There are violent and non-violent crimes. Violent crimes should be punished by jail time (to segregate them from normal citizens), monitoring, restitution, reformation. Non-violent crimes should, at most, garner a fine.
What is a non-violent crime? Drug use, Drug Sales, Prostitution, Drunk Driving (Remember that you can be arrested and jailed for just being behind the wheel and drunk even if you didn’t hurt anyone), Gambling without the sanction of the state, etc. etc. etc. We have all sorts of crimes that are created by the nanny state to protect us from ourselves even when we aren’t hurting anyone else.
A Violent crime should be defined as: 1) Having a victim, and 2) That victim having suffered an injury.
We spend far too much money and effort locking people up for: 1) Doing things that we don’t like (whether anyone gets hurt or not), Thinking things we don’t like (I can cite examples), or not following OUR morals. We need to get out of the business of enforcing OUR morals on others.
Show me a victim before you start locking people up.
very possibly because we coddle them. you do even 1/4 of what most felons (def: traitor) do in other countries, and you get permanently removed from the gene pool.
Many states elect their judges to state and local benches. It would be fair to assume that some of these elected judges make decisions influenced to one degree or another by the ‘help’ they received in getting their position and the help they hope to get when they run again.The judges send people to jails/prisons where civil punishment combines with the crimes inmates visit on each other.There is ‘scum’ everywhere in the judicial system. From the truly evil/bad criminal, to the corrupt cop, the ambitious prosecutor, the lazy/incompetent defense attorney, corrupt staff in the system who might divert or even destroy evidence,and the judge himself. Then there is the prison with too many corrupt and underpaid guards and wardens who may also not be the best man for the job. Sometimes, the nicest person in the courtroom is the hapless person arrested.Fortunately, MOST people are good. For instance, many police will give warnings when they can instead of arresting or writing a ticket.There are also non violent crimes that do great harm financially and/or emotionally to massive numbers of people.Mandatory sentencing guidelines are wrong for one important reason. It forces judges to ignore mitigating circumstances or even a person’s exemplary behavior and contributions to community in their past. There are more reasons to use guidelines instead of mandatory sentences, but that will suffice.The cost of maintaining our overcrowded prisons is in the billions, and that doesn’t include other costs.Evil needs to be punished, but most criminals aren’t really evil. They just made a really bad judgement call.We need to be better at separating the two and sentencing the people with wisdom, not vindictiveness.Respectfully,C.
“Why does America have higher rates of scum than all other countries?”
It’s a trickle down thing, Doc – scum trickles down from our upper levels of government, thus contaminating our general population, where it tends to spread.
I doubt there is an effective prophylactic for this, except to deal with the infection at its source.
Anything is routine when you have 350,000,000 people.
if 0.001% of the population commits any crime you will see a conviction 350 days of the year (assuming each is on a separate day) as a result understanding while it may seem rampant can be as little as 1/1000 cases.
Thanks to media latching on to anything that seems unfair you will generally get the impression it is much larger
Mephistopheles over 10 years ago
DaSharkie – Let’s break that down a little.
There are violent and non-violent crimes. Violent crimes should be punished by jail time (to segregate them from normal citizens), monitoring, restitution, reformation. Non-violent crimes should, at most, garner a fine.
What is a non-violent crime? Drug use, Drug Sales, Prostitution, Drunk Driving (Remember that you can be arrested and jailed for just being behind the wheel and drunk even if you didn’t hurt anyone), Gambling without the sanction of the state, etc. etc. etc. We have all sorts of crimes that are created by the nanny state to protect us from ourselves even when we aren’t hurting anyone else.
A Violent crime should be defined as: 1) Having a victim, and 2) That victim having suffered an injury.
We spend far too much money and effort locking people up for: 1) Doing things that we don’t like (whether anyone gets hurt or not), Thinking things we don’t like (I can cite examples), or not following OUR morals. We need to get out of the business of enforcing OUR morals on others.
Show me a victim before you start locking people up.
MaNoah over 10 years ago
very possibly because we coddle them. you do even 1/4 of what most felons (def: traitor) do in other countries, and you get permanently removed from the gene pool.
chazandru over 10 years ago
Many states elect their judges to state and local benches. It would be fair to assume that some of these elected judges make decisions influenced to one degree or another by the ‘help’ they received in getting their position and the help they hope to get when they run again.The judges send people to jails/prisons where civil punishment combines with the crimes inmates visit on each other.There is ‘scum’ everywhere in the judicial system. From the truly evil/bad criminal, to the corrupt cop, the ambitious prosecutor, the lazy/incompetent defense attorney, corrupt staff in the system who might divert or even destroy evidence,and the judge himself. Then there is the prison with too many corrupt and underpaid guards and wardens who may also not be the best man for the job. Sometimes, the nicest person in the courtroom is the hapless person arrested.Fortunately, MOST people are good. For instance, many police will give warnings when they can instead of arresting or writing a ticket.There are also non violent crimes that do great harm financially and/or emotionally to massive numbers of people.Mandatory sentencing guidelines are wrong for one important reason. It forces judges to ignore mitigating circumstances or even a person’s exemplary behavior and contributions to community in their past. There are more reasons to use guidelines instead of mandatory sentences, but that will suffice.The cost of maintaining our overcrowded prisons is in the billions, and that doesn’t include other costs.Evil needs to be punished, but most criminals aren’t really evil. They just made a really bad judgement call.We need to be better at separating the two and sentencing the people with wisdom, not vindictiveness.Respectfully,C.
cjr53 over 10 years ago
Charges have to filed; the opportunity for the rich to avoid court and a conviction leading to a minimum sentence.
Hawthorne over 10 years ago
“Why does America have higher rates of scum than all other countries?”
It’s a trickle down thing, Doc – scum trickles down from our upper levels of government, thus contaminating our general population, where it tends to spread.
I doubt there is an effective prophylactic for this, except to deal with the infection at its source.
Quipss over 10 years ago
Anything is routine when you have 350,000,000 people.
if 0.001% of the population commits any crime you will see a conviction 350 days of the year (assuming each is on a separate day) as a result understanding while it may seem rampant can be as little as 1/1000 cases.
Thanks to media latching on to anything that seems unfair you will generally get the impression it is much larger