the idea that the only way for them to be safe is to incarcerate “those addicts and alcoholics”.
And yes, some of my patients (inmates all) should never be released from prison. But frankly that’s about 3% of them.
QtM, 70% of whose patients have drug and alcohol abuse problems, and who get incarcerated at a cost of about $25K a year. Decent rehab would cost about $8-12 K per case to implement, with expected reductions in cost once the program got running.
You’ll get no argument from me, but unfortunately, there’s small chance of that happening any time soon. Politicians love to pound the podium and shout how they’re “tough on crime” while quietly cutting prison budgets.
Any politician who would dare to try to eliminate prison time for drug possession offenses would be crucified by his opponent. “Candidate A wants crazed junkies to be allowed to roam our streets, attacking our children!” (The political system depends on creating fear while simultaneously offering a solution to the “threat.”)
But I would like to point out that even if it did happen, there would still need to be funding increases. The prison nearest to me has over 2,900 inmates at present, and nearly half of them are sex offenders.
Apparently there’s some contraversy over that. The USS Texas Virgina class nuclear sub has that slogan painted on it’s side. There’s other groups as well and some lawsuits over its use.
It’s possible the slogan or a version of it was used in the War for Texas’s independence (the Alamo and San Jacinto). Well, the Scottish version of it. The Don’t tread on me, flag is very similar in respect to the slogan "Don’t mess with Texas.
Either way it’s very clear that the people of the state have adopted it as their own and have used versions of it for quite some time.
Sorry, about the hijack but I thought it was interesting and since you called me on it.
Using that site’s search function, the only results I got for “don’t mess with Texas” related to the aforementioned anti-littering campaign. I’ll readily grant that 70 plus years is quite some time, though.
Well, Jesus, it’s not like the politician would need to bring this issue up during his election campaign. Whoever did this would have to already be* in* power.
Having read my OP and the replies to it, I am forced to concede that my proposals would be nothing short of a recipe for disaster if they were implemented.
However I still maintain that the ultimate price should be paid by the following.
Cold blooded murderers.
Terrorists causing untold suffering the world over.
also…
Traffic wardens.
Estate agents.
Telemarketers.
Leaders of warlike nations, i.e. San Marino, Lichenstein, Monaco, The Vatican and Denmark.
Manchester United fans.
Lawyers.
Nope. First, you can’t punish agnostics/atheists extra. Second, almost all criminals have demonstrated that they do not, in fact, believe in their nominal religion (all of them that I’ve ever heard of prohibit stealing, murdering, etc, and yet these guys did it anyway).
If anything, the latter point makes existing religious accomodations a bit questionable (if a Muslim, for example, could ignore the thou-shalt-not-kill parts of the Koran, I don’t see why he can’t learn to equally ignore the thou-shalt-not-live-on-porkrinds&beer parts). :dubious:
If I may suggest, ask the moderators to move this to the Pit, where the profanity and rants can really cut loose and logic gets tossed like last week’s fish.
It seems to be generally accepted that locking up a burglar reduces crime in a neighbourhood - well it would, I suppose
It also seems to be generally accepted that a lot of crimes are drug related
a couple of years ago I chased a burglar out of my flat, just missed the b*stard, and the rather attractive police forensics lady said ‘he would have been on drugs’
my reply was if I could move as silently and as fast, then I would like some of them
Maybe ‘prohibition’ is a dumb idea ?
I have known a reasonable number of people who were sent down, generally they were pretty bright, oddly fairly productive members of society. I have a feeling that every Saturday in the stocks dodging tomatos would have been a cheaper and more effective deterrent.
The last one was nicked with 1cwt of hash, it was amusing getting a call from him and sending a cheque to H.M. xxx. He said that some of the people were Ok, but others were … I forget the words, but he meant animals.
My instinct is that we need to divide prisoners into distinct categories, real animals could be left to kill each other, those that would benefit from remedial training are potentially productive - they could become indentured apprentices, and those that are fairly harmless but not retrainable could be Woad Workers - free in the community, but dyed blue and working in very public places.
How is this an apology? As a lawyer, I see it as a call for capital punishment for me and other lawyers, simply because we exercise our lawful occupations; same with the others in your “also” list.
If you want to debate something properly, then let’s do it. But calling for people to be killed because of their lawful occupations is not a serious debate - it just shows how immature you are, and how poorly you understand the basic principles of debate.
As well, it also shows that you don’t understand the basic principle of an apology - it’s not very effective to pour more gasoline on the fire and call it an apology.
Most politicians want to seek a second term, right? Secondly, I can’t think of many politicians who have the power to change the law on their own-- they have to have the approval of governing bodies, the members of which also want to get re-elected.
