IMHO, there is little valid purpose served in continuing to keep a prisoner locked up after he/she has genuinely reformed. (The main difficulty being, of course, that short of mind-reading you cannot tell if someone has truly undergone transformation or not.) But if someone has genuinely been successfully rehabilitated, continuing to hold them in prison is excessive and needless punishment. If someone is serving a life sentence for murder, but has genuinely reformed 12 or 26 years into their sentence, they should get a second chance.
The only valid reason to do so would be deterrence for other people - the knowledge for criminals that “If you commit Crime X, you will be locked up for 20 years” is a lot more potent-sounding threat than “If you commit Crime X, you will be locked up until you change your ways.” But then it’s technically locking up the prisoner for the sake of others, rather than for the sake of himself/herself.
I would guess that the only way this could happen practically would be governors using their commutation power a lot more than they currently do, but pardoning convicted felons usually bodes poorly for one’s reelection chances.
When this applies to child molesters it might work because I dont think they can ever totally reform plus there is the fact that even after leaving prison, where do they go? They have made laws governing where they live so strict (like not being within 3-5 miles of a school or daycare) that there are darn few places for them. Often that leaves just a tiny area or small towns.
So it might just be better to leave them… well not a prison… but some sort of controlled environment.
Otherwise they are on the street where authorities lose track of them.
The purpose is revenge, some believe that to be justice. If someone reforms (and again how do we really know), But if, then that is a victory for the victim. That victim is now the one who should get credit for this person’s new and honest life, and that society has another productive member.
So many people, especially young men. Do incredibly STUPID things in their teens and early 20’s. They join gangs, deal drugs, swagger around with a gun, etc… and then they wind up in prison. They then reform.
So what good is locking that person up for 20 years or more or life or holding them after they complete their sentence. Shouldnt “good behavior” amount to something?
I have talked to people in corrections and they say often its about half the prisoners should not be there. I’m convinced that its the prison industry keeping many of them in. If some top elected officials like governors or even the president, would just go thru files and pardon deserving prisoners we could probably reduce our prison population by half and save billions which then could go towards education.
Historically the US had far fewer people in prison, and for shorter sentences than we do now. And our crime rate is lower. You may say one leads to the other, but I doubt its that simple.
Anyway, nobody wants to be seen as ‘soft on crime’ in politics so they just push for harsher and harsher sentences.
And like you said, how do you know who is reformed? If you let out 100 people and 1 commits a crime, people will want to make sure the next batch of 100 are not released even if 99 of them aren’t criminals anymore either.
I would assume a big factor is age. Age and gender are two of the bigger risk factors for crime, and when a male reaches his 40s or so, he will probably give up the criminal lifestyle (since at root the criminal lifestyle is about status and procreation in many ways, and by your 40s those urges are not as intense).
But what do you do when you have someone who has done something so heinous, that really, there isn’t much they can do to make up for it? Think of the Manson family, for example? Some of them claimed to have “found god” or whatever. But their crimes were horrific. (There were some people out there who were even worse)
I don’t believe in the death penalty, but every now and then, you just have someone who really does NOT deserve a second chance. It wasn’t just a stupid, split seond decision, but truely cold-blooded murder.
(And haven’t there been cases where people have been given second chances, only to blow it?)
IMHO it depends on the crime. Dealing or using drugs? Prostitution? Shouldn’t be in prison to begin with. On the other hand, ISTM whenever I hear about someone being arrested for a murder, the suspect inevitably has a rap sheet a mile long with offenses like burglary and aggravated assault. Those types offenses should be punished more aggressively.
It’s probably not that simple. Historically we had a lot more lead poisoning too for a few decades, and that led to lower IQs, behavioral problems, and poor impulse control.
I don’t imagine it’s likely to happen but if I was in charge, I’d legalize all drugs. I figure that if people want to recreate themselves (or kill themselves) with drugs, it’s their own business. I’d keep laws restricting sales to minors and laws against operating vehicles while under the influence but if you wanted to smoke some crack, you’d be able to go buy it legally at Walmart as far as I’m concerned. In addition to this being a personal liberty issue, I feel that the crime that has developed around the illegal sales of drugs is causing more harm to society than the drugs themselves are.
How many of your customers on average were in for drug possession and if recall correctly you served from the late 70’s to the 2000’s, so did you see a change in the percentage and trends?
It’s hard to break it down like that. People might be convicted of a drug charge but it was very rarely the only charge involved. What usually would happen is somebody would get arrested for another crime and then found to be in possession of some drugs, which he would then also be charged with. The number of people who were arrested and imprisoned solely for drug possession is very small.
That’s saying something different though. Sure, if all drugs were legalized, then those selling drugs wouldn’t be criminals. But that’s not how things are. And it’s one thing to say some dumbass caught selling a dimebag of weed shouldn’t be thrown in jail. But it’s completely another thing to say that about a high-level drug kingpin who brings literal tons of heroin and fentanyl into the country.
There are two stores in my town which specialize in the sale of alcohol. They appear to be able to co-exist without any drive-by shootings to determine which of them owns the “turf”. The same is true about the various stores that sell cigarettes and the Dunkin Donuts and the Tim Hortons which are selling coffee only a block away from each other.
If drugs were legal, we wouldn’t have high level drug kingpins or drug cartels. Coca plants and heroin poppies would be grown on regular farms alongside corn and wheat. Literal tons of these crops might get moved around but they would be in ships and trains and semi-trailers.
That said, I am not FlikTheBlue. I’m expressing my own opinion (while acknowledging it’s unlikely to be implemented in the real world). I don’t know if he shares my opinion or has a different one.
On a separate not, I would disagree with FlikTheBlue on something else he wrote. He said that anyone who was arrested for murder “inevitably has a rap sheet a mile long with offenses like burglary and aggravated assault”.
This is not really the case. There are a lot of people whose first arrest is for murder. You’d think a serious crime like murder wouldn’t be an entry-level crime but the reality is that professional criminals with long rap sheets are usually participating in crimes that generate money. Murder is often a crime that is committed with no financial motive. Somebody who kills their spouse over an argument or somebody who’s been burying dead prostitutes in their basement isn’t any more likely to be robbing houses or selling drugs than you or I are.
