My point is that if it was legal the high-level drug kingpin would disappear. Rather than being provided by someone like El Chapo or Pablo Escobar, crack and heroin would be provided by people like the stockholders in Anheuser-Busch or those guys on TV with big beards that advertise small craft beers.
I would say that’s pretty messed up. Especially when you consider something as minor as shoplifting can land you in prison for life with the “three-strikes” law.
However, what do you say about cases like the Manson family, or Ted Bundy (if he hadn’t been given the death penalty), or Gary Heidnik, or Jeffrey Dahmer? Gary Ridgeway? John Wayne Gacy? Charles Albright?
Do you think any of them should have been set free?
If they were truly reformed, then yes, I think parole could have been considered. Of course, it’s impossible to tell with certainty whether someone has truly been reformed or not, as Little Nemo** highlights, and therein lies the rub. Seeing yet another victim get murdered would be a high price to pay for being mistaken about someone’s repentance.
But I asked it as more of a philosophical than practical question. IMHO, if someone is truly reformed, then continuing to lock them up is rather pointless punishment. The only purpose it serves is…make someone suffer.
Part of the rationale behind long prison sentences is to keep people locked up until they age out of crime.
A forty-year old is less likely to offend than a twenty-year old, for various reasons. So if you lock up a twenty-year old for twenty years, he is less likely to re-offend, or at least that is the theory.
There is a scale, or there used to be, that was used to predict the likelihood that a child molester would be convicted again. IIRC you got points for various factors, and the higher the score, the more likely you were to re-offend. If you were over 25, you got points. If it was not your first offense, you got points. If you molested a non-family member, you got points. If you molested a male child, you got points. So a forty-year old who molested the boy down the street after serving three years for a previous offense - it doesn’t really matter how well he presents after being in prison, or undergoing treatment, or repenting - he is likely to attack more children if he gets out. So it might make sense to say “sorry, perv - get used to prison because you ain’t getting out.”
Or even “we use the gas chamber in this state - how long can you hold your breath?”
Regards,
Shodan
Child molesters are diversely quoted as having the highest recidivism rate of all crimes and the lowest recidivism rate of all crimes. Go figure.
You’re assuming only deterrence and reformation are valid reason to keep someone in jail. But plenty of people think that punishment is the main goal of prison time, hence that there’s no reason to free the criminal even if he’s reformed.
So, the argument here is “since we make the life of these people after jail so difficult, we shouldn’t release them”, apparently. Wouldn’t making their life less difficult a more logical option? This argument seems to be drawn directly from Kafka.
And that’s exactly the point. Most people won’t be happy if the criminal doesn’t suffer for his crime.
The final check on the system is that the Governor (for state crimes) and President (for Federal crimes) with the power to grant clemency or even wipe out the conviction completely.
A student of my wife’s ended up being plea-bargained into a life without parole sentence. No, no one thinks he will murder again. But as the appeals process goes on in the courts, so do the appeals every time a new governor takes office.
One of the reasons involves the definition of “recidivism” and the follow-up period. " Recidivism" usually refers to what happens after an offender is released from prison and may be defined as to a new arrest, new conviction or a return to prison for either a sex offense or any crime- studies that include “new arrests” for any crime will show a higher rate that those that only include “return to prison” for a sex offense. Some studies consider anyone that has not had an event that constitutes "recidivism’ as a non-recidivist while others exclude those who have died or moved out of state from the sample. ( and removing them from the sample increases the recidivism rate) And of course the rates will differ depending on whether the follow-up period is 3 years post-release or for the rest of the offenders life.
When three strike laws were first enacted, they only counted crimes involving violence in the tally. You couldn’t invoke the law over non-violent crimes like drug dealing or shoplifting.
I’ll admit I’m not really in favor of forgiving some crimes. Murder being the obvious one.
Even if the murderer sincerely repents and acknowledges they were wrong and will never commit another crime for the rest of their life… their victim is still dead. There are some things in life that are irreversible. If you can’t undo the crime, I don’t think you should undo the consequences.
If I had the authority to set free a convicted child molester and did so only to find they hurt another again it would weigh on my conscience. Civil rights advocates for the convicted would object, but for me personally I would sleep better favoring all children to the extent I was able.
Forgive me but I was only responding to what you had posted below, where you say that “it depends on the crime”. If drugs were all legalized, then dealing drugs wouldn’t be a crime at all. But you say in your first post that a crime such as drug dealing shouldn’t result in prison at all. Maybe I’m not understanding you here but it seems to me that you are saying two different things in these two posts.
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If you are not directly involved with offenders or prisons then you likely are not aware of the desirable ideal compared to current reality.
Yes it is highly desirable to rehabilitate offenders once they have been punished, and yes it is supposed to be the role of the post offending part of the criminal justice system to rehabilitate prisoners.
Much of the rehabilitation system is supposedly in place - the reality is that it is not.
The vast majority of the rehabilitation system is geared to generating numbers and charts and league tables at a minimum cost. The performance of service providers and subsequent management promotion is based upon these factors.
Once you realise this, it is easy to understand why rehabilitation as currently practised largely fails.
In the UK last year we had over 900 staff leave the prison service with less than one year of service, compare this figure to 2010 and that same figure is just 60. Over those years the loss of experience has been dramatic, and the reasons why experienced staff leave and inexperienced staff decline to continue have not been addressed
In addition the number of staff who operate the prison units has been reduced by one third, and the staff who operate prison employment and rehabilitation programs have been reduced by 50%.
It may seem amazing that the amount of rehabilitation courses throughput has remained the same, and the number of working hours by prisoners has increased, but this is entirely due to the drive to achieve numbers and targets - which means fewer staff have to supervise much larger numbers of prisoners. Result is that courses are badly compromised and work supervision is hardly controlled - in effect these parts of the prison system are not actually doing their work, they are just ensuring that prisoners are not killing each other, and little else.
Once released from prison, UK offenders are then controlled by probation services - that organisation was privatised against the advice from pretty much everyone involved in the criminal justice system by the then politician in charge of Justice Chris Grayling.
The result privatisation was that a huge percentage of experienced staff left, staffing levels were cut, caseloads increase to the point where they cannot be managed and former offenders are now frequently completely unsupervised. This failure is so dramatic that probation services have been taken back into public sector at a cost of over £500 million. The damage has been done it will take around 10 years to regain the staff and experience.
All this is extremely obvious, yet government ministers did all this for one reason - to save money, and increased offending is the predictable result. It is so obvious that one tends to imagine that politicians were quite prepared to accept the current rise in crime and ineffective criminal rehabilitation as a viable cost to those savings.
All this is a very long and roundabout way of pointing out the real truth - rehabilitation costs lots of money but in the short term it costs rather more than incarceration and building more prison places.
Politicians tend to campaign on short term issues, and for the current government this has worked since it is in office - the issue of effective rehabilitation does come down to money, and in turn this comes down to the electorate deciding their priorities - if you want less crime and effective rehabilitation then you need to vote for those who will fund it. Rehabilitation is not a short term investment, it generally takes many years for offenders to give up on crime and if rehabilitation is ever likely to be effective it will need extensive strands working in the community to supervise, house, train and employ former offenders, along with all the detox and mental health and social services to support an effective program.
So, answer for all of you - if you want to reduce offending, think about the words of the politicians before you vote.
In many ways the “liberal” position on imprisonment has dominated the dialogue so much that it’s hard to remember that the criminal justice system as constituted since time immemorial back to the early ancient societies, has more of a purpose than just “deterrence, rehabilitation or revenge.” Revenge often being seen as a “negative” and immoral aspect of the system.
Let’s take a quick step back to the legal system in general. Let’s say I get liquored up tonight and go driving my car, and I plow into your front yard, I slam into your car parked in your driveway, then drunkenly try to escape by backing up and slam into your house repeatedly, doing major damage to your property.
Obviously I have committed a number of criminal acts. But let’s not consider them at all right now. Inevitably there will be either some insurance process or civil trial between me and you. The reason for this is I have done more than commit a crime against your property, I have also committed a civil tort. If the damage to your property was $35,000, it’s highly reasonable to presume that in either an insurance settlement or civil lawsuit, I would be found liable for that $35,000 in damage.
No one considers this “revenge”, no one thinks it’s being done to “deter” future torts. Instead everyone recognizes it is simply “equitable” that I make recompense for the bad thing I did, in scale to the amount of bad I did, and in this case it is very easy to assess a monetary value to the scale of what I did since you can provide evidence as to how much money it cost to replace and repair the destroyed/damaged property.
It is widely understood in such cases it is the role of the court system to see equitable results. This has another name: justice. Equitable results and justice are not revenge, they are about “setting things right” in a civilized society, a society where impartial arbiters determine how it is to be set right, as opposed to a lynch mob or a familial feud.
When someone commits a serious violent crime, for example a murder, there must be considerations beyond the trope of deterrence, rehabilitation and “vengeance.” Justice or equitable outcome must be considered. A murderer has stolen a person’s life from them, and justice demands something from them that is at least “to scale” for that act.
Historically it was a lot simpler. Murder all but universally carried the death penalty, it was executed very quickly after the trial. Most smaller crimes carried corporal punishment or humiliation (flogging, being put in the stocks etc), or monetary fines. Imprisonment was not used for any long term purpose but was more for temporary holding. We’ve largely recognized in modern society that the death penalty is simply too flawed to really administer appropriately in conjunction with modern concepts of right/wrong, and legal fairness. With that avenue shut down, a long prison sentence is about the only tool we have to insure someone who has stolen another person’s life has to make some serious amend for that.
I think the default should be murderers never see freedom again, and that’s not that revolutionary an opinion. But I’m also in favor of some universal parole system where every offender at least has a chance at parole, so that in exceptional circumstances some lenience can be shown. But I would expect for most murders that would not ever happen.
Most criminals in general do eventually get released, and for that reason rehabilitation is very important, and should be prioritized more. But we need to stop the narrative that the criminal justice system can only exist to rehabilitate or deter, courts can render justice, and justice demands things sometimes, like lengthy prison sentences, to result in an equitable outcome for a seriously immoral action.
There are nations that agree with you. Norway, I believe, has a 21 year maximum sentencing limit. Other northern European countries are similar. They believe that prison is for rehabilitation and not punishment.
The United States penal system, much like that of numerous other nations, is very punitive in nature. An oft used phrase is, “The punishment must equal the crime.” That of course can be quite subjective and, if determined by victims or the court of public opinion, can be very punitive indeed.
We have a history of “over punishing” people, giving them sentences that are decades in length for non-violent crimes and crimes committed as juveniles. In my mind, our system needs a big overhaul.
A rule can just be a rule. It can be as simple to use as a menu at a restaurant. You don’t get half your money back because you got full have way through your meal.
The question is - Why do some nations have a revenge culture - because this then feeds into why we have a lower priority in rehabilitation.
We the public respond readily to revenge politics, and our politicians play on that. Non-one wants to lose votes by being seen as ‘soft on crime’.
In many cases such societies also see the post release social disadvantage as part of the punishment, after all why should a person with a criminal history prosper upon release?
This means that offenders do find it hard to gain work of any sort and especially work that might be seen as rewarding, why should an offender get life privileges that non-offenders would envy.
It’s a bi-polar reaction to crime and rehab - we would like offenders to cease committing further crime but we do no seem to want them to make anything of themselves, its a kind of dog in a manger attitude - If my life is crap and I do not commit crime then why should former offenders have opportunities ? but until we can make the connection between rehabilitation and a path to a fulfilling crime free life, well then, re-offending will remain an ongoing problem.
How is it possible to determine if an offender has reformed? Years ago prison staff would write up reports on prisoners, not just the specialist offending behavior programs managers but also those with whom prisoners spent large chunks of their time, such as unit staff, workshop supervisors and trainers.
Those sorts of staff would spend most of their working time with the prisoner work party so you would imagine that more use would be made of this resource, however this is no longer the case.
Nowadays those opinions are rarely sought and the huge increase in the size of prisoner work parties makes it impossible to develop the sorts of interpersonal relationships that would allow a meaningful assessment.
Even if this were to be reinstated it would not work until work party sizes are reduced and suitable staff recruited - unfortunately the detrimental changes to pay and conditions mean that those sorts of staff cannot be recruited or retained, and the prison estate simply has to take what they can get to plug the holes.
So it still comes down to money, it may appear to be more efficient to have fewer staff supervising more prisoners, however the quality of training, assessment and control all inevitably decline - which means reoffending rises, hence the same old faces keep returning to prison.
It is all a false economy designed to make politicians look good but without actually taking responsibility, and you vote for them. You should always be wary of the revenge ideology of right wing politicians because it leads to increases in crime and you are its victims.