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If he fails at that or has a 2nd offense (theft or violence, not unpaid parking tickets) - House arrest, 1 year + mandatory counseling.
After THAT... dunno. Ship him out to some work farm in the boonies digging turnips and shoveling manure until he can convince a shrink he's reformed.
Or I guess we could just break his hand with a hammer and be done with it.
If you were the victim of a crime, would you prefer
A) an 80% chance the criminal is caught and, if so, serves 2 years
B) a 20% chance the criminal is caught and, if so, serves 8 years
I would have more peace of mind, and more sense of justice done (on average) in system A. System B prevents the criminal from re-offending for longer, but at a cost of many more victims before the system has even one chance at rehabilitation. Conservatives are always happy to point out how many crimes the accused surely committed before he got hauled in for the present one -- and they're often right.
If this is really the (numerically oversimplified) choice, i.e. the world we live in with limited resources and you can't just dodge the question with "lock 'em all up and throw away the key," what would you choose?
Apart from that, I also think Crosby is probably right that option A deters crime more effectively; that's basic behavioral psychology (theory based on animal experiments, I have no idea how one could experimentally test this with humans outside of Texas).
I wouldn't characterize his position as "soft on crime". To vastly oversimplify (cue Will Carroll), I'd characterize it as "blame 'society' instead of the criminal."
Essentially, it's everyone's fault except for the person whose fault it is.
Perhaps busy noting the fact that in reality healthcare and insurance has been proven over and again to be unviable as a market.
I understand the theory, but there's nothing in Crosby's posts here that suggests he wants a huge increase in the number of police. Unless there's a policeman on every corner and a security camera every three feet, including in private residences and businesses, we will never have anything close to "certainty of consequence." It's fantasy.
Regardless, Crosby still hasn't offered a single word of explanation as to how or why criminals could serve less time but somehow be "rehabilitated" and re-enter society as "regular citizens." His whole "plan" is little more than wishcasting hidden under several layers of flowery talk.
I'm intrigued by this second option, does Joe get to monkey around with his car's brakes first?
You're right. You're oversimplifying.
I think this person should be arrested and charged with petty theft. Assuming that this is a first-time offender, and the harm is precisely as you describe (being deprived of one's wallet for five minutes and resisting arrest), the appropriate solution would be a fine and/or some community service. He might have to spend the night in jail because of the holiday weekend awaiting a hearing. (Which is probably what really happened, since petty thieves rarely serve serious prison time for first offenses.)
Sorry, but that's a bunch of nonsense. Crosby has explicitly said that it's "shameful" to lock people up.
I don't recall saying that at all, but if I did, it was in the context of locking people up to inflict suffering rather that to serve a different goal.
I know that I've said at least ten times in this thread that I'm not opposed to prison in general, but opposed to how often we imprison people, for what crimes we imprison people, and for how long we imprison people.
He plainly wants far fewer people locked up, to the point he's against the imprisonment of Bernard Madoff (#349).
I don't see how Madoff spending time in a cell does anyone a bit of good, but if you want to say he's there as an effective deterrent or because he's unrepentant and likely to commit the same crimes in the future, then I'd agree that prison is appropriate.
I'm not going to take a strong stand on Madoff because he's a serial offender that did an awful lot of damage, but I'm not going to duck the question either: I think the appropriate remedy for Madoff's behavior is primarily a civil one and not a criminal one.
Yeah, Crosby seems to just want to do with non-violent, "non-serial" criminals something along the lines that parents/teachers do when they call "Timeout" for kids: make them go and sit in a corner for a few minutes, then re-release them into the classroom.
I'm pretty much exhausted at this point. I've said enough times, in plain enough English, that I'm not recommending that people face no consequences for the harm that they cause. There is a broad range of penalties between "nothing" and "prison," and the middle ground is a more appropriate, more cost-effective, and more humane solution than jumping right to prison as the solution.
I don't see how making a pickpocket pay a fine and spend 25 or 50 hours picking up garbage on the side of the highway is some sort of free ride. I also don't see how putting a murderer in prison for fifteen years rather than thirty years is some sort of free ride either (even if he's not raped or infected with Hepatitis C).
You know, I wonder why the opponents of this never describe themselves as "hard-on-crime"?
Sorry, couldn't resist.
I made that point about 100 posts ago, and they just keep them coming...
You keep saying this, but he's not. Prior to being arrested, he had a clean record, to my knowledge.
Yes, he committed multiple offenses. So does the guy who holds up a liquor store.
Then it would be fair to say that you are "soft on crime." Why people like veer bender are taking issue with this characterization of your position is a mystery.
See, you are soft on crime! Even 'veer bender' suggested 100 hours or maybe even 1,000 hours for this guy.
To the extent you're "exhausted," it must be from using thousands of words to say very little. 300 comments later, I'm still waiting for your miraculous system for rehabilitating criminals quicker and cheaper than the current system. Your whole "plan" boils down to, Let's lock up fewer people for less time, and — trust me! — there will be less crime and lower recidivism rates. But "Trust me" is not a plan.
Is Madoff's whole deal a single crime against many people or many crimes each individually against one person?
I don't see how Madoff NOT spending time in jail does anyone (aside from Bernie himself and the Mrs) a bit of good.
I mean he's the greatest thief of all time, sure many of his victims were rich greedy SOBs, but not all were, and some were wiped out totally. A system that looks at Bernie and says, "well gee, since you didn't PHYSICALLY harm anyone, you get to go free, just don't do that again," is a "system" that is going to be treated with contempt by anyone and everyone.
He had a clean record because prior to being arrested he had not been caught, but despite that "clean record" he'd been in fact, stealing for literally decades.
I just want to go on record as saying that I think Madoff should do meaningful prison time, although I agree with Crosbybird on a lot of other things. Crimes with real victims should be punished with prison time, especially when prison time is a meaningful deterrent.
What does that have to do with my freedom not to buy health insurance?
Untrammeled sexual freedom and expression has been proven over and over again to lead to teen pregnancy, illegitimacy, family break up, STDs, and a whole host of negative consequences. Does that mean the government should be regulating peoples' sex lives?
Likewise, your argument would say that if we could come up with a really efficient police state that had fewer negative consequences, banning drugs, alcohol, smoking, hell even fatty foods, would be OK.
You start with talk of freedom, but end up with "greater good" justifications, that are the same as any group calling for the naked exercise of power to attain their preferred ends.
No you're not. You've never even remotely engaged this conversation with any sort of curiosity or intellectual honesty. All you've ever hoped to accomplish here was to keep repeating yourself and your statements of blind assumption until everyone else got tired of listening to you yabber incessantly. You're not only an idiot, you're also a liar.
Right. Hasn't this been an unspoken part of the criminal justice system for a long time? Only a fraction of crimes are solved, and it's embarrassingly small for a lot of property crimes. Just as a total guess, I'd be shocked if more than 5 percent of first-time criminal defendants were arrested after committing their first crime (and for the pedants here, I'm not talking about jaywalking or spitting on the sidewalk).
Less time per prisoner means more money per prisoner. I don't think you're seriously suggesting that our rehabilitation efforts are already providing the maximum possible benefit or could not benefit from additional funding. Or that our prisons don't have at least some solvable problems that contribute to recidivism.
There's a point of diminishing returns with a prison sentence (or really any sort of deterrent). Twenty years in prison is unlikely to make a person more reformed than ten years in prison. The additional ten years has a very real cost that needs to be justified. If it's "this guy is too dangerous to be allowed to run loose in society; he's likely to kill someone" then keep him in prison until he's no longer such a risk. But that sort of assessment can't possibly be made on a general level: there's no "average murderer" or "X% confidence interval" that we can rely on to set a sentence of appropriate length as a general rule.
I understand the theory, but there's nothing in Crosby's posts here that suggests he wants a huge increase in the number of police. Unless there's a policeman on every corner and a security camera every three feet, including in private residences and businesses, we will never have anything close to "certainty of consequence."
I don't have a problem with an increased police presence where appropriate. We'd probably need a lot fewer police to satisfy this aim, though, seeing as a huge portion of the crime would disappear when we stopped making victimless acts criminal.
We don't need to turn into a police state to have a higher success rate in crime prevention.
And I'll say once again: I am completely fine with Madoff serving prison time as an actual deterrent. I'm fine with imprisoning him if you think it's likely that he'll commit or encourage others to commit more crime.
I'm not fine with putting him in prison because he's a bad man that needs to be locked in a cage. His victims are no more whole with him in a cell.
You get angrier and angrier with every comment. I guess it's hard being The Smartest Man Alive and having everyone laugh at you and your goofy shtick. I guess that's why the moderators don't ban you for your constant ad hominem attacks.
Anyway, I reject the entire premise of your comment. To the extent I've "repeated myself," it's to try to coax answers out of Crosby. He keeps making grandiose claims about how his "system" would be better, but he offers no details other than saying "more like Western Europe." He then doubled down on the inanity by coming out against the imprisonment of Madoff, which was laughable.
Also, if it's not too much trouble, if you could point out an example of me being a "liar" here, that would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.
About the same that it has to do with your freedom not to buy national security. Some #### just has to get paid for if the society is going to function. If there is a reasonably efficient means to have that something get paid for via a free market, then society should do all it can to use the free market mechanism to deliver those services or goods. But if the nature of a good is such that its delivery completely undermines and distorts market mechanisms, such as national security and health insurance, then you have to find another way to deliver those services.
The mandate is just a different packaging for a tax. Part of the social contract for the society you live in is to pay that tax.
I'd be shocked if it were even as high as 5%.
I pointed out an example of you lying in the post where I noted the fact that you're a liar. Intellectual dishonesty of your sort is the example.
Wow, not only will we be locking up fewer criminals for less time, but now we'll also need fewer police?
You really should publish a detailed version of this system somewhere. Literally every society on the planet would want to implement it.
The problem is that taxes are for action (you're earning money; buying something; etc.), not for inaction (not purchasing health insurance).
And once you talk about amorphous "social contracts," then *your* social contract is no better than Snapper's. Perhaps as "part of the social contract for the society you live in," Snapper thinks you shouldn't have sex outside of marriage or marry someone of the same gender.
You don't have any principles, Sam; just preferences.
Now who's the liar? There were no such examples in #418. At his most specific, Crosby has proposed to save money by not imprisoning drug users, but that doesn't count as "rehabilitation." Crosby has offered no details whatsoever to explain how the average rapist could be better assessed and more quickly rehabilitated under his system than under the current one.
Anybody else notice how, in the Supreme Court arguments, the govt lawyers were unable (or unwilling) to say exactly where the limit of govt power would be, if the mandate remains? Alito at least gave them the opportunity by asking a direct question, but there was no real answer.
I'm becoming convinced that if they uphold this thing, the next step is "Now everybody has to pay for Internet service, because Internet commerce is new and different and everybody will eventually participate, no matter whether they currently want or expect to. Some #### just has to get paid for if the society is going to function, and that's interstate commerce, so Congress can make you do that or pay a penalty to the IRS which is totally not a tax."
EDIT: clarity, mostly.
I don't take issue with calling CB's position "soft on crime" as the term is usually used. I'd say it obviously is. I do take issue with the general characterization of his position made by others here, though.
Even 'veer bender' suggested 100 hours or maybe even 1,000 hours for this guy.
Nope, wasn't me, you've got the wrong softie.
Fwiw, I do think Madoff should do jail time. Like CB, I don't think he should do it for vengeance; unlike CB, I'm willing to just assume that the other reasons for prison are sufficient to just come out and say "lock him up" for this guy.
My mistake. I thought #401 was yours.
I haven't been beating up on Crosby's position just for sport; I've just been waiting for an explanation that never comes. It's easy to say that criminals can be rehabilitated better and faster, just like it's easy to say that 2-year-olds shouldn't have cancer or that kids shouldn't go to bed hungry. The devil is in the details, and Crosby hasn't given any.
After he releases all of the non-violent drug users, just how will Crosby's system be able to rehabilitate even violent criminals, and then look into their hearts and minds to make risk assessments that are more accurate than those of our present-day system? He seems absolutely convinced that a not-insignificant number of murderers and rapists can be rehabilitated in "10 years instead of 20," but offers not a word of explanation.
About the same that it has to do with your freedom not to buy national security. Some #### just has to get paid for if the society is going to function. If there is a reasonably efficient means to have that something get paid for via a free market, then society should do all it can to use the free market mechanism to deliver those services or goods. But if the nature of a good is such that its delivery completely undermines and distorts market mechanisms, such as national security and health insurance, then you have to find another way to deliver those services.
Except that's not true at all as regards to healthcare.
National Defense, police, courts are necessary for the functioning of a civil society. Healthcare is not. Civilization existed for ~5000 years when a doctor was more likely to kill you than cure you (any time prior to about 1900).
If we eliminated all health insurance tomorrow, and limited all healthcare to no more than what the average person could pay out of pocket or saving (say max $20K per annum) society would go on just fine. We'd still have antibiotics, and most drugs except the most advanced and all general surgery.
Say we'd return to 1960 levels of medical care. More people would die, but no so many that society would be impaired at all. Life expectancy would go from 80 to 70, at the very worst.
Nothing catastrophic would happen.
You don't have any principles, Sam; just preferences.
Exactly Ray. Liberalism or leftism, or whatever version of Libertarianism Sam espouses is just "I want complete freedom from Gov't restriction on actions I think are good, but massive Gov't power to curtail actions I think are bad, or enforce other actions I think are good".
Say what you want about my Distributism/Leo XIII Catholicism, but at least it's a ethos.
The details are very case-specific. Give me a particular criminal, with a particular set of circumstances (like you did with the pickpocket above) and I'll give you more specific information, but eventually I'm going to hit a wall because I'm not a trained psychologist or therapist and I'm not looking at a detailed case file. How do we know when to release a person from a rehab center or a mental institution? We trust the judgment of professionals in the field. I'm suggesting that we give these criminals behavioral therapy and we trust the judgment of those therapists. A politician or judge or lawyer is in no position to evaluate the psyche of an individual, let alone to come up with a general rule of about how long a person needs to be rehabilitated and apply that rule unilaterally to all prisoners.
Right now, the "rehabilitative therapy" consists primarily of isolation from normal society, with a fairly good chance of abusive conditions (overcrowding, insufficient medical care, assault). When an arbitrarily long sentence, driven by society's desire to make sure there's enough suffering, is complete, we release the prisoner into society in a condition that all but guarantees a lifetime of being a second-class citizen (unable to vote, closed out of an overwhelming percentage of jobs, with practically no resources).
We generally don't rehabilitate criminals in our current system. It's not our goal, and so it is not our result. Making it the goal, and measuring the success of the system based on that goal, rather than on how unpleasant or long the imprisonment is, cannot help but be an improvement. You're framing it as "better rehabilitation." I'm framing it as "legitimate rehabilitation, as opposed to lip service." I don't think our system is even trying, and I don't very many people care for our system to try. Prisoners are unsympathetic. We joke about prison rape, and often consider it a bit of poetic justice.
It all comes down to this: I believe that crime is primarily a social and psychological disorder, and should be treated as such. There are some individuals that simply aren't and won't ever be fit to be normal members of society because they are irredeemably evil, but those individuals represent an overwhelmingly small percentage of the current prison population. The focus of our system should be on identifying which few people can't be redeemed and isolating them, while working to help the others who can rejoin society. That won't happen until the focus shifts from punishment to rehabilitation.
How do you know sentences are "arbitrarily long"? The recidivism rate is sky-high, and societies have tried shorter sentences only to suffer adverse consequences.
I don't believe the U.S. criminal justice system is motivated by "suffering" at all. It seems motivated by a desire to identify uncivilized people and separate them from society for longer and longer periods based on the severity of their crimes and/or the number of crimes committed.
How does society un-ring this bell? Should rapists and bank robbers have their criminal histories wiped clean at the end of their sentence, so unknowing people will hire them? You not only want to give criminals a second and third (and tenth?) chance, but you apparently want to force all of society to pretend it's the person's first chance. That's beyond reckless.
I've barely even been in this thread!
Oh wait. Prison sentence? Never mind.
Is this a problem?
I don't see it as a problem either. Nobody can have principles anyway. You can't have multiple ideals that come first and foremost before all else. Eventually those principles are going to come into conflict, and you will have to chose one over the other. People who claim to have principles are lying - most likely to themselves.
Well, sentences (state and federal) are certainly arbitrary. They've never been based on anything but legislative whim.
I'm claiming that sentences are arbitrarily long because they are arbitrary (there's nothing inherent about X years that is properly suited to a particular crime) and because they are long.
The recidivism rate is sky-high, and societies have tried shorter sentences only to suffer adverse consequences.
And yet first-world nations with shorter sentences somehow have less of a crime problem than we do. Give me those consequences.
I don't believe the U.S. criminal justice system is motivated by "suffering" at all.
Then we disagree. I think there's a very clear vengeful streak in this country that is obvious in our criminal justice system.
How does society un-ring this bell? Should rapists and bank robbers have their criminal histories wiped clean at the end of their sentence, so unknowing people will hire them? You not only want to give criminals a second and third (and tenth?) chance, but you apparently want to force all of society to pretend it's the person's first chance.
Rapists are not the same as bank robbers, and shouldn't be treated similarly. And car thieves still differently.
Since I've said several times that prison (and even long prison) terms are appropriate for serial offenders, you're really arguing in bad faith to say "and tenth." I've been giving you an overwhelming benefit of the doubt as you repeatedly distort my position, but I'm not going to be able to do that if you're this blatant about it. I'm comfortable saying that pretty much all non-violent criminals deserve a second chance given a showing of good faith.
Nor did I ever say that society needs to pretend that it's anyone's first chance. There's something between "don't hire this guy because ten years ago he stole a car and he can never be a normal part of society again" and "ignore all of a person's bad prior acts as part of the employment process."
Prison sentences are arbitrary in the same sense that having the bases 90 feet apart is arbitrary, but unlike the length of baseball's basepaths, criminal statutes are constantly being reviewed and revised. When society feels a punishment is too strict or too lenient, the laws are changed.
As for sentences being "long," you still haven't produced a scintilla of evidence to suggest that shorter prison sentences would yield the same or better results. Who are all these miracle workers who are going to rehabilitate criminals in half the time and yield a lower recidivism rate?
You expect us to believe that people commit fewer and/or less severe crimes when the punishments for those crimes are less severe? It's one thing to say Country X has a lower crime rate than the U.S., but to claim the lower crime rate is a result of the more lenient penalties seems specious.
You don't believe the current system gives second chances to non-violent offenders? Reading your comments, it's as if first-time shoplifters get sentenced to five years in Sing Sing. I bet the average non-violent criminal is arrested five or six times before serving a day in a state prison. First- and second-timers get adjournment in contemplation of dismissal, or time served (i.e., the night in jail after the arrest). Third- and fourth-timers might get community service, or probation, or maybe a few weeks or months in the local jail. I'm constantly reading about people who've been arrested dozens of times.
What is that "something"? You can't half hire someone. A thief released from prison today needs a job tomorrow. Unless the criminal record is expunged and/or it becomes illegal to ask about prior arrests or convictions, such people are always going to have a hard time finding well-paid work (i.e., work that makes criminality less appealing).
Likewise. Of note though. I spent some of my youth in the Sha's Iran. My dad was careful to explain about the wasted addicts by the side of the road. The drugs (opium IIRC -- being next door to Afghanistan makes this likely) weren't legal (to the contrary, they shot addicts from time to time) but they were cheap and plentiful.
Actually I lie. I was on morphine for a day in the aftermath of surgery. I reacted very badly to it. It's moderately likely that any hard drugs in that family would kill me.
How does society un-ring this bell? Should rapists and bank robbers have their criminal histories wiped clean at the end of their sentence, so unknowing people will hire them? You not only want to give criminals a second and third (and tenth?) chance, but you apparently want to force all of society to pretend it's the person's first chance. That's beyond reckless.
I'd say there's a distinction that should be made between not expunging a criminal's record and taking away his right to vote. The latter is at bottom a political weapon and little more, whereas the former is justifiable in terms of safety. One thing that might be helpful, though, is for all criminal records to be accompanied by a complete record of each case, including all of the circumstances surrounding it and all reports concerning the prisoner's behavior while he was incarcerated. IOW give the whole story, not just a possibly misleading down and dirty version of it. That way any potential employer can make a better informed decision as to the risks and rewards of hiring an ex-con.
-------------------------------------------------------
You expect us to believe that people commit fewer and/or less severe crimes when the punishments for those crimes are less severe? It's one thing to say Country X has a lower crime rate than the U.S., but to claim the lower crime rate is a result of the more lenient penalties seems specious.
Obviously that's not something that by itself leads to an easy answer one way or the other. But it's also interesting to note the correlation between violent crime rates among developed nations and the relative availability of guns, and the correlation between the crime rate and the rate of inequality.** No single one of these correlations necessarily leads to any conclusions about why the United States has such a high crime rate compared to other developed countries, but taken as a whole they certainly suggest to me an underlying social attitude towards the role of society and the individual that can lead to a lot of unintended negative consequences. We can't isolate our disgracefully high crime rate from our underlying social ethos, or reduce it to millions of cases of individual immorality. Those criminals aren't all named Topsy.
**I might have added divorce rates to that mix, but there's almost no correlation between a country's divorce rate and its rate of crime, particularly violent crime.
----------------------------------------------------
I don't see it as a problem either. Nobody can have principles anyway. You can't have multiple ideals that come first and foremost before all else.
Oh, I don't know. If someone's first and only principle is the preservation and protection of private property uber alles, and makes a practice of resisting any and all modifications of that principle, it's not hard to fancy oneself as the only "principled" person in the room. The libertarians have been using this reductionist gimmick ever since the first Ayn Rand book appeared, and though nobody takes their bleatings seriously except themselves, that doesn't stop them from repeating their "you don't have any principles" cliche as regularly as a cuckoo bird sings "cuckoo".
Is this a problem?
Yes, if you're going to make absolute pronouncements about things being good or evil. If there's no principle behind it, then it just your preference. Anyone's opposite preference is equally valid. Any kind of relativism (not saying Sam's a relativist) is self-contradictory, and intellectually bankrupt.
This is true for everyone, including you and Snapper, Ray. The difference between us is that I don't dress my preferences up in tutus, name them Dolly McQueensalot and sit them down for pretend tea like you do.
Duly noted, Snap, and credit given for the reference. Well played.
No. Many kinds of relativism, yes. "Any kind," no.
And of course, the fact that you kick your feet and scream until people stop having the patience to argue with you doesn't mean that saying "but the Pope said Jesus was special" unsticks you from this particular wicket, either. Your moral absolutism is just a relativism that doesn't have the self-awareness to recognize what it doesn't actually know.
But there is for single motherhood.
Oh, I don't know. If someone's first and only principle is the preservation and protection of private property uber alles, and makes a practice of resisting any and all modifications of that principle, it's not hard to fancy oneself as the only "principled" person in the room. The libertarians have been using this reductionist gimmick ever since the first Ayn Rand book appeared, and though nobody takes their bleatings seriously except themselves, that doesn't stop them from repeating their "you don't have any principles" cliche as regularly as a cuckoo bird sings "cuckoo".
Please Andy, I'm just as far from a Libertarian as you are. Libertarianism fails on a number of grounds, but not because it lacks intellectual coherence.
It's completely fair to ask for a coherent philosophy when people are espousing major changes to society.
Fascism is fantastically coherent as well.
No. You can say my principles are wrong, but they're not relativistic in the least. The traditional Christian morality is starkly universalist.
And, most of them can be justified without reference to the Divine. Not all of them, I'll grant you.
Which version? Fascism (non-Nazi variety) is far from the worst form of gov't man has devised.
Say what you will about the tenants of national socialism, Donnie. At least it's an ethos.
But there is for single motherhood.
In fact there's very little correlation there. If you look at the countries with the highest rates of single motherhood, we trail Great Britain, which has a far lower violent crime rate than ours. Of course our omnipotent gun lobby might have something to do with that.
Oh, I don't know. If someone's first and only principle is the preservation and protection of private property uber alles, and makes a practice of resisting any and all modifications of that principle, it's not hard to fancy oneself as the only "principled" person in the room. The libertarians have been using this reductionist gimmick ever since the first Ayn Rand book appeared, and though nobody takes their bleatings seriously except themselves, that doesn't stop them from repeating their "you don't have any principles" cliche as regularly as a cuckoo bird sings "cuckoo".
Please Andy, I'm just as far from a Libertarian as you are. Libertarianism fails on a number of grounds, but not because it lacks intellectual coherence.
I've never said it lacked intellectual coherence, only a wildly disproportionate sense of social priorities, operating under the convenient self-described label of "principles". One can be perfectly "consistent" to one's guiding light, but if that light itself only aims inward, it's not much use to anyone else.
It's completely fair to ask for a coherent philosophy when people are espousing major changes to society.
Fine, but neither you nor the libertarians get to define the terminology, or get to be the final arbitrators of "coherence". Neither Friedrich Hayek, Karl Marx, nor the Pope have the final word on human problems, no matter how fervently their devoted fans feel otherwise. The fact that the followers of all three of these irreconcilable individuals hector us with the invocation of their sets of "principles" should alone caution us about trying to claim that having "principles" alone means much of anything.
You can't look exclusively cross-society, there are all sorts of confounding variables. Within societies, it's clear that children of single mothers commit more crimes (as well as having more of every other social pathology), even once you control for race, income, class, etc. It is indisputable that less single motherhood would lead to less crime.
Fine, but neither you nor the libertarians get to define the terminology, or get to be the final arbitrators of "coherence". Neither Friedrich Hayek, Karl Marx, nor the Pope have the final word on human problems, no matter how fervently their devoted fans feel otherwise. The fact that the followers of all three of these irreconcilable individuals hector us with the invocation of their sets of "principles" should alone caution us about trying to claim that having "principles" alone means much of anything.
Fair. But when you advocate a massive expansion of gov't scope and power, it is completely fair to ask you to provide a coherent principle as to what gov't is allowed to do, and what it is not allowed to do. Otherwise, you are completely vulnerable to the "slippery slop"/"creeping socialism" argument.
If your position is "gov't can do whatever 51% of the voters want it too", then we are fools if we don't fight tooth-and-nail against every expansion you propose.
If you and your side believe our Constitutional structures provide no limit to gov't power, then the Libertarians are right; we really do need to keep gov't so small it can be drowned in the bath.
There are places in this country where you serve more time in prison for non-violent drug crime than you do for rape or murder. There's no coherent system based on realistic assessment of harm in sentence length. That's arbitrary.
As for sentences being "long," you still haven't produced a scintilla of evidence to suggest that shorter prison sentences would yield the same or better results. Who are all these miracle workers who are going to rehabilitate criminals in half the time and yield a lower recidivism rate?
You haven't produced any evidence that this system is doing anything positive.
I've at least given you a correlation between harshness of penalties and lower crime rates in first-world nations. What evidence have you given that strict penalties are working at all? Sentences have become more severe since the 1980s, and crime has gone up.
You expect us to believe that people commit fewer and/or less severe crimes when the punishments for those crimes are less severe? It's one thing to say Country X has a lower crime rate than the U.S., but to claim the lower crime rate is a result of the more lenient penalties seems specious.
It is a result of a different philosophy of both criminal justice and social awareness. Countries with lower crime rates are doing more to prevent crimes by addressing social conditions that cause crime, and the conditions within their prisons are more humane, creating fewer hardened criminals.
You don't believe the current system gives second chances to non-violent offenders? Reading your comments, it's as if first-time shoplifters get sentenced to five years in Sing Sing. I bet the average non-violent criminal is arrested five or six times before serving a day in a state prison. First- and second-timers get adjournment in contemplation of dismissal, or time served (i.e., the night in jail after the arrest). Third- and fourth-timers might get community service, or probation, or maybe a few weeks or months in the local jail. I'm constantly reading about people who've been arrested dozens of times.
This sounds like the system not properly addressing crime. You're convinced that I'm all about reducing every sentence, but I'm about making sure that criminals provide appropriate restitution to their victims and to compensate society for the cost of enforcement. I said earlier than certainty of punishment is a far more effective deterrent than severity of punishment: six arrests without any consequences at all is not rehabilitation, it's not isolation, and it's not a deterrent.
What is that "something"? You can't half hire someone. A thief released from prison today needs a job tomorrow. Unless the criminal record is expunged and/or it becomes illegal to ask about prior arrests or convictions, such people are always going to have a hard time finding well-paid work (i.e., work that makes criminality less appealing).
Part of the problem is that many people don't honestly believe that a criminal truly has been rehabilitated. If they did, past criminality would rarely be a problem. I can tell you that if I were hiring and someone applied for a job, admitting on the application to a single non-violent felony committed several years prior, it would not be a significant negative factor in the hiring decision. If anything, I might feel a slight incentive to hire this person in order to give him or her a chance to re-enter society.
If you believe that rehabilitation is something our system does well, then you aren't afraid to hire criminals. It's only because of this mistaken belief: "once a criminal, always morally defective and dangerous." That's the attitude that the average person has in this country toward crime, and it's reflected in our criminal justice system.
This is just not true. Violent crime is way down from the 80's and early 90's.
You can't look exclusively cross-society, there are all sorts of confounding variables. Within societies, it's clear that children of single mothers commit more crimes (as well as having more of every other social pathology), even once you control for race, income, class, etc. It is indisputable that less single motherhood would lead to less crime.
I certainly won't claim that single parenthood is an ideal situation, but strengthening social support institutions can help mitigate its negative effects, and these social support institutions, both private and public, are stronger in some countries than in others.
Fine, but neither you nor the libertarians get to define the terminology, or get to be the final arbitrators of "coherence". Neither Friedrich Hayek, Karl Marx, nor the Pope have the final word on human problems, no matter how fervently their devoted fans feel otherwise. The fact that the followers of all three of these irreconcilable individuals hector us with the invocation of their sets of "principles" should alone caution us about trying to claim that having "principles" alone means much of anything.
Fair. But when you advocate a massive expansion of gov't scope and power, it is completely fair to ask you to provide a coherent principle as to what gov't is allowed to do, and what it is not allowed to do. Otherwise, you are completely vulnerable to the "slippery slop"/"creeping socialism" argument.
The underlying principle that governs my policy preferences is that the strong shouldn't be allowed to take gratuitous advantage of the weak, which is really little more than a reaffirmation of the Golden Rule in terms of the broader society. That doesn't mean that every policy has to have that preference held over its head like a sledgehammer, because sometimes it can be unworkable in real life. But it does provide a template in helping me decide between one course of action or another. The question of "slippery slopes" is little more than a shopworn scare tactic used by ideologues of all stripes, particularly the lawyers amongst them, who want to fit every question into some E-Z pigeonhole that suits their ideological purposes.
If your position is "gov't can do whatever 51% of the voters want it too", then we are fools if we don't fight tooth-and-nail against every expansion you propose.
If you and your side believe our Constitutional structures provide no limit to gov't power, then the Libertarians are right; we really do need to keep gov't so small it can be drowned in the bath.
I'll let you take that up with the strawmen who actually believe in the straws that you're propping up. Perhaps someone out there doesn't believe in judicial review, or believes that governments have unlimited power, but I haven't seen anyone yet who fits that bill.
Crime continued to rise (violent and otherwise) in the early 1990s and then there was a substantial dip in the mid-90s. Today we're better off in terms of robberies and assaults, but homicides and rapes have been relatively stagnant.
Except this would be happening at precisely the same time as medical advances begin prolonging human life past the century mark (and beyond). So long as human life is bound by a natural order there is nothing inherently tragic about death. It comes to us all after all. However, once that ceases to be true then you are introducing the most radical form of inequality into a polity based upon the fundamental equality of human beings.
I am not exaggerating in the slightest when I say that it would be the end of liberal democracy. It's pretty simple. Either we provide universal health care for everyone as the ethical foundation of society or it will be the fall of our civilization.
Also in terms of the crosby conversation he's pretty clearly right about the practice of industrialized prisons. That said his proposals are manifestly unjust. Here's my partially serious proposal. Violent crimes should be met with violence. Bring back the death penalty and execute murderers etc.; those who present a danger to society, career criminals etc. should be exiled to their own private island and allowed to form a libertarian paradise; finally those who exploit society, the Madoff's of the world, should lose their financial freedom, not necessarily by going to prison but by being forced to work low hourly wage jobs and living solely off that income. How great would it be to be served a hamburger by Bernie Madoff getting paid $7/hour.
In each case we'd get justice. Death is the price of death, dangerous exile is the price for dangerous behaviour, while enforced humility is the price of vainglory.
If this study is to be believed, there was no evidence that longer sentences reduce recidivism, and there was evidence that longer sentences actually led to more crime. What we do know with certainty is that longer sentences are more expensive. I think it reasonable to place the burden of justifying that expense on the people who advocate spending that money.
I quite often disagree with Gaelan but here we're in lockstep. A society that doesn't ensure health care for all its citizens is doomed to collapse.
finally those who exploit society, the Madoff's of the world, should lose their financial freedom, not necessarily by going to prison but by being forced to work low hourly wage jobs and living solely off that income.
While I'm not entirely on board with this, I think it serves a far greater purpose than Madoff sitting in a cell.
I am not exaggerating in the slightest when I say that it would be the end of liberal democracy. It's pretty simple. Either we provide universal health care for everyone as the ethical foundation of society or it will be the fall of our civilization.
That's not the only option, no. We could also simply ban any of the extreme life extending procedures/drugs.
It's also not a workable option, because society will never to be able to afford to keep the vast majority of people alive past age 100. The burden on the working people of a huge unproductive class would be crippling.
If such "immortality treatments" become possible (I don't think they will), the answer is to ban them for the wealthy, not try to pay for them for everyone. If Bill Gates wants to move to the Cayman's and live forever, he can do so without his money (which we don't have to let out of the country).
First the immigrants take our low wage jobs, and now the inmates?
Crime continued to rise (violent and otherwise) in the early 1990s and then there was a substantial dip in the mid-90s. Today we're better off in terms of robberies and assaults, but homicides and rapes have been relatively stagnant.
Yeah, not true at all. Crime rates peaked in the early 70's, were flat through the early 90's and then declined rapidly.
Crimes per 100 K pop.
1970/1980/1990/2000/2010
Murder 7.9/10.2/9.4/5.5/4.8
Forciple Rape 18.7/36.8/41.2/32/27.5
Robbery 172.1/251.1/257/145/119.1
Burglary 1084.9/1684.1/1235.9/728.8/699.6
Aggravated Assault 164.8/298.5/424.1/324/252.3
In every category we are well below 1980 levels, and for murder, burglary and robbery, well below 1970 levels. Murder rate are lower than 1960.
EDIT: I'm also not sure what these numbers are supposed to prove.
It's supposed to show that this:
is not true. Which it does. Crime is lower than 1980 across the board. Whatever the harsher sentences imposed in the 80s did or didn't do, they didn't increase crime.
#464, the numbers in your own post don't agree with you. In burglary and murder, the highest number is 1980. In all the others, it's 1990.
I didn't show the whole time series. Murder hit 9.8/100K in 1974.
I hate to quibble, but 9.8 is lower than 10.2.
Look at how the crime rates move around year to year.
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
'78 was 9.0, '79 and '81, 9.8, '82 9.1. 1980 is the high, there's no statistical difference between 10.2 and 9.8.
Murder rates broke the 9/100k mark in 1974, and basically stayed there (with fluctuations betewwn ~8 and ~10) until 1994, when they began a rapid decline.
Utter nonsense. Please name such places.
You're the one who wants to overhaul the system. The burden's on you.
Huh? Violent crime has dropped DRAMATICALLY in the U.S. since the late 1980s, when more prisons were built and mandatory minimums became more widespread. As if this discussion wasn't already a waste of time, it appears you don't know the first thing about the underlying stats and trends with regards to crime in the United States. Unbelievable.
(EDIT: Hat tip to snapper.)
Not sure if I have a practical solution to this though, other than the aforementioned destruction of civilization (which, I too, agree with Galean and CB that 21st Century health care and longevity is going to be a severe world wide social crisis). Banning something like longevity treatments is only going to drive the price up, barring a world-wide police state.
I don't see how this is a reasonable solution. Not all killings are murders and not all murders are equal. More importantly - police forces / judiciaries are corruptible (and in many cases, corrupt) and skill of legal representation is not evenly distributed. That is to say, there is an accuracy problem that (In my mind) prevents severe and irreversible punishments for all but the tiniest fraction of cases. There are False Positives (people convicted unjustly) and there are False Negatives - and the distribution is not random.
This is a failure of your imagination more than anything else. If you told feudal Europe in 1000 CE that people would be living to 80-100 with regularity they'd say "not in a thousand years!" Radical life extension (beyond what we now have, which is radical by all historic standards) is inevitable. And you will never ban the inevitable.
Nothing is inevitable as long as man has free will. How did the inevitability of Communism work out?
If longevity proves grossly inequitable, they'll be a revolution and the 300inevitability yo rich will be slaughtered. Society self corrects for extremes, peacefully as longg as decent people don't fall for inevitability BS, or violently if they do.
Utter nonsense. Please name such places.
Try California, where under their three strikes law a person with a third conviction of mere possession of certain drugs can get 25 years of more.
I'm not following your line on Communism? Is that a swipe at Marx' argument about historical necessity? Be more clear. As for free will, clap louder, man. Tinkerbell is dying.
Such people are being sentenced for being habitual offenders, not because the people in California consider simple drug possession to be more serious than rape or murder. Also, California's "three strikes" law was amended over a decade ago to avoid situations where simple possession could trigger "three strikes."
It's a swipe at 100+ years of leftist nonsense about the "inevitability of communism".
History is funny. Nothing follows preordained paths.
We're probably ten times as likely to have significantly lower life expectancies in 100 years than we are to routinely live to 150.
By the way, this is a first offense.
55 years MINIMUM for first offense, marijuana sale.
In Alabama, a first offense of selling pot to a minor (17 year olds count as minors) is a Class A felony, which carries a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison. That's the same penalty as rape or murder, (although you can tack on 5 more years if it's within 3 miles of a school); it's a more harsh penalty than having sex with a mentally disabled person incapable of consent or manslaughter.
Hamedah Hasan is serving a 27 year sentence for a non-violent drug crime.
How about Mark Young, a victim of a three strikes law where the first two strikes carried a $1 fine and suspended sentence -- first strike: filling a false prescription; second strike: petty possession of amphetamines and Quaaludes; third strike: arranging for a meeting between marijuana seller and marijuana buyer. Mark Young is in prison for his entire life without possibility of parole.
Read about Mark Young's and other insane non-violent drug sentences here.
How about Douglas Lamar Grey, who has a life sentence for the purchase of one pound of marijuana based on a three-strikes law where the first two strikes were over 31 years prior to the third offense?
Or Jimmy Montgomery, sentenced to 110 years in prison for less than two ounces on a first-time offense? (Oklahoma's governor shortened the sentence to 10 years because Montgomery was a paraplegic.)
There are quite a few cases of people spending decades in prison for non-violent drug offenses, some under three-strikes laws, some because of stacking counts, some because they were small links in a large chain who simply had nothing to plea-bargain with.
477 — This was your original claim:
I didn't see any examples in #477 of people in those jurisdictions serving less time for rape or murder than for being caught with drugs.
Do you really want me to provide examples of federal rape and murder cases with sentences that are shorter than 27 years, 55 years, or life in prison without the possibility of parole? I refer you to the search engine of your choice for such evidence.
You can make an argument that these cases are rare, or that they involve large amounts of drugs, or that we're talking about repeat offenders, but the point stands: there are people in jail for non-violent drug offenses that are serving longer sentences than people in jail for rape or murder.
This is not a matter of reasoned disagreement, but one of simple fact. I'm going to have to insist that you concede this fairly minor point or I'll be forced to conclude that you have absolutely no interest in arguing in good faith.
I don't have any evidence to back this up, but I would guess that a non-violent drug offender who spends anything more than a couple of years in federal prison comes out more likely to commit crimes "with victims" than when he went in. I'm curious what others think.
Anyway, your examples don't seem like a good reason to overhaul the entire criminal justice system. I agree the Weldon Angelos case seems like overkill, but he wasn't some kid with a joint in his pocket. He was caught dealing drugs while armed, he refused a 15-year plea bargain, and he ended up having the book thrown at him.
(As a side note, it's strange how the liberals operate around here with regards to guns. Right here on this page, liberals have complained about the availability of guns and essentially blamed guns for crime. But then, when a guy like Weldon Angelos gets convicted of possessing a gun during the commission of a crime, they decry the harsh sentence that was imposed. Very strange. It's as if they blame the guns more than the people possessing them.)
Well, after you made the bogus claim that crime has increased since the '80s (#455), one might conclude this entire discussion has been based on a false premise.
***
I bet this is true at the state level, but federal might be different. From what I can tell, the federal system does a better job of segregating inmates based on their criminal offenses. (Plus, the people who go into the worst federal prisons generally don't ever get out.)
In my experience this is pretty much everyone in the world's political standpoint, right, left, libertarian, or whatever.
I like how Jim Geraghty put it on Twitter a while back:
I corrected a mistaken claim based on old data three whole posts later (#458). I remembered the spike in the 90s after the increased sentences in the 80s.
The US has a pretty high crime rate for a Western democracy, despite having an overwhelmingly high relative incarceration rate. Why isn't all of this extra incarceration helping?
479 — How many people are even prosecuted for federal rape charges? Rape and murder are almost always state cases. Regardless, I'd bet there are far fewer people serving 8 years for rape or murder than there are serving 50 years for having marijuana in their car.
So you are admitting that some people are serving longer sentences for non-violent drug crimes than others in the same jurisdiction are serving for rape or murder, right?
As a side note, it's strange how the liberals operate around here with regards to guns.
Not me. I think a reasonable waiting period and background check are reasonable, but every law-abiding adult citizen that can demonstrate basic firearm competence should be able to own a gun. I don't think guns are some sort of monstrous problem.
In my experience this is pretty much everyone in the world's political standpoint, right, left, libertarian, or whatever.
Seconded. And I'm including myself.
I think this is the principle behind the Night's Watch.
(As a side note, it's strange how the liberals operate around here with regards to guns. Right here on this page, liberals have complained about the availability of guns and essentially blamed guns for crime. But then, when a guy like Weldon Angelos gets convicted of possessing a gun during the commission of a crime, they decry the harsh sentence that was imposed.
I don't know about "liberals" in general, but some of us like to look at cases in full context. I haven't read the details about Angelos's case**, but my first reaction would be to see an armed man selling drugs, my second reaction would be to look at his past criminal history. Then and only then would I react to the sentence. AFAIC guns + drugs are like the two components of epoxy. Each one by itself is relatively benign, but put them together and it's an entirely different matter.
Very strange. It's as if they blame the guns more than the people possessing them.)
As if there's no relationship between the easy availability of guns and crime. As if an unarmed drug dealer poses the same threat as an armed one. Obviously you blame the person who chose to arm himself for an illegal act. I'm not sentencing the gun itself.
**Though if he's any relation to Peter Angelos, I say lock him up and throw away the key.
And, no, McCain did not endorse the idea in the 2008 presidential campaign. Nor, incidentally, did a little known guy named Barack Obama, who criticized his opponent Hillary Clinton precisely because she did make such a proposal.
Besides, you're looking at the question ex post instead of ex ante. What you want is not to be a victim of a crime in the first place -- and having criminals in prison makes it harder for them to victimize you.
One of the reasons we don't catch as many people that commit crimes with victims is that a significant portion of police resources are dedicated to fighting victimless crime. Also, the overloaded prison system absolutely contributes to "catch and release." If you can't release a non-violent drug criminal because of mandatory minimums and "Truth in Sentencing" laws, and the budget doesn't allow you to build more prisons, then you're limited in your ability to lock up people who really need prison time.
We're dealing with a system of limited resources, and every dollar spent in the wrong place is a dollar that can't be spent in the right place.
Besides, you're looking at the question ex post instead of ex ante. What you want is not to be a victim of a crime in the first place -- and having criminals in prison makes it harder for them to victimize you.
Deterring would-be criminals from committing crimes makes it less likely that they'll victimize you. That is an ex ante solution, assuming that you can find an effective deterrent. There's little question that likelihood of being caught is a much stronger deterrent than harsher penalties. Specific deterrence and isolation keeps one person from victimizing you. General deterrence keeps a number of people from victimizing you.
At the end of the day, it's not just that I don't want this particular person to commit a crime against me, but that I don't want anyone to commit a crime against me.
Just worth mentioning: I don't have a problem with long sentences that serve a legitimate purpose. If we can demonstrate that ten extra years provides a benefit worth the money we're spending, then I'm almost certainly in favor of those ten extra years. To go back to where this started, I don't see making criminals suffer as providing any benefit (and in fact, I think it is bad for society and for those criminals), which is why harsher sentences for the sake of greater punishment are not at all compelling.
It's not enough to demonstrate that these harsher sentences have any positive effect at all, but to demonstrate that the positive effect justifies the tremendous economic and social costs.
The way I imagine it the government wouldn't be forced to find Madoff a job. Rather they would confiscate all of his income/property, ban him from receiving government assistance, make it illegal for him to receive financial gifts, and tax his income over say $20000 at 100%. After that it would be up to him to find a job, pay his bills, stay alive, etc.
If he can't find or keep a job then he can be homeless. It would be a modern form of ostracism.
I'm on board!
If he can't find or keep a job then he can be homeless.
Sounds like a winner to me, and a model for dealing with other white collar mega-criminals. I'd also take away his passport while I'm at it.
It would require amending the Constitution.
Of curse in realty no one on either side in DC has any track record of standing on principle (except perhaps the Dixiecrats in the 50s and 60s- of course their principles were pretty vile, but they did make an effort to stand by them)
The clinging to ideology and refusing to compromise is actually a pretty new tactic- well it's not actually a"new tactic" it's just that the willingness to employ it (unwillingness to compromise) is relatively new.
and
makes my head spin.
But where's the evidence that we're not catching people because of limited resources?
It's well understood that there are diminishing marginal returns (in terms of deterrence) from increased punishment. That's not the same thing as saying that harsher penalties don't matter. But it's not "likelihood of being caught" that's the other relevant factor; it's likelihood of being punished. If you're caught, but nothing happens to you, then what's the big deal?
I agree with this 100 percent, but I want the reallocated money to go toward locking up more actual criminals for longer periods of time, and not toward giving Madoff an ankle bracelet with a GPS tracker. It seems like we agree on the non-violent drug users (and have for 2-3 pages); it's the non-drug users where we have major disagreements with regards to appropriate sentencing, etc. I believe far, far more people would commit crimes, especially non-violent crimes, if they knew the punishment for being caught was likely to be home confinement or a year of community service rather than hard time in prison.
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