That is hilarious. May I use it?
Um, yes, but it’s not mine. It’s T. Herman Zweibel, of The Onion fame.
I really should attribute that…
The recent decrease in crime is more likely due to the aging population in this country than to stiff sentences, as most crimes (for which people are caught, at least) are committed by younger people.
Also the loss of community and family responsibilty is greatly exacerbated in inner-city communities where so many of the family members are being imprisoned. What about our responsibilty to those communities? If we remove the ones responsible for providing for and rearing those children who live there, we should not be surprised if they grow up to rebel against the society which left them to their own devices.
A better way to actually reduce crime would be to provide some hope of a better way of life for the entire community. If people have a hope of bettering their lot in some other way they are less likely to break the law. The local availabilty of good jobs and the training for those jobs can make a difference.
Just the fact that I don’t think imprisonment is the best way to deal with all crime does not mean that I believe it should go unpunished, and I believe Stoidela would agree with me here. It seems to me that community service and restitution are better ways to remind petty criminals of their responsibility to the community than imprisonment, as well as being more sensible economically. As well as work-release perhaps there ought to be a parenting-release program, where if those who are parents must be incarcerated, say for non-compliance with a drug treatment program, it would only be on the weekend, when they are more likely to backslide and get into trouble, but they could be there during the week to help take care of and remain connected with their children. The rest of the time maybe they could be electronically monitored.
And you believe correctly.
stoid
Late weighing in here (saw this yesterday, but didn’t have a chance).
I’ve worked in corrections since 1977. Have known thousands of offenders. Many go back to prison, many others don’t. I’ve seen trends come and go, will put out some of my observations:
Back in 1977 when I first started, these were in effect: drug treatment (residential) programs were mandatory for those convicted of a drug crime, folks who ‘walked away’ from correctional settings were generally only picked up while committing another crime (there wasn’t anyone around to look for them)and generally weren’t prosecuted for the escape. Most were mandated to go through a residnetial community phase post prison, pre parole. By 1991, they’d changed the mandatory drug treatment to recommended assessment and possible treatment, generally group counseling sessions once a week (there were other stages in between as well). The ‘walk away’ issue, well, they started actively looking for them in about 1987 or so, prosecuting them for being missing for 24 hours or more. Currently, folks face prosecution for being missing for as little a 10 minutes. Currently there are few correctional residential programs, most operate much like a jail work release program, many are sent home on electronic monitoring systems instead. While these are cheaper, they do not afford the opportunity to have staff observe behavior and deal with issues before they become problems.
No politician will have problems getting re-elected if they appear to be “tough on crime”, and by correlation, any attempt to decrease penalities that don’t seem to work will be used by opponents as being “soft on crime”. MI had one of the nations toughest “drug lifer” laws on the books. It now is under intense scrutiny, we’ve discovered it wasn’t a good idea.
the so called “three strike” legislations, have actually been on the books in some form or another for about 20 years. It does, however take a while after implimentation of a policy to make any attempts at gauging their results. Generally, because in changes in political control, we don’t see those effects while the policy is in effect.
It is my personal belief that many people, who consider themselves to be ‘fine upstanding citizens’ have done something which could have gotten them convicted of a crime. Examples for the State of MI include: Failure to note and pay ‘use tax’ (similar to sales tax) on purchases made through mail order and internet sources, use of prescription medicine in a way other than originally prescribed, being with some one who has committed a felony, etc.
Examples of people I’ve known who were convicted of felonies: 1. College chum who was with her rooomate, roomate shoplifted, both were convicted. 2. Friend who’s nephew asked “will you give my friend a ride to the airport?” - the ‘friend’ was under surveilance and was a courier for drugs. The uncle had no other connection with the crime, certainly didn’t profit from it. 3. Man who came home to find his girlfriend in bed with another guy. He left in a rage, when he came back to get his stuff, she’d changed the locks. He did 8 years in prison for breaking into his apartment.
There is no way to prevent all crime from happening. Even if we locked up everyone who ever committed a crime for the rest of their life, somebody will commit a ‘new’ offense. If we did lock 'em all up and through away the key, we’d soon have a great proportion of our population hired as guards for the rest of them. You also need to count in the costs of the care of the children of the convicted - who will raise them?
In addition, our system of jurisprudence has long been based on a concept of justice - that is we convict people for what they have done, not what they might do in the future (‘attempted crimes’ have already been attempted, threatening an action in many cases is illegal in it’s own right). And, we have a tierd system so that rehabilitation is possible, we seem pretty conculsively to want to punish the serial killer in a higher degree than the guy who steals a slice of pizza. While we might abhor both actions, we do in fact, treat them differently in the CJ system.
Back to the OP - why are there so many in prison? On a factual basis, it has been correctly pointed out that tho’ we’ve been incarcerating lots of drug offenders, this does NOT completely explain the raise in percentage.
At least in MI: Crime has gone down. New criminal incarcerations have consistently gone down. However, currently incarcerated numbers have gone up, and continue to do so. Why? because we’re keeping them in longer.
With indeterminate sentences, you’d have some guy sentenced to 3 - 5 years in prison, he’d typically do about 1 1/2 years inside, another 6 months to a year in a corection center, and two years parole, for a total of 4 out of the 5 years. Currently, I don’t see anyone getting out at their first eligible release date (and haven’t for about 6 years -this is anecdotal info from running a program for offenders who’ve been released) They’ll do about 3 to 3 1/2 years inside then, another 1 - 1/2 years parole. While proponents of “truth in sentencing” laws may applaud this, there are some other realities involved.
Parole is an excellent way to achieve both the rehabilitation of the criminal, and the safety of society. The person is back in the real world, with it’s issues and choices, but has structure and some one keeping track of them. If you shorten the length of time on parole, you have a more difficult time determining if the person is going to succeed, and putting things in place so they will.
At 30,000 per year per inmate, it is in our best interest to reserve such a price tag for those people who would wreck serious harm.
Therein is the basic problem. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. It, however, is not an exact science to any degree. While it makes sense to keep John Wayne Gacy’s incarcerated for the rest of their life, regardless of the cost, it’s not necessarily true of the average criminal.
While people like the scum who killed Polly Klaus in CA get a lot of publicity, there’s also at the same time, thousands of other people who have been released and not re-offended.
To those who think the price tag of keeping 'em all locked up isn’t too high, I sugest you do a little bit of research and find out exactly how much of your current tax dollar goes to corrections, and find out the current number of people on parole or probation in your state. Multiply that number by $30,000 and add it to your corrections budget. Keep in mind that the number will likely go up vs. down, at least for the foreseeable future (folks in prison median age roughly in their 20’s/30/s, add 40 years minimum for their additional years of life, then add the number of new criminals per year, subtracting only those who die while incarcerated - it’ll take several years for the number to start leveling off).
>> The recent decrease in crime is more likely due to the aging population in this country than to stiff sentences, as most crimes (for which people are caught, at least) are committed by younger people.
That is plain nonsense. Are you telling me the American population has aged so much in 5 or 8 years? How much exactly have they aged in that time?
It is quite proven that a few people commit most of the crimes. Putting those people away lowers the crime rate because they are not capable of committing more crimes while they are locked up.
>> Also the loss of community and family responsibilty is greatly exacerbated in inner-city communities where so many of the family members are being imprisoned. What about our responsibilty to those communities? If we remove the ones responsible for providing for and rearing those children who live there, we should not be surprised if they grow up to rebel against the society which left them to their own devices.
I guess they are in prison because they used their freedom the wrong way? Why did they choose to do that instead of fulfilling their responsibilities to their families and their children? our responsibilities to them? When I see someone struggling to do their best I am very inclined to lend them a helping hand but when I see someone breaking into my house I think jail is the right place for him.
Give me a break. Asian kids whose parents are thousand of miles away and who have much less and have to work harder for it, they come here, they work and study hard, and they succeed. There is no excuse for being a criminal. If those inner city kids were taught by their parents better values they’d be studying and making a better future for themselves. But their parents won’t teach them right from wrong and if outsiders try to do it they’ll be called racist and worse.
>> A better way to actually reduce crime would be to provide some hope of a better way of life for the entire community. If people have a hope of bettering their lot in some other way they are less likely to break the law. The local availabilty of good jobs and the training for those jobs can make a difference.
The jobs and the training are there but if a kid won’t get an education he cannot get the job and no one can force him to get an education except a good family and good parenting. But everytime you preach these values to those people they call you all sorts of things.
Where inner city people are failing for generations, immigrants are succeeding. They come to this country with less and hardly spek the language but after a generation or two they have made it. Look at the vietnames and Chinese. Asians as a group have the highest income in the USA, higher than whites (Washington Post, March 4, 2000, page A3).
It is because they have one thing inner city kids don’t have: shame and a sense of responsibility. So give me a break. The American system is based on one principle: no one has any say in your life until you mess up, then you’re off to jail. You do the crime, you do the time. Oh? You don’t like it in Prison? Then don’t do the crime. Simplistic? yes. That’s why I like it. I have NO sympathy for criminals.
Those who differ can go and live in the inner city and try to help those people so unjustly treated by society. Come back and talk to me after you’ve been mugged and raped and burglarized and your car has been stolen for the second time. maybe you will have chenged your tune by then.
I’d agree to some degree with you concerning female offenders(who are rarely seriously violent offenders) since they are generally the glue that holds these families and, ultimately, communities together but on the caveat that taking offenders out of the community, that they may have done little to contribute to, may actually be the best option there is.
Once an offender has found it is easier and faster to make big money through crime they tend to find it difficult to struggle in a low paid job trying to make ends meet and the reality is that they will have to start at a low level before they can improve their prospects.The temptation is always there to go back to the old ways when the pressure is on.
The availability of good jobs is not likely to be an option in high crime areas, kind of chicken and egg, unfortunately.
Having grown up in a high crime background myself, the first thing I did was move out soonest.
This is what most do if they have the chance, which creates a community of left-behinds who do not have the wherewithall in terms of character to better themselves.
And one of the best ways to become irredeemable is to be locked up for a long time.
I think that this business about disgarding people is very deeply ingrained in the American mythos. The black and white nature of the frontier justice ideal, the inherent social and economic racism, and the refusal to validate social interdependance all come together on the crime issue.
The solution to crime is found in arming the general public to disasterous effect, the solution to poverty is to demand that those with the fewest resources pull themselves up by the bootstraps, and the solution to race issues is to incarcerate a grossly disproportionate number of non-white impoverished males. The greater the problem becomes, the more the American public retreats into its self-constructed mythos, and the more difficult it becomes to identify solutions and then empower efforts toward effective solutions. Insight and balance become lost, and slogans become accepted as analysis. Dissenters are met with personal, cultural and racial derision, and further attempts to reinforce the American mythos are made. In light of this, I leave you with:
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Crafter_Man *
**
So there you have it. I and the rest of the world are robtic slaves. Gotta love the creation and defence of the American mythos.
If those inner city kids were taught by their parents better values they’d be studying and making a better future for themselves. But their parents won’t teach them right from wrong and if outsiders try to do it they’ll be called racist and worse.
How can their parents teach them anything if they are not there? Why is incarceration of the parent going to teach a child more than having a parent in a drug rehabilitation program and performing community service? How could the parent have learned better values to teach the child if their parent was not there?
The jobs and the training are there but if a kid won’t get an education he cannot get the job and no one can force him to get an education except a good family and good parenting
Good jobs are largely unavailable in these communities, as are good schools. The only people these kids see making any money are the drug dealers, so they think this is the only way out. And again, how would you provide them with good parenting by depriving them of the parents they have?
When I spoke of our responsibility, I said to the community, not to the offenders. How can you see whether they are trying to do their best or not, if you are not involved in their community?
Those who differ can go and live in the inner city and try to help those people so unjustly treated by society. Come back and talk to me after you’ve been mugged and raped and burglarized and your car has been stolen for the second time. maybe you will have chenged your tune by then
I have lived in a city, though I suppose Denver is not as bad as many other places. When I was there, I could not afford to buy a car, and no one broke into my house, I suppose because I had nothing worth stealing, and no one offered to rape me, though I did have a couple of peepers. I had to move out to get a good job, and I cannot afford to move back and try to help. I might be able to do that when I retire, I think I would like to volunteer for a literacy program, maybe. The fact that I am white might hamper me in efforts to help because reverse racism does exist, but that is no reason not to try.
Muggings and rapings are violent crimes, and no one is arguing that those people who commit those crimes should not be locked up. Not every person who smokes a little dope or even crack is guilty of anything like this, at least not before they have been sent to prison and mixed in with violent offenders.
Why would you prefer to have the person who stole your car or broke into your house be locked up rather than have them make restitution for it?
Just as a point of statistics; the chances that any single individual would have all these things happen to them is vanishingly small, to the point of near impossibility. The chances that any individual not living in an impoverished neighborhood would have even two of these things happen to them is even smaller.
The paranoia in this country about crime is pretty silly, actually. The vast majority of violent crime is committed in very small neighborhoods by people who know each other or are at least neighbors.
The crime that the rest of us experience most often is property crime. Our cars are stolen and our houses are broken into and our VCRs are nabbed. Bummer, but hardly worth throwing people in the trash over.
stoid
>> How can their parents teach them anything if they are not there?
Well, when they were there they were obviously not teaching them anyway so … Or does setting an example as a criminal count as teaching?
You make it sound like the responsibility for being in jail is with us. it is with him. HE committed the crime. My parents were there to teach me because they did not commit crimes. Those kids are not learning anything good whether their parents are there or not.
I repeat, why is it that others under the same or worse circumstances remain law-abiding and succeed in life?
>> the chances that any single individual would have all these things happen to them is vanishingly small, to the point of near impossibility
Well, I knew a woman here in DC who was the type that believed criminals were good people and it was all society’s fault etc. She decided to live in the inner city and in a couple of years she was indeed mugged a couple of times, burglarized once and had her car stolen. Oops, she wasn’t raped. I guess she didn’t wait long enough before giving up her ideals.
I am not arguing against a sensible policy. I believe many crimes should be decriminalized (prostitution for instance). But I think the whole rehabilitation thing has failed and criminals are just exploiting the system. I’m with the get tough crowd but obviously for bad crimes. I am not talking of speeding or running a red light.
Right, I’m confused. OP says “Too many people in jail” - which seems true, at least to the extent that no-one (with the possible exception of tubagirl and her nephew’s father) has argued that too few people are in jail.
Crafter_man then posts his belief that:
- If someone breaks a law, we must punish him or her.
- If you don’t like a law, work to get it changed or remove.
Which also seems fair - if you’re going to have laws, best to enforce them. If they don’t work, change or remove them. No-one seems to contend this point.
In many ways these two viewpoints seem complimentary. If there are too many people in jail, then the use of CM’s point 2 would seem to be the solution. So why the hell does there then seem to be terminal amounts of fallout, bickering and accusations of name calling (such as “nazi” and “pinko hippy”, which in fact no-one actually called anyone). If anyone could clear this up for me, I’d be grateful.
Stoid: we have some folks that are in charge of defining whether or not a punishments is “cruel & unusual”- we sometimes call them the SCOTUS. And they disagree with you. Life imprisonment for a single burglary is constitutional. Maybe not morally right, maybe YOU don’t like it, but unless you sit on a High Court, or can find a decision from some-one who does, do not casually throw that tern around, OK?
Jenkins: I served on the Santa Clara Civil Grand Jury, and we considered drug rehabilitation as opposed to jail. This has since been voted in. It works.
Still, even tho the drug laws do admit a good number into our prisons, they cannot be the sole cause. The cause for this must be the socio-economic system of the USA, which is completely unique. Other nations have strict, or even worse drug laws. Other nations have tougher sentancing. Thus, it muct be the one thing that is unique- the social & economic structure of this Country. Ie, it causes dissatisfaction, which causes crimes- which cause criminals in prisons. Besides rehablitaion for some drug offenders, letting criminals go is going to do nothing but cause even more crime- as oddly enuf- that is what criminals do. You must decrease disatisfaction. The way many other nations do that is force the dwntrodden to be satisfied “with their lot”. I do not think we want this. The other way is to improve the economy- more jobs, less crime. This is what has lowered the crime rate for the last 8 years or so.
>> The way many other nations do that is force the dwntrodden to be satisfied “with their lot”.
Can you please explain to me how you can “force” anyone, much less the downtrodden, to be satisfied with their lot? Do they use drugs for this? Any concrete countries you can mention as examples?
I do not think you can force anyone to be satisfied. Social inequalities in Europe are much smaller than in the USA, let’s start with that. So, comparatively speaking, there are more “downtrodden” in the US.
While I agree with most of your post, I think this statement is silly. You cannot force anyone to be happy. I think it is the culture that makes you more accepting of your circumstances.
It depends on your personal priorities in your values but I do not believe having a culture of bitching and whining and complaining (like American culture is lately) is anything positive. I think a culture that promotes work as a means to achieve a higher standard of living and which promotes a healthy acceptance of your situation in life.
If you teach people that the world is unfair and that they have been stolen what was rightfully theirs, then you get a culture of violence and of people who are unhappy. I cannot see anything positive in this.
I particularly dislike the kind of people who love to complain about how bad everything is in America. The only thing they achieve is to make people unhappy. Most of the world has much less and are happier. In my priorities of life, being happy is way above having money. It seems (some) Americans value money more than happiness.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Crafter_Man *
**
And what do you think Families Against Mandatory Minimums
(my link, remember?) is trying to do?
(Also, I’ve got to say “3. You buy Beatle records”? WTF? Owning a Beatle record stopped being a sign of leftwing/counterculture belief, I dunno, thirty years ago? Still upset about them cancelling Mitch Miller are we?)
Stoidela
Humble experience with these schemes, innovative as they are, is that candidates for special prison/probation programs are usually carefully screened before they take part.
These schemes are often somebody’s baby and they don’t want them to fail hence the care in selecting offenders but when they are brought into wider use after succesful pilots they run into problems.
Generally prison officers and staff can usually recognise which inmates will be back and which ones won’t and often the ones that are unlikely candidates for reoffending are put through these programs which makes the program look good.
The latest one at the moment is called Reasoning and Rehabilitation and it is supposed to challenge the logic processes of the inmate.
It has a low recidivism rate but if you were to look at those inmates selected for the course you’d find that they would have had a low rate of reoffending anyway even if they had not taken part.
The course originated in Canada, its designer has since been convicted of child sex abuse and is currently in jail - not a UL - true.
Sailor
Much as I agree with some of your points about collectively consenting to some restriction of freedom in a social/family sense I would like to explain the following…
In criminal activity lifespan terms this is indeed what has happened.
Typically, offending behaviour starts in the late pre-teens and usually the severity of offences increases.
This will usually involve incarceration at some point during which time the offender is not able to offend.
Taking the case of the persistant offender this will reduce his/her offending career by anything from a couple of years upwards to ten years or so in bits.
Offenders usually reduce their offending behaviour patterns once they get much beyond 30 so this would yield an offending career of maybe 15-25 years minus time in prison thus a total of around 5-15 years of offending.
If you then move the whole plot onwards by your 5 - 8 years you can see how significant that might be, this is anything up to half an offending career.
Add to that that the birth rate is falling significantly and the change in demographics is amplified.
It took a while for me to grasp the sheer scale of what is happening in the US corrections system , at the moment in the UK we have a little over 60k in prison but if we were to go pro-rata with the US this would be in excess of 400k, some 6 or 7 times higher.
The cost to the US is much greater than might at first be obvious.
In financial terms this represents a loss to the labour markets and hence increases the cost of available labour.
There is a huge loss of tax revenues through federal and state taxes, plus a massive burden on the US taxpayer.
In order to compete on world markets the US has then to increase the productivety of its available workforce.
No surprise that the US has much higher productivity than most of Europe, no surprise that many US workers feel stressed with psychiatric referrals increasing.
It appears from an outsiders view that there are fewer and fewer US citizens who in turn must produce more and more.
There must come a time, if it isn’t already here, when this will affect the US economy as other nations are able to reduce unit costs, employing a higher percentage of their own workforce.
The British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in his major speech for the start of the next parliamentary session, this week, that as unemployment continues to fall the only way to increase GDP will be to increase productivity to levels similar to the US.
I would put the case that the huge and rising prisoner population in the US could be an economic millstone.
The social effects are equally likely to be damaging.If your long term prisoner population continuse to rise at this rate there will, quite literally, be a shortage of men and a corresponding increase in the number of prison ‘widows’.
This might be very nice for those who men not incarcerated but will cause huge misery to either fatherless children or childless women.
Th only parallel I can think of is when Britain lost a goodly part of a generation on the fields of the Somme and hundreds of thousands of women were left without their menfolk and main wage earners.
[alarmist - but it gets the messge across}
Locking offenders up and throwing away the key is a quick fix but building more prisons and incarcerating even more Americans may well lead to the decline of the US.
I think people are probably more satisfied with their lot if other people don’t flaunt too much more or less. I think jealousy is human nature. I am a doctor and not a strong believer in socialism, but at times it seems like the raison d’etre of everything in the States is buying something to be better off then the next guy. The less you have, the more galling this must be. The less you have, the harder you work, the less things change… must be very frustrating.
sailor - what you fail to realize is that a lot of those parents that arent there are out working… and it is obvious by your post you havent seen a poor, minority dominated school… inner-city kids get an inferior education… it is hard, damn hard to get out of the hood and make it… hard work and natural ability are not enough… it takes a great deal of luck… growing up like that the hard working, honest people you see on a daily basis are poor and barely getting by… the only people you see with money are the dealers … the people you hear about making it out are either balling (sports) or the few that are lucky enough to get scholarships… its easy to good when you got something… when your making it … when your getting by… try struggling day after day… pay check to pay check… living in some shit hole, not knowing were your next meal is coming from or how youre going to make rent… before you start judging people… once i was told something to the effect of “… theres a lotta things i just wont do… but i will…” … so next time you feel like getting up on your soap box and condemning a lot of people… remember that until you step into a man’s shoes… see what he sees and feel what he feels… you dont know him… and thus you cant judge him…
Bobby_Drake2, it is just too easy to find excuses. What you give me are excuses. The fact is that while blacks in the inner city say they can’t make it because they don’t have the means, immigrants come to this country with nothing, not even speaking the language, they face the same or worse difficulties and in the great majority they succeed. The only difference between those two groups is not anything outside of them, it is inside of them, it is their mentality and their culture. So, don’t tell me it can’t be done when many people are doing it. I have no sympathy for criminals whatever their excuse may be.
Casdave, I think you misinterpret my quote about aging. I said sentences were stiffer and crime had gone down in the last few years. Someone said crime had gone down due to aging, not due to stiff penalties. Yes, individuals have aged and that makes many less prone to crime. But the population has not aged. While some guys get older and less prone to crime, some kids have grown into youths who would be taking their place as criminals. The fact that crime has diminished shows stiffer penalties have worked in diminishing crime because whoever is of “criminal age” today is definitely committing fewer crimes. (Unless you can prove to me there was a dramatic drop in natality 20 years ago).
In other words, to an individual 5 or 8 years may change his character quite a bit but the composition of the population is not going to change drastically over such a short period of time.
I think the key is to teach children responsibility as early as possible. The government can’t do this, it has to be done by parents. Many parents were never taught these lessons in the 1st place and have no idea how to teach them to their children. I say this makes them incompetant as parents.
I posted in some other thread my idea for holding parents/guardians responsible for their children. I think that parents should be charged with a crime when their minor child commits a crime. If they cannot control their child, they should be required to ask for help. This would be fairly complicated to put into effect. You would have to define very carefully what crime the parent/guardian was guilty of when a minor child committed a criminal act. You would have to define how much responsibility a parent had for child that they could not control and had therefore given up custody of (I would think they would owe some sort of monetary child support at the least). There are other difficult issues, but I think they are all solveable. Is there some sort of intermediate step we could take in this direction? I can’t see anyone actually getting this kind of system put into place in toto, but maybe we can get there in baby steps.