Regardless of what the report said, what you said is that “if you… leave [the stipulation] at only ‘non-violent’ then the numbers [of] people sitting in prison cells for 5-7 years for basically nothing more than being addicts”
That is what you said. Never mind the report. You said that if the criterion is only “only ‘non-violent’” then you are dealing with people who are “basically nothing more than being addicts.”
I reject that entirely. A burglar who breaks into a woman’s bedroom in the middle of the night is not in any sense guilty of “nothing more than being addict”.
They are also only 25% of your set of “offenders [that] have… only ‘non-violent’ [histories]” and so are "sitting in prison… for basically nothing more than being addicts.
As such they are hardly representative of the population you described.
75% of your offenders that have only ‘non-violent’ histories *were *contributing to the costs to society that I mentioned.
I said I support legalization so obviously I see benefits to it. I agree that it would greatly reduce both street crime and organized crime - two major benefits. I also view it as a personal liberty issue even if it didn’t have any other benefits. But I’m also pointing out that there would be costs and we’d be foolish to ignore those.
My post simply included that for completeness but the argument can be made by only the first condition: no past criminal history, no violence, no other crime associated with the time they are serving in prison. That number (in 1994) was 12,727. Make of it what you will in regard to the impact on courts, prison population, and the lives of the addicts who comprise that number.
The rest of your argument is nitpicking one part of a larger point that has already soundly defeated your original position on this question, and I’m not going to play anymore.
The report stands by itself as an argument (made by our own justice system) to stop mandatory prison sentencing for what they defined to be small time drug offenders. That definition does not include any of the examples you are arguing about now. It is irrelevant what you think about robbers breaking into teenage girls rooms, when the argument is that there were over 12 thousand prisoners not guilty of anything like that, as defined by the very justice system that put them away for it.
Which would be fantastic if drug users were all able to support themselves and their habit through legitimate work. However the very nature of hard drugs means that many (probably most) users can not do so for the course of their addiction. As such the taxes are simply being paid for by welfare dollars from the taxpayer. So it’s still a major net drain on the economy.
Which could be a good thing, or a bad thing.
Don’t get me wrong here, if I were Emperor I would decriminalise all drugs tomorrow. However I also would not tolerate drug use an excuse for being on welfare or for committing crimes, since doing so wouldn’t actually address the problem of drugs as a drain on society.
But if the taxes on heroin were high enough to cover all the furture costs of heroin usage , including both medical and unemployment. And if people were able to afford to buy heroin from legitimate income sources, then by all means it should be legal. It costs me nothing so it’s none of my business.
However I am skeptical that this would be possible. It is possible with nicotine because people with nicotine addiction are no less productive for, on average, 30 years before they start to chew up the costs of the additional taxes they paid over that period.
In contrast, people with addiction to most hard drugs start to become measurably less productive much faster. Because of this, I suspect that the cost of a hit of heroin would be higher under a legal, user pays system than it is at the moment.
But IMO this shouldn’t stop us form legalising it. It just means that we need to be very careful with any assumptions that it would reduce crime or in any other way decrease the cost to society.
That’s why it could only be in an imaginary example. In the real world the damage to society with free access to all drugs would be catastrophic because some of their lethal effects could happen in mere minutes after the store opened, without any hope that optional counseling and rehab would help curb their effects.
Some drugs should probably be legalized or at least controlled in a non criminal way, but either way long, mandatory prison sentences for drug use and possession do nothing to curb addiction it just creates a cycle of addicts becoming repeat offender and getting longer and longer sentences each time. It does contribute to prison overpopulation and setting those addicts back further in their lives, reducing their chances of long term recovery even more.
This has been widely recognized for a long time, and generally penalties have made big distinctions between “users” and “dealers” of drugs. But with mandatory sentencing, 3 strikes type rules, ‘zero tolerance laws’, etc. imposed during the 1980s, small time users can and still do get slapped with ridiculously long prison sentences that don’t at all match the crime.
Nonetheless you chose not to argue it on that condition. You chose to argue it on the condition of “only non-violent”. And that argument has now been completely demolished.
Because you can’t respond.
Far from nitpicking, it adresses the core of your argument and demolishes it entirely.
No. it doesn’t. I have just thoroughly demolished the argument you tried to make from it. But thanks for playing.
Except drugs are only so expensive because they are illegal. I don’t agree heroin would be more expensive if it were truly legal - as in poppy fields all over Virginia instead of or in addition to Tobacco, and giant multinational corporations competing to sell heroin packs at every 7-11. It would be dirt cheap. Even with a huge tax levied on them, the base cost of the chemicals and plants involved in the production of most drugs is negligible, nothing. I think most would be much less expensive.
And as long as its an imaginary world there would be money set aside from the taxes imposed on the sales to provide programs for addicts who couldn’t afford the drugs. They would get a free supply but only under some condition like counseling or work-for-drugs programs or somesuch.
You made the incorrect and irrelevant point that there is no way to measure ‘low level’ drug crimes as they impact the prison population because they are all basically intertwined with other crimes and criminal behavior.
I showed you a study that did, right from the source - the jailers, demonstrate there are tens of thousands of addicts in prison who A) committed no additional crime beyond the drug offense, B) had no previous criminal history, and C) no violence was associated with their drug offense. Period. That number is all you need to worry your pretty little head about in terms of how it defeated your incorrect argument. The rest is your typical nitpicking. It’s not that I couldn’t continue responding to it all night, it’s just that I don’t want to.
You then went on to claim that non-violent offenders who break into women;s rooms in the middle of the night are guilty of nothing more than being addicts
A claim that I have since proven to be utter horseshit. Multiple times.
Yet you still argue that to be the case.
Sad really. That’s your entire argument, and it has been totally trashed.
You are the only person in this thread who has used that idiotic analogy.
No, I don’t. You created the strawman. Now you’re choosing to nitpick about it as if I would be stupid enough to make such an analogy. The readers of this thread can evaluate the positions for what they are worth with no further input needed from me. Nite, Blake
You don’t read too damn well, do you? Here are the relevant sections
from the citation establsihing the non-violent to no-prior-record charateristics
of the prisoners, who constitute a lot more than your “8% at most” of
all Federal prisoners:
(emphasis added)
US drug sentencing laws are a complete travesty and would be even
if no other crimes were ever committed. Unfortunately there are 100s
of thousands of truly violent and predatory criminals who might be out
of commission much longer if so many resources were not wasted on
these low-level drug offenders.
Unfortunately the yahoo element of society, well represented in this
thread by our Mr. Blake, has both major parties so intimidated that there
are no prospects for much-needed sentencing reform.
**PrettyVacant ** --you seem to have been arguing this out inside your own head for quite some time.
Problem with that is, you always win those arguments, because you always agree with yourself.
Most US murders take place inside our 6 or 7 largest cities, more that 2/3s, if I remember properly, & far out of proprtion to the size of those cities. America has had a problem administering our biggest cities since the Revolution. Is our problem an Urban one, rather than a minoprity issue?
Further, many of those in prison could better be described as “immigrants” (legal or not). And disproportionate numbers of immigrants in prison populations seems to exist worldwide. Is our problem an acclimitization problem, rather than a minority issue?
Finally PrettyVacant, it is always important to remember that becoming shriller does not make you righter.
Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor - Can I encourage you to re-read your post (above) and after every single sentence consider how appropriate a response beginning ‘You patronising turd’ seems?
The developing debate is interesting although, initially, I was intersted in why the USA has 10 times more crimianals than comparably affluent European countries…
[QUOTE=Starving Artist]
the popular embrace and defense of gangsta/hip-hop culture
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That affects the crime rate? Okay, so if we look at crime rates from 1989 to 1999, we see that they…
[QUOTE=gonzomax]
Over 100,000 prisoners work for corporation making about 20 cents an hour. Somebody is getting super cheap labor and a free building to work in.
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And you know, I really don’t care of they enjoy it (considering what it’s better than for them), the United States government should not be buying products manufactured by prisoners, or b y anyone earning less than the minimum wage, or by anyone who can only purchase from a company store, or who is not free to take their skills to a competing operation. And what can they do with those skills? They can get employment in manufacturing, later. Assuming they can get themselves incarcerated again. When you incentivize imprisoning people, you get more prisoners, despite the fact that crime rates have been falling for almost two decades.
The problem here is that the US has a law that private companies can’t buy anything made with prisoner labor (US or any other nation’s prisoners). That leaves only State and Federal governments to buy prison produced products. If they don’t, there’s no work for the prisoners, and they would be paid nothing. So what do you want? Prisoners with no work, private companies buying the stuff and getting the benefits of cheap labor, or the gov’t doing the buying? Which do you think is least likely to be exploiting them?
