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PT6A posted:My statement does not presuppose that criminals are born that way, merely that there exists criminals, who I fully agree are nothing more than products of their environment, who commit crimes which are not necessary to guarantee their survival. Certainly we should address these issues as best we can when these people are caught committing a crime, and any incarceration should be focused more on rehabilitation that punishment, but some threat of punishment is necessary to deter those who have not yet committed crimes from doing so. Well sure, then. Not going to argue with that.
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Nov 1, 2011 17:53
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Thunder from Down Under posted:The entire private prison industry wouldnt let that happen. Realize non-violent offenders make up ~50% of those in prison and ~20% of those are drug charges. This is from a 1999 report so those numbers have probably risin, but you get the idea. http://www.cjcj.org/files/americas.pdf I know it won't happen, what I want to know is how, or if things would be different, if non-violent crimes were just a fine; like a cost of doing business kind of thing, or "on-the-spot-tax", if you will. What kind of time and money would be saved avoiding court issues, and paying for all that prison upkeep, for example, and the revenue such fines might theoretically generate for local and state governments. Mister Facetious fucked around with this message at 22:22 on Nov 3, 2011 |
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Nov 3, 2011 22:19
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Most fines are big enough to destroy the lives of regular people who commit them but small enough for businesses that are large enough to commit them regularly to simply consider them an expense like wages and utilities.
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Nov 3, 2011 23:49
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Mister Macys posted:I know it won't happen, what I want to know is how, or if things would be different, if non-violent crimes were just a fine; like a cost of doing business kind of thing, or "on-the-spot-tax", if you will. 'On the spot' fines? Welcome to a world of corruption.
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Nov 4, 2011 15:48
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quote:but some threat of punishment is necessary to deter those who have not yet committed crimes from doing so. Please cite something you have to back up this claim because the threat of punishment has shown time and time again in studies to do absolutely nothing to deter ones action. Education and rehabilitation have been shown as the most effective and permanent means of changing someones actions and habits. If someone wants to do something, no amount of deterrence will stop them. People don't magically become "criminals", our society and laws create what we consider to be "criminals" or "criminal acts" once they meet our defined criteria of what a "criminal" or "criminal act" constitutes. If you don't want someone to act in a certain manner, you have to give them a reason past "We'll lock you up and take away your freedom". The threat of jail time isn't what stops me from going out and robbing people for survival or breaking particular laws, as a matter of fact, I break laws every single day that I fully know could land me serious jail time under the right circumstances but I don't care. My actions aren't hurting anyone and I'm breaking arbitrary laws set up by a system that doesn't care to listen to my reasons for breaking said laws, no amount of deterrence is going to stop me from continuing to break these laws. Only way it's going to stop is if the laws are taken away or an alternative that isn't illegal is made available. The fact that I was born into a well to do family, had access to education and job opportunities to take care of myself is what's keeping me from making certain decisions that wouldn't sit well with our current set of laws. quote:'On the spot' fines? Welcome to a world of corruption. As opposed to the World of Co-Operation and Harmony we now live in? At least we'd be saving money on incarceration and drawing more revenue into our system. Only problem is most people don't have enough money to even pay for simple bills let along fines for every stupid law a country can think of and fine them for. PTBrennan fucked around with this message at 17:34 on Nov 4, 2011 |
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Nov 4, 2011 17:14
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You could make it a monthly bill. And then the Fed could inevitably turn that revenue source into some kind of lovely bond, and sell it to China/Ireland/Iceland/Germany/Greece, etc..
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Nov 4, 2011 17:33
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quote:You could make it a monthly bill. I like it. Justice System to Citizens: Look we know we have so many laws on the books that sooner or later you're going to break the law whether you mean to or not, it's inevitable, so let's just send you a bill every month and we'll call it even? Honestly, I'm surprised it hasn't been suggested yet by some republican somewhere. My bad they already do, they just call is something different. http://deaauctions.com/police_seized_property_auctions.htm It's called an "Auction" instead of "Criminal Taxation". PTBrennan fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Nov 4, 2011 |
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Nov 4, 2011 17:36
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Pope Guilty posted:Most fines are big enough to destroy the lives of regular people who commit them but small enough for businesses that are large enough to commit them regularly to simply consider them an expense like wages and utilities. I think it actually would be an interesting idea for misdemeanor level violations (I believe a number of felonies probably should be misdos though). However, we would have to set it up like they do traffic fines in Finland. It is based on your pay. For example, a theft of up to $1000 could be worth 1 month of pay (plus restitution). It would still have some notable problems. Notably, someone making $120,000 would be less impacted by the loss of $12,000 than someone making $12,000 losing $1200. And of course, those who couldn't pay would have to be punished somehow, likely by jail. Perhaps basing it on net-worth would be more just? Basically, these days in misdo land, those who can pay avoid jail anyhow. They can get on ankle monitor programs (which aren't cheap) and some counties that don't have official ankle monitor programs now allow private companies to offer the service to avoid the indignity of jail. Similarly, my clients (I'm a public defender) return to court and are often jailed for a failure to pay fines and restitution. I'm always shocked at why the court asks why a client who makes $8k per year hasn't paid his $2k in DUI fees, $1.5k in DUI classes, and $6k in restitution in 1 year or even 3 years. (Based on an actual 2nd DUI) By at least basing fines on income, we'd take a step closer toward equality. There's a reason a DUI is so expensive, we want it to hurt for even the wealthy. However in doing so, we make it nearly impossible for the poor to successfully complete probation.
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Nov 4, 2011 20:11
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A fine-based fee also wouldn't account for unfairness and discrimination in prosecution/policing.
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Nov 4, 2011 20:31
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Selavi posted:A fine-based fee also wouldn't account for unfairness and discrimination in prosecution/policing. If the sheriff can get $50 from a homeless guy and $10,000 from a rich guy it might change things. Not by much, but maybe a little. It would also have the advantage of keeping people who have jobs employed. Those of us with 2+ weeks of vacation can get 2 weeks in jail and not lose our jobs. Those who can't get fired.
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Nov 4, 2011 20:38
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PTBrennan posted:Please cite something you have to back up this claim because the threat of punishment has shown time and time again in studies to do absolutely nothing to deter ones action. The existence of punishment, however, definitely deters crime. See, for example, General Deterrent Effects of Imprisonment, which finds a strong negative correlation between the certainty of punishment and the crime rate, and a weaker negative correlation between severity of punishment and the crime rate. I can hardly imagine what model of human psychology you're using where the threat of punishment has no influence on behavior.
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Nov 4, 2011 21:26
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quote:The existence of punishment, however, definitely deters crime. See, for example, General Deterrent Effects of Imprisonment, which finds a strong negative correlation between the certainty of punishment and the crime rate, and a weaker negative correlation between severity of punishment and the crime rate. That article study is from 1972, no offense but I'm sure that's a little outdated compared to recent studies. Here's a study from the U.S. Department of Justice from 1998 https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/171676.PDF You'll notice the mentioned most effective methods for most areas isn't punishment or fear of reprisal from the system. In only two instances is the word punishment even used and it's in the context of a reward/punishment system used by coaches in order to help addicts and delinquents. Also Death Penalty has been shown not to deter murders or criminals http://www.newsmax.com/US/death-penalty-study/2009/06/18/id/330990 So there is plenty of evidence to the contrary.
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Nov 5, 2011 00:13
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nm posted:Actually, it might a little bit. Remember that fines are a huge source of revenue. Even for folks that do have vacation, a lot of service industry & entry level jobs have rules about taking it. For example a call center employee may not get approved if she says "I know it's the busy season but I need to use all 10 days of my bank time, in a row, starting the day after tomorrow, and no I can't tell you why." Then you get into the deal where employers have moved to a "PTO bank" where sick & vacation time is combined, so that worker would still be poo poo out of luck if she got sick after her sentence and more time hadn't been accrued. One thing I really like is seeing the increase of county work-release for low-level misdemeanors, that start from the beginning of the sentence. For example if you get 10 days in county and you have a job, you can either: do the 10 straight up, do 5 weekends (on the weekdays you go home after work but you're on monitoring), or do go to work each day and return to the jail each night after you get off- in your own vehicle, with your street clothes kept at the jail. Now, your route is on a strict schedule, so no stops on the way to or from, and you'll be pisstested to make sure you're not drinking & all that- you're not getting off the hook or anything, it's just a good way to keep offenders from losing their jobs. As far as scaling fines, Scandinavian countries for example set traffic fines as a percentage of income. According to that article Norway sets it as 1.5x monthly income and Finland sets it as 14 days of income. I've had a lot of experience with DUI offenders in AZ over the past several years, the average for first-timers (no wreck/no injury/no minors in the car) has been between $3,000 and $6,000+ depending on BAC and length of probation/length of interlock/MADD fee/education fees/treatment fees/jail fees (you have to pay for all of that + rent while in jail at $70/day plus fees). The median yearly household income in my area is $14,587; so offenders here pay a far greater percentage of their income than the Finns/Norse. What happens is the rich guy from Raytheon who happens to be passing through writes a check and forgets about it, but it can devastate the family of a resident. That isn't right. We need to decide what the financial impact a conviction should have on someone
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Nov 5, 2011 01:29
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PTBrennan posted:Please cite something you have to back up this claim because the threat of punishment has shown time and time again in studies to do absolutely nothing to deter ones action. Education and rehabilitation have been shown as the most effective and permanent means of changing someones actions and habits. Um, what? If there was no threat of punishment I would go out and rob a bank tomorrow.
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Nov 5, 2011 03:01
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PTBrennan posted:That article study is from 1972, no offense but I'm sure that's a little outdated compared to recent studies. quote:Here's a study from the U.S. Department of Justice from 1998 quote:Also Death Penalty has been shown not to deter murders or criminals "Just over 88 percent of 79 experts from the American Society of Criminology said they did not think the death penalty 'acts as a deterrent,'" This is not even remotely shown not to deter. Now, actual studies that aren't just "we asked some people from an academic society" have found mixed results at best about the deterrent effect of the death penalty. One study, for example, looked at the murder rates before and after various states' alterations of their capital punishment laws, and particularly during the 1972-1976 moratorium on capital punishment, with a finding that quote:In all models, the estimated coefficients of the deterrent variables are highly significant. Executions and lagged executions have negative coefficients, indicating that executions reduce murders. The state moratorium variable has a positive coefficient, suggesting that banning executions increases the murder rate, or alternatively, reinstating the death penalty reduces the murder rate. These estimates suggest that both adopting a capital statute and exercising it have strong deterrent effects. But of course, I'm aware that many other studies disagree, and I would hesitate myself to assert that the death penalty has a strong deterrent effect. Note, however, that the implied comparison here is a deterrent effect in comparison to incarceration, not in comparison to "nothing at all." On some level, you must realize how silly a claim it is that punishments do not alter behaviors. Do you speed when right next to a police car? Strudel Man fucked around with this message at 03:18 on Nov 5, 2011 |
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Nov 5, 2011 03:01
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HidingFromGoro posted:One thing I really like is seeing the increase of county work-release for low-level misdemeanors, that start from the beginning of the sentence. For example if you get 10 days in county and you have a job, you can either: do the 10 straight up, do 5 weekends (on the weekdays you go home after work but you're on monitoring), or do go to work each day and return to the jail each night after you get off- in your own vehicle, with your street clothes kept at the jail. Now, your route is on a strict schedule, so no stops on the way to or from, and you'll be pisstested to make sure you're not drinking & all that- you're not getting off the hook or anything, it's just a good way to keep offenders from losing their jobs. Just plain ankle monitors where you stay home makes a lot more sense and cuts down on the contraband issue. My most recent county sheriff refused to do this type of work release unless explicitly ordered. People on pure ankle monitors at home were better monitored and it was cheaper.
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Nov 5, 2011 06:39
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HidingFromGoro posted:Even for folks that do have vacation, a lot of service industry & entry level jobs have rules about taking it. For example a call center employee may not get approved if she says "I know it's the busy season but I need to use all 10 days of my bank time, in a row, starting the day after tomorrow, and no I can't tell you why." Then you get into the deal where employers have moved to a "PTO bank" where sick & vacation time is combined, so that worker would still be poo poo out of luck if she got sick after her sentence and more time hadn't been accrued.
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Nov 5, 2011 12:22
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nm posted:I think it actually would be an interesting idea for misdemeanor level violations (I believe a number of felonies probably should be misdos though). However, we would have to set it up like they do traffic fines in Finland. It is based on your pay. "Why do you want to punish people more for being successful" -Half The Country A significant portion of our poor and middle class have stockholm syndrome when it comes to the abuses of the rich. See the tea party protests.
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Nov 5, 2011 14:41
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Fire posted:"Why do you want to punish people more for being successful" edit: I mean like talking points, for use on people who are believers of the Right Wing. Radd McCool fucked around with this message at 16:55 on Nov 5, 2011 |
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Nov 5, 2011 16:36
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Of course, all of this assumes that you weren't fired from your job for having the police so much as look sideways at you.
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Nov 5, 2011 16:39
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Yeah, how would a scaling fine work for people who are out of work or minors?
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Nov 5, 2011 20:01
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Selavi posted:Yeah, how would a scaling fine work for people who are out of work or minors? Minors go through a completely different system. Out of work still gets some income from unemployment or odd jobs. In the rare cases of zero income, community service instead of fines.
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Nov 5, 2011 22:01
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What kind of system would there be for minors? And could we justify taking rent/food/childcare money from someone whose sole income was from odd jobs and social security? I think some kind of system of rehabilitation and education could work better, especially when it comes to people who just can't afford the extra fines. Some people really have to count on every dollar they get for well-being.
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Nov 5, 2011 22:51
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Radd McCool posted:Anyone have a good angle on why taxes aren't punishment?
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Nov 5, 2011 23:07
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Radd McCool posted:Anyone have a good angle on why taxes aren't punishment? However, you pay taxes and essentially buy countless services that you could NEVER afford in any other way. Let's say you pay $10,000 in taxes. In exchange, you get unlimited access to roads, electricity, fire and police protection, the legal system, etc. etc. It's no more of a punishment than having to pay for milk at the grocery store.
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Nov 5, 2011 23:14
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Selavi posted:What kind of system would there be for minors? And could we justify taking rent/food/childcare money from someone whose sole income was from odd jobs and social security? I think some kind of system of rehabilitation and education could work better, especially when it comes to people who just can't afford the extra fines. Some people really have to count on every dollar they get for well-being. Poor people certainly would be worse off under a fine system that wealthy, but they'd be better off than in a jail system (where they already get a bill for their incarceration). I think a communitys ervice option could help minimize the impact on the poorest. I am skeptical of rehabilitation, at least as it exists in the US. My experience has been the court mandated programs are pretty useless time wasters. They are incredibly expensive and that cost is always passed on to the defendant. A 24 hour outpatient drug program costs $500 here. And unlike the fines, that fee cannot be waved or converted to community service. It is a seriously profitable industry. I'm in favor of rehabilitation in theory, but I've never seen it well instituted here. It always becomes a feel good measure for the courts, a cash grab for the groups that do the programs, and a leading reason my clients are re-incarcerated. I think we need some sort of punishment. While I don't think long prison sentences deter more than lighter sentences, the punishment needs to actually have an impact. And that should be with fines that are significant to the individual or enough community service to significantly cut into free time. Radd McCool posted:Anyone have a good angle on why taxes aren't punishment? If you don't see the difference between a tax that is levied on everyone for the purposes of paying for the services we all enjoy, and a fine instituted on an individual to punish him because he broke a law, you're a moron. That said, traffic and parking fines have started to be a significant revenue stream. criminal fines are a tiny, tiny revenue stream. Even for DUIs, the $1400 you get charged for a first in California doesn't go much beyond paying for the cop, his car, the testing, the judge, the prosecutor, the public defender, and possibly the jury. I'll bet they lose money when we go to trial. A felony level fine here is about $200 plus maybe $100 of fees. That doesn't pay for poo poo. nm fucked around with this message at 23:46 on Nov 5, 2011 |
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Nov 5, 2011 23:41
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Being skeptical of rehabilitation because of how the US does it is like being skeptical of orgies because of how the Evangelical Church down the street does them.
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Nov 6, 2011 01:19
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Pope Guilty posted:Being skeptical of rehabilitation because of how the US does it is like being skeptical of orgies because of how the Evangelical Church down the street does them. As the system exists now, I don't trust rehabilitation to really be anything but a revenue stream.
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Nov 6, 2011 05:33
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Debate between former Drug Czar John Walters and Glenn Greenwald about drug legalization. I found myself about to yell at my computer screen during certain sections of this debate. I don't understand how John Walters at one moment agrees that we have too many people in prison while at the same time staunchly defending a policy that has attributed to a dramatic increase in the prison population. Is his self-righteousness so blinding that he can't see the hypocrisy in his own opinions?
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Nov 15, 2011 23:05
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Maybe his solution to the prison population problem, is to build more prisons. Because obviously if there were enough prisons for all the criminals, America wouldn't have this problem. 
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Nov 16, 2011 23:20
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http://www.temple.edu/aas/documents/ThompsonWhyMassIncarcerationMatters.pdf This article shows how labor has been affected by the unprecedented increase in incarceration rates in the United States and how companies take advantage of prison labor.
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Nov 17, 2011 08:11
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Doughbaron posted:Debate between former Drug Czar John Walters and Glenn Greenwald about drug legalization. Walters is an example of someone who's probably never been really exposed to contrary viewpoints on the issue of drug legalization. On some level I understand. It was his job to be the Drug Czar, after all, and in that position, factoring in the other governmental positions he has had previously you can get an idea of the kind of people he's been around his whole life and the kind of biases he's picked up that he doesn't even realize he has. I don't doubt that he genuinely was trying to do the right thing in his capacity as head of the ONDCP but he wouldn't have ended up with that job if his experiences hadn't shaped him to hold those views and made it unlikely that he would even be capable of fundamentally changing them by now. You can see it in the way he gets all confused about having to defend his views and holds latent hostility towards his audience, like he honestly can't envision that anyone would ever advocate legalization, which of course he can't. The best part is when he acknowledges that addicts are "not responsible for their behavior" in the same breath as defending putting people in jail because "they were guilty of *something*, possibly something *violent*, and the drug crime is just what they pled down to", which is how he handwaves away the otherwise uncomfortable fact that minorities and the poor are getting hit much more than they should if prosecution of the drug war was fair. The only way you could say such a thing is if you think that "those people" are inherently more violent and prone to crime and at the same time they're less able to conduct themselves properly under the influence of these evil drugs. So drug crimes are a regrettable necessity that gets those dangerous people off the streets and it is not racist and unfair that so many of them are minorities and poor people but simply a fact of life. And indeed that is his argument when it comes down to it, passive racism and all, interspersed with laughably transparent appeals to the students to say something if someone they know has a drug problem, which he clearly hoped would make them feel "empowered" and presumably more sympathetic. It's sad that what he probably got out of having gone to that debate was a healthy dislike of Glenn Greenwald and confusion/shock/horror at how unreasonable his audience of students was to him. comrade_sven fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Nov 18, 2011 |
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Nov 18, 2011 04:16
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Does anyone know if there is data available that shows for what reason nonviolent offenders are rearrested? Particularly, I am interested in data that would allow a comparison between first-time nonviolent offenders and seeing what percentage of those individuals go on to commit violent crime. (I am trying to gather empirical and/or statistical evidence of the Prisonization Effect, for what it's worth). Thanks - this thread has great information!
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Nov 25, 2011 18:25
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DuWay posted:Does anyone know if there is data available that shows for what reason nonviolent offenders are rearrested? Particularly, I am interested in data that would allow a comparison between first-time nonviolent offenders and seeing what percentage of those individuals go on to commit violent crime. (I am trying to gather empirical and/or statistical evidence of the Prisonization Effect, for what it's worth). Start here, may also want to check state DOC info, it can vary by state.
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Nov 27, 2011 03:21
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There's a federal probe going on right now of Pennsylvania's state prison in Pittsburgh (link). Currently the top front page article on HuffPo.
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Dec 2, 2011 06:12
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Doughbaron posted:Debate between former Drug Czar John Walters and Glenn Greenwald about drug legalization. John Walters along with anyone in the DEA is a sociopath. Their sole job is to destroy people's lives to the fullest extent of their legal power, and they get off on it. Anyone that isn't a sociopath, and has just an ounce of humility wouldn't be backing these draconian policies. Just because he concedes to a blatantly observable factual point that they're too many people in prison, doesn't mean that he instantly became reasonable. Everyone in politics during the time of prohibition, including prohibition agents realized that it was complete nonsense and backwards, but continued to back them because they were popular. If reasonable drug policy was established, their would be no need for people like John Walters. The policy is a lot deeper than having a drug czar because he's allowed to be in power because of the people. During prohibition, people that were against prohibition lost because the prohibition's "Tea Party" was so determined at voting them out. We have a lot of mentally ill people this country believe that drugs are the creation of supernatural being that lives in a smoke pit that reigns over people that did "bad" during their lifetime. These mentally ill people are the same people that believe that sticking someone in a cell and treating them like a animal for a lengthy period will "cure" them. Until this thinking changes, we will never have a reasonable drug policy in this country. The mentally ill are very organized, and they vote. They will continue to vote for people that take a hardline stance against drugs until these parasitic ideas die, if ever. OG KUSH BLUNTS fucked around with this message at 06:34 on Dec 2, 2011 |
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Dec 2, 2011 06:28
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I wanted to post in this thread because an old roommate of mine who is in the Alaskan Corrections System is trying to reconnect with people outside, so I thought I could share his story. My friend is a person who has a lot of mental health issues, and when I last saw him, we had to boot him from our apartment because his behavior was going to put us at risk of losing our lease. I've been able to speak to him over the phone for the past week or so, because he is in Anchorage on medical evaluation and his calls in town are free. He'll be leaving to go back to the maximum security correctional facility sometime this week, so I'm planning to visit him tomorrow. Speaking to him over the phone he has sounded more rational and clear minded than I have ever heard him in the time knowing him. I can only hope that he has made it through the system these last few years with the minimum number of horrific incidences that prison is notorious for. The worst thing I've heard from him so far is having to walk outside to the pharmaceutical dispensary in the cold and risking busting your rear end on the ice.
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Dec 13, 2011 05:28
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I'm surprised by the hate and bigotry in this reddit thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/nw2sw/til_transgender_prisoners_in_the_usa_are_housed/?sort=new The issue is important, even if the problem is a symptom of the overall failure. The ignorance is astounding. Also, is there an updated link for http://lf.dont-read.com/?p=51 ? Thanks.
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Dec 30, 2011 17:56
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KuNova posted:...surprised...hate and bigotry...reddit Don't be, it's reddit. There's a reason there's a D&D thread devoted entirely to deriding horrible opinions on Reddit.
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Dec 30, 2011 18:26
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KuNova posted:I'm surprised by the hate and bigotry in this reddit thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/nw2sw/til_transgender_prisoners_in_the_usa_are_housed/?sort=new Wow, every single post for page and pages is ignorance, even youtubes has some nuggets in the comments that aren't ignorant sometimes.
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Dec 30, 2011 21:35
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