I will also add, the side effects of the stupid US war on drugs are possibly even larger than the original problem itself. This gave the Heroin trade an incredible boost in Western Europe, and you then start to think about the supply chain, and where that leads - straight back to Afghanistan, the local warlords and ultimately to the rise of the Taliban which was a part reaction against the local disorder caused by the increased power of local tribes, you have to wonder why we have not made more of a stink about it.
If you really wanted to cut the power of these terrorists, you need to cut off their money supply, that means cutting the Heroin trade, and that means a sensible and practical way to handle drug users, mere incarceration has not worked, and continues not to work.
Back in the 1980’s Heroin was almost unheard of drug in prison, marajauna was the issue, but we had a mandatory drug testing policy applied as part of the stupi war on drugs policy. What happened was the prisoners were being caught with marijauna in them - which can stay in the system for 30 days and were being given added time, so they switched to heroin, which stays in there for maybe 3 days at most and a much lower chance of being tested positive - so they came in with no habit, and came out with an addiction.
We can argue in the UK that sentencing policy has increased our prison population dramatically, but thise changes were prompted by the increase in petty crime caused by addicts stealing to support their habits. The stupid US ‘war on drugs’ policy has, in effect, funded eastern warlords, increased our prison population from around 50k to around 90k.This is something mirrored in the US prison population.
This is what happens with simplistic naiive policies on crime, especially drug crime policies are enacted by crowd pleasing politicians, and now we have the OP with his ‘build more prisons’ mantra.
You want to reduce crime, then takeaway the profit from the main driving force which is high priced illegal addictive drugs. You also reduce the numbers in prison, and save money.
The US and indeed the entire world economy is supposed to be geared toward industrial production and profit( when it seems to me to be about power for its own sake), the drugs business is just another industry, and we can easily create a recession in it, by undercutting the dealers.
In the UK we have sentenced criminals to longer and longer terms over the last 15 years, and far from deterring crime, our population in prison has exploded.
We have had a crime reduction, this is true, but that can be readily attributed to the fact that demographis have changed, and the number of individuals in the main offending age range has reduced.
The links you cite do not bear any slight resemblance whatsoever with the reality I find every day working in prisons. If deterrance worked, they why is our population increasing? By nearly 80% in 10 years. Those links read almost like a party political broadcast, even though they purport to be from independant academic research.
For every learned journal that asserts prison has a significant deterrant effect, and increased prison terms reinforce that effect, there are plenty more that assert the opposite, so I will go by my practical experience of prison work, which shows the effect is very limited indeed, and incredibly poor value for money. Other options are far better when correctly targetted such as training, mental health services, drug rehab, education and skills training in real world workplaces - not in prison workshops.
I can also point to many many studies to back this up, from the Prison Research trust which has carried out work proving that those who do not engage in education and training are 3 times more likely to reoffend than those who do, through to reports by the UK Social Exclusion Unit, through to Ofsted - which is our eduction and training inspectorate and also reported in jan 2009 the very same thing.
The trouble with prisons, and crime, is that everyonE has an opinion, but Joe Public is largely ignorant, and biased, being full of hatred and revenge, instead of genuine working experience in the field. They are prepared to vote in the most ludicrous politician who can sound tough, instead of taking the time and trouble to inform themselves properly. Joe Public is a lazy Schmoe, wants others to sort out their problems, looks for easy answers, so now we have the stupid ‘war on drugs’ which had mutliplied the problems with heroin massively, and bumped up the price of drugs, which goes on to fuel the violence in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and threaten India’s streets from time to time.
Who would give the slightest cuss about those countries if they were just throwing rocks at each other? They have the money to be organised and buy weaponry, the money which we provide.
Crime in the UK was most likely on the rise because of immigration. This coupled with longer prison sentences will of course increase the prison population impressively.
By which, I’m not utilizing any sort of racist reasoning. Mass immigration is usually of the poor. Regardless of what skin color or religion they may be, they or their children are much more likely to commit crime because there isn’t enough jobs for so much cheap labor and/or because they feel like they won’t have an equal chance to succeed as the locals, and so a disproportionate number turn to crime.
When the Irish came to the US, there was a mass of Irish gangsters for a few generations. When the Italians came to the US, there was a mass of Italian gangsters for a few generations. With the influx of Muslims into Europe, Europe as a whole has had a large increase in crime. Stronger methods of deterring that crime simply means that there is less crime than there would be, but not necessarily that crime won’t rise.
Since immigration only began in ~1995 and it is mostly the second generation who go bad, problems in the UK are just now starting.
The figures I have seen suggest that around 80% of crime is committed by 20% of offenders, and these are the repeat offenders.
You may have seen stories of ‘blip’ boys, whose presence leads to a statisical spike in certain areas.
We have a Prolific Offender program, PPP, which adresses this, these people can be on short prison terms but very very long licence release terms, meaNing that if they get even a public complaint then they can be returned to prison without formality.
Being placed on the PPP program is something that I often hear prisoners dread, and yet most of their time is actually spent outside prison, its just the ease with which they can be recalled back into prison. So we get the benefit of deterrance, without them being in jail and costing £40k per year.
Immigrants as you state are often closely tied in with poverty, and hence crime, and one easy market is that of drugs - and we see this is extremely common among these groups of offenders, mainly Pakistanis. I’d reckon that of first and second generation immigrants, drug supply, importion etc probaly accounts for the vast majority of these people who are on prison terms of 5 years or more.
These people fear deportation more than any prison term and its when they get close to the end of their sentence that they get really worried, again, its not prison that concerns them all that much.
In many ways this is a bit of a cop out, as we have many Polish immigrants whose crime rates seem to be lower than the average, mainly because they already have been recruited in their home towns for specific work over here in the UK.
As you can see from my posts, there are a variety of methods, for differant offenders in differant situations that provide deterrance and ‘just locking them up’ is actually not all that useful, it is hugely expensive and almost all prisoners will be released back into society at some point, so training and education are absolutley essential, but no matter what happens, prisons have a lot of restrictions which mean they can never provide genuine work based training within their fences.
I know that prisons will trumpet out how they provide work for prisoners, but this is simply meeting government targets, from personal experience I can tell you that not one prisoner in the UK actually works anything more than a 25 hour week, and not one of them is every pushed in their working capacity above 20% of that of the worker in the same type of work outside prison.
It will never ever be possible to properly replicate real work in prisons, due to the security concerns and chronic under investment and cost cutting. It makes much more sense to put prisoners on licence and make their freedom contingent on their holding down a job, lose the job and lose the freedom. It is cheaper, it produces wealth for both the prisoner and the economy, but it will not work for many because it needs to be very tightly controlled and tied to other issues such as housing.
We can do education in prisons well, and we can do cognitive development programs along with mental health support, we can provide some skills training, but this needs to be augmented by linking this to real work, which must be compulsory to the prisoners on release, and yes, it needs a Big Brother approach to these individuals and I feel that for those, who have damaged society so much with their behaviour, that this would be entirely justified.
In effect offenders should feel that prison is not a fixed site with walls and razor wire, prison should mean that no matter where you go, and what you do, you are accountable and observable, and you serve your time in the community, one breach and you come back to jail, do noy pass go, do not collect £200 and start around the board, all over and over again until you get it right.
I like the PPP program better then the electronic monitoring programs we have.
In the PPP Program does the town give the offenders money for a place to live and a job? The problem in my area is they have trouble finding a place to live long term. You can’t go out on a bracelet unless you have a fixed address, phone connection and in some cases a Breathalyzer hooked up. When your bracelet buzzes you have ten minutes to call back or your busted. You also need to give a BAC if you are so ordered. If you fail either you go back to jail.
I misnamed the frequent offender program, its actually called Imprisonment for Public Protection.
This was originally intended for sex offenders, especially the repeat ones, and those who had refused to take part in any offending behaviour programs.
IIRC it was due to the outcry over the killers of a schoolboy, the ringleader of a peaedophile gang was sent down for a number of years, but when his time was up he admitted that he might reoffend upon release. This caused outrage and police had to literally keep a 24 hour watch on him.His name is Sidney Cooke, an evil bastard if ever there was one.
The system was changed so that offenders who were deemed to remain a persistant risk to the public could not be released, if ever, until they had satisfied the parole boards and other parties that the offender was safe.
At first this was intended for very serious offenders, but now it also covers frequent offenders. It means that they can be awarded a term of 5 years but they will only be released when they have completed the work that has been deemed necessary to reduce their risk of reoffending, which mans the days of the prisoner who refuses to do any courses have mostly gone, as they will be retained in prison until such time as they do cooperate.
When they are released, they are not, as far as I am aware, provided with employment as a matter of course, but their very long licence terms - minimum of 10 years, means they can be recalled, even for driving without insurance on their cars, or some other relatively minor offence. These prisoner may only serve 2 or 3 years and are released, but they are on a lead for the next 10, after 10 years this is reviewed and the licence can be extended or dropped altogether as the parole board deems appropriate.
I have often heard offenders talk with some serious concern about this type of sentence, it really does worry them and that has to be a good thing.
I am not a huge fan of the electronic monitoring, partly because I don’t feel it is adequately resourced, but mainly because prisoners do not fear it, and if they don’t fear it, then it is no deterrant.
It is only suitable in my view for infrequent offenders, on lower end crimes who have a job, and so its a way of keeping them under control whilst keeping them out of prison, and maintaining their employment - and this does not cover all that many offenders in total - so it would probably not be all that economic.Cynical person that I am, I believe the only reason for the wider remit is simply to justify the cost.
There have been quite a few notable failures involving some very serious offences where transponder wearers have removed them, and should have then been picked up, but the police have not been notified for weeks by the private agencies that are supposed to handle these events.
I have looked at the various articles on this and this seems to be a concern, even though the latest generation of tags have the potential to be GPS tracked.
http://www.theengineer.co.uk/opinion/keeping-tags-on-offenders-is-no-crime/279523.article
1993 called. They want their “build more prisons” argument back.
Seriously, though, while I agree with the sentiment of your OP, the facts have shown that the threat of incarceration does nothing to prevent crime. It is a cultural/economical/moral issue that revolves around a perpetual underclass in this country that just can’t live by the same rules that society has agreed upon. As long as this class of people keeps breeding, you can’t build prisons fast enough to house them all. And my broad brush covers all racial boundaries.
Which is why a birth control shot for welfare may be a good idea.
Because “on welfare” is a synonym for “violent criminal”, right? :rolleyes: They’re all born evil. An evil subspecies.
Criminals aren’t orcs. They aren’t all related, some separate group you can sterilize.
Congratulations!
No one stated that anyone is born evil. No one stated that criminals are a subspecies. Your post is entirely irrelevant to anything.
Nonsense. What, exactly do you think was being implied by recommending mass sterilization of the poor as a solution for crime? By a poster who as I recall has a history of claiming that some races are innately superior to others, at that.
I have no idea what Chen019’s motivations may be. You may be right that he/she is a racist. Personally, I wouldn’t judge you as a particularly great judge of personality when it comes to anyone who proposes anything you disagree with in the slightest, but that’s not the question here either.
The point is that he made a suggestion for cutting crime. Calling him a racist, earned or no, has nothing to do with the merit of his suggestion. If you don’t think it would work, you’re perfectly free to say why it wouldn’t work. If you think that it’s immoral, you’re perfectly free to explain why it’s immoral. Both of these options commit no logical fallacy and Chen019 still ends looking like an amoral bastard (or not, depending on how well you argue).
But, in this case you chose instead to commit a fallacy. No matter what, a fallacious argument is well…fallacious. I might agree with you 100% that forced sterilization or even optional-yet-government-sponsored sterilization is immoral. But even then I’d still have to say that nothing you said had anything to do with the topic at hand. You’re simply attacking the debater, not the topic, and introducing irrelevant information from elsewhere–possibly your own imagination–and trying to make it the topic of discussion. Neither of those helps in any way.
This post is a week old, so I’ll make this a mod note instead of a warning: this is completely out of bounds for Great Debates or any forum here except The BBQ Pit. Unless you’re in the Pit, you’re not allowed to insult other posters and you’re not allowed to tell them you’re putting them on your ignore list. Don’t do this again.
The extreme danger of the ideas of Chen09 must not be underestimated.
This is disguised racism, and I would rather not Godwinise this thread, but consider the practical reality.
Imagine if such a policy were implemented, who would get to determine who are the ‘undesirables’ and what would be the criteria?
Birth control is not a compulsory procedure, and to force it on to any person without consent would be an assault, to do this in the name of good order is monstrous.
The quote the it might be ‘a good idea’ conveniently ignores the economic realities of disadvantaged group, whose populations tend to be derived from certain ethnic backgrounds.
Even if this were not the case, we are effectively looking at a slow from of genocide, where people are categorised according to income and those people eliminated, instead of educated, trained and have equal opportunities.
What would the purported mechanism be? We spend a large amount of money to ‘encourage’ long term contraception? I don’t think so, the right wing factions would want to push and push the boundaries beyond the ethical.
One way they would do it would be to give the poor the option, welfare and compulsory contraception, or no welfare at all. - welfception.
Hey it would play great with the tax cutters wouldn’t it, because you force people off welfare, or you get rid of the ‘subspecies’, either way you think the problem is being eliminated and tax dollars saved.
No, this is another of those simplistic stupid easy answers - reality check here, there will always be poor people, poor people are more likely to be involved in street crime, whilst rich criminals get involved in city crime. When you look at financial mismanagements and financial theft, which has cost the most money?
BCCI, Lehman, Enron, Northern Rock, Savings and Loans,Milken, and there are plenty more, we are talking about astronomical sums of money here, millions of lives blighted, but I note there is no-one proposing to force contraception on these criminals, yet they have probably done more to keep poor people poor than any number of street robberies.
By sterilizing poor people. How is that not a claim that being a criminal is genetic?
How about legalise all drug use and for all other serious first time offenders sterilisation, second time offenders euthanasia ?
Or how about punishment to fit the crime ?
People who let their dogs foul public places have to pick up dog crap, arsonists are burnt alive, rapists are raped to death by a specially designed raping machine.
Gang Banger and others who commit crimes to look tough are made to wear powder puff pink and blue satin panties with TuTus in public while on probation, and have to be called no nuts.
Or serious criminals are put to work assisting the army by clearing minefields under fire.
And now I expect some bleeding heart liberals to get all upset and offended by my very reasonable proposals.
How about if I just use the opportunity to point out casdave’s interesting and useful contributions to the thread?
This is an area that’s always interested me for personal reasons and it’s just so rare to hear those working in prison-related fields talk with such clarity, compassion and pragmatism about the issues and potential resolutions. Thanks.
Send them all to Australia as revenge for Rupert Murdoch.
I’m a bleeding heart liberal, and I LOVE your proposals!