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Positive Optimyst posted:I have no criminal record and hence have done not time. But I hear/read that County is much more difficult that actually doing state prison time. Plus not a large yards (in many jails, there isn't even really a yard), so limited opportunities to get outside and not feel like a rat in a cage. Many jails still have 23 hour lockdowns. The food is loving terrible in county, even compared to prison. --- Also, most COs are just newly hired sheriffs who need to get time before they hit the streets. They don't want to do this, and they are less experienced. There are experienced people in jail who want to do that, but they are often supervisors or people in more removed positions, not the person you deal with daily. nm fucked around with this message at 21:45 on Jul 14, 2012 |
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Jul 14, 2012 21:43
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Actually, it basically is a law of economics at this point. Gary Becker has been studying this sort of thing and found that there's a weighing of the possible punishment, the chances of getting caught, and the reward. On the other side, there's the costs involved in hiring police, investigating crimes, and building prisons. Both sides are ultimately economic decisions. And, at the same point, you can't prevent all crime through deterrence OR prevention. Standard deterrence theory rests on the the three primary characteristics of formal sanctions: certainty, celerity, and severity. Theoretically, the more likely you are to be caught, the speed in which sanctions will be enforced, and severity of those sanctions determine how much they will deter criminal activity. The problem is that rational choice theory (of which deterrence theory is more-or-less as subset) runs off a couple absolutely retarded assumptions; the least of which is that people will always act within a rational framework (the second, less supported assumption--and the basis of our criminal system--being that the rational choice paradigm is relatively consistent throughout the general population). Of course, when you check into poo poo involving drugs or alcohol, rational choice theory falls apart because people no longer behave rationally when drunk or high. And guess what the most common factor spanning all violent crimes is? You guessed it: alcohol. There's a reason rational choice theory was dead by the early 20th century. It only made it's recent resurgence in the 70s-80s because of the implosion of the political and social climate in the U.S.
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Jul 15, 2012 12:42
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A pro-death penalty Tory MP went to Florida to have a gander at capital punishment in action. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18858496 "I just want to commend you on your prison regime, which I actually think is what the British public, if they could sit down and design their own regime, I think this is what they'd design. I genuinely do".  Don't feel obliged to let him on the plane back.
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Jul 16, 2012 17:01
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Private Eye posted:"I just want to commend you on your prison regime, which I actually think is what the British public, if they could sit down and design their own regime, I think this is what they'd design. I genuinely do". Actually he's probably right, because trying to organize a justice system by appealing to the horse sense of the general public is stupid and results in a race to the bottom pursuing ever more severe punishments. The effort to appeal to voters by being tough on crime is a big part of why the American system is so totally hosed up. I think three strikes laws, which people were just discussing, are the best example of something that's good politics but ridiculously bad policy. I mean, think about it from different angles. Would the British public mandate life sentences or maybe castration for paedophiles, if they were allowed to design their own regime? Maybe. Let's study that possibility. Give the people what they want.
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Jul 17, 2012 02:05
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EvanSchenck posted:Actually he's probably right, because trying to organize a justice system by appealing to the horse sense of the general public is stupid and results in a race to the bottom pursuing ever more severe punishments. The effort to appeal to voters by being tough on crime is a big part of why the American system is so totally hosed up. I think three strikes laws, which people were just discussing, are the best example of something that's good politics but ridiculously bad policy. Isn't popular opinion on the death penalty in Europe generally around 50% anyway? I've read this in a bunch of places before and a quick search shows that in the UK support for the death penalty does hover around 50%.
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Jul 17, 2012 02:23
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Feds: Mississippi county runs 'school-to-prison pipeline' http://edition.cnn.com/2012/08/10/us/mississippi-juvenile-justice/index.html?hpt=hp_c1
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Aug 11, 2012 21:26
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Feds: Mississippi county runs 'school-to-prison pipeline' This has been going on for a while now, but it looks like Mississippi has taken it to a new level. quote:The alleged mistreatment included youngsters being "crammed into small, filthy cells and tormented with the arbitrary use of Mace as a punishment for even the most minor infractions -- such as 'talking too much' And to make it as plain as I can - these are highschool kids who have been thrown in jail for playing up at school.
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Aug 12, 2012 04:15
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EvanSchenck posted:Actually he's probably right, because trying to organize a justice system by appealing to the horse sense of the general public is stupid and results in a race to the bottom pursuing ever more severe punishments. The effort to appeal to voters by being tough on crime is a big part of why the American system is so totally hosed up. I think three strikes laws, which people were just discussing, are the best example of something that's good politics but ridiculously bad policy. This is exactly my own experience. The public at large, unfortunately, is a terrible place to look for advice as to what should be done with criminals. Maybe 1 out of 50 people I talk to about crime & punishment think that Sandusky should've just be shot in the street because hey, cheap and efficient. If I show people the data from the Netherlands vs Canada or the U.S., most do not even care. "We can do it our own way and get the same results if we just try harder," is the best sort of reaction I can expect to get most of the time. "I don't want THOSE PEOPLE sitting in a resort watching TV! I want punishment!" In this case, THOSE PEOPLE isn't even being used in the racist sense (most of the time, anyway). Any criminal is just a 'THEM', as if breaking the law somehow morphed them into alien monsters. People never think that they themselves might one day have to face the criminal justice system, whether rightly or wrongly accused of a crime.
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Aug 12, 2012 05:41
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The Ender posted:This is exactly my own experience. The public at large, unfortunately, is a terrible place to look for advice as to what should be done with criminals. Maybe 1 out of 50 people I talk to about crime & punishment think that Sandusky should've just be shot in the street because hey, cheap and efficient. I can't say that I'd be sad to see Sandusky shot in the middle of the street, based on what he's done, but at the same time I have come to realize that public policy cannot be built on exceptional cases, and we must err on the side of caution. Regardless of what society wants, the criminal justice system must work to purge itself of emotion and only consider that which is objectively best for society. Unfortunately, that's a far too nuanced position for the average person to accept.
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Aug 12, 2012 08:21
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PT6A posted:Unfortunately, that's a far too nuanced position for the average person to accept. I watched a documentary about a tribal peoples who, at the time of their filming, were the most backward on the planet. They were a collection of tribes located in Papua New Guinea who believed that sex didn't cause pregnancy so much as it simply opened the woman up to receive forest spirits - spirits whose proclivity for entry (through the butt, no less) was such that the women wore grass skirts, barriers to these spirits, to prevent unwanted pregnancy. Another man reported that his father had become ill and died consequent to leaning over swirling water thus exposing himself to bad air - so be careful up here, okay white man? These weren't beliefs so much as they were simply a certain knowing of how the world worked. This is the kind of knowledge which arises from the human gut, and it's gut instinct which underlies prison policy in this country. Radd McCool fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Aug 12, 2012 |
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Aug 12, 2012 17:47
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I don't know if this has been attempted already, but I made a petition regarding for-profit prisons at noted pointless petition site https://www.whitehouse.gov. I feel the very least that is deserved is a dismissive essay on how nothing can be done. http://wh.gov/gBdo
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Aug 12, 2012 21:31
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Radd McCool posted:I think the biggest lie in politics is that gut instinct is enough to understand the world. I agree that the gut isn't a good place to go to make policy decisions, but I think the problem is we're not talking about the same thing as tough-on-criminals types. We're trying to have a conversation about lowering crime rates and getting the most out of our dollars put into the justice system, and all they want to talk about is what they think criminals deserve to have happen to them. I think they might, maybe, believe harsh punishment deters criminal behaviour, but I don't think it would really matter all that much if they found out that it didn't. That Mississippi poo poo is terrifying though, I'm really psyched that the Canadian government is so enthused with the way you do corrections in the States that we want to emulate it up here.
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Aug 13, 2012 02:05
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Zone of Danger posted:That Mississippi poo poo is terrifying though, I'm really psyched that the Canadian government is so enthused with the way you do corrections in the States that we want to emulate it up here. A bunch of conservative Texan lawmakers told the Canadian government it doesn't work either, but nope, better go ahead and pass the law anyway. At least our Supreme Court doesn't suck.
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Aug 13, 2012 19:26
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A little good news: After media attention and an ACLU letter, the DOJ has amended its policy of blocking the release of North Carolina residents who were convicted of a federal weapons offense under erroneous law.
Gazpacho fucked around with this message at 14:48 on Aug 15, 2012 |
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Aug 15, 2012 14:39
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I don't know where else to complain about this. I've watched cops since the 80s, and in the 80s/90s, the cops were all really nice (generally) and wanted to help people. In every single episode that I've watched in the past 5 years or so, they seem to be arresting innocent people, and abusing them for absolutely no reason. E.g. guy gets pulled over (is obviously of color), cops throw him out of the car, "find" drugs, he "is" a felon, he goes to jail without trial, cops say "he has no civil rights because he's a felon."
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Aug 21, 2012 01:01
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JoeyJoJoJr Shabadoo posted:I don't know where else to complain about this. I've watched cops since the 80s, and in the 80s/90s, the cops were all really nice (generally) and wanted to help people. In every single episode that I've watched in the past 5 years or so, they seem to be arresting innocent people, and abusing them for absolutely no reason. E.g. guy gets pulled over (is obviously of color), cops throw him out of the car, "find" drugs, he "is" a felon, he goes to jail without trial, cops say "he has no civil rights because he's a felon." It might be just a general wising up to what is going on and situational awareness. Police abuse occured back then, but maybe the culture surrounding the show tried to change with the times. Maybe people stopped wanting to see good cops doin stuff and instead wanted to watch the riot cops crack some skulls. I know I've been around people who will holler at the TV for the cops to gently caress some guy up for drinking in his front yard after they just got done drinking in their front yard. Or maybe poo poo is just getting worse and worse.
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Aug 21, 2012 01:17
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Has anyone done a good study on the increase of police brutality following the drastic increase of emphasis on 'otherization' in police attitude? It seems to me that not only has the average cop on the beat been increasingly armed militarily but they have also become more and more detached from the people they are supposed to protect.
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Aug 21, 2012 01:18
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Has anyone done a good study on the increase of police brutality following the drastic increase of emphasis on 'otherization' in police attitude? It seems to me that not only has the average cop on the beat been increasingly armed militarily but they have also become more and more detached from the people they are supposed to protect. It's important to note in which part of the country you're referring to. Towns with a population in only the hundreds would have a comparatively smaller police force (perhaps just a Sheriff and a deputy) and where the officers would know just about everyone that lived in town. But in response to you're question, that trend seems to be escalating particularly in urbanized areas of the country, and I would argue that the increase in armament is necessary as criminals have access to all sorts of automatic fire. Also, found a website you might be interested in: http://www.policemisconduct.net/2010-q1-npmsrp-police-misconduct-statistical-report/
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Aug 21, 2012 03:31
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Sotore posted:I would argue that the increase in armament is necessary as criminals have access to all sorts of automatic fire.
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Aug 21, 2012 03:39
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Kugyou no Tenshi posted:How many incidents would you say occur each year in which police have to deal with someone who possesses an automatic weapon? Just curious, since it's the linchpin of your argument there. An increase in police armaments was in part a response to incidents such as the North Hollywood bank robbery, but I have a really, really, really hard time believe that on balance the proliferation of military weapons and tactics among parts of the police has saved rather than cost lives (even counting only the lives of people innocent of crime (even counting only the lives of people not even intentionally accused of crime)) on balance.
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Aug 21, 2012 09:58
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eSports Chaebol posted:An increase in police armaments was in part a response to incidents such as the North Hollywood bank robbery, but I have a really, really, really hard time believe that on balance the proliferation of military weapons and tactics among parts of the police has saved rather than cost lives (even counting only the lives of people innocent of crime (even counting only the lives of people not even intentionally accused of crime)) on balance. If we're not actually dealing with a greater increase of automatic weaponry on the part of criminals, then the wholescale militarization of police departments seems like a disproportionate response to a very small number of incidents. I'm not, for the record, saying that police departments have no need of well-equipped and well-trained response teams, but when you're seeing cops showing up to protests in full military or riot gear, or looking at police departments that use tanks for drug busts (hi Sheriff Joe!), it seems pretty hosed up.
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Aug 21, 2012 21:56
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Kugyou no Tenshi posted:That's kind of what I was getting at. Sotore's argument seems to be that criminals have "all sorts of" automatic weapons, which would in turn indicate that "all sorts of" firearm-related crimes in which officers are involved involve automatic weapons possessed by criminals, and I would like to see the numbers on that - or even the numbers on how many crimes are committed with automatic weapons, period. It's a flat statement of fact that needs evidentiary support to be remotely valid. Pretty much this. Actual automatic weapons are incredibly rare in crime and were even during the peak of it in the 80s and early 90s. Even criminals having other than handguns or the occasional shotgun is far from typical, and most of those still aren't so heavily armed that any special escalation of force is really needed. Dealing with those freak events can be left to smaller response teams, and even without them concealable vests and modern pistols leave modern police a lot more capable in a dangerous situation than decades ago where they'd have a shirt and a .38 special, without going into the whole commando look and attitude. On a level I can sympathize. If I was going to go into situations where I might get shot at as part of my job, I'd want the full armor, helmet, rifle, what have you. But at the same time, this is generally a case where the risk is overstated, while the attitude and being conveyed is a more certain harm. It's likewise understandable that even non-abusive police might want greater leeway dealing with suspects and reduced public scrutiny while doing so, but the reasons not to allow this are stronger.
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Aug 21, 2012 22:13
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Down Right Fierce posted:It might be just a general wising up to what is going on and situational awareness. Police abuse occured back then, but maybe the culture surrounding the show tried to change with the times. Maybe people stopped wanting to see good cops doin stuff and instead wanted to watch the riot cops crack some skulls. I know I've been around people who will holler at the TV for the cops to gently caress some guy up for drinking in his front yard after they just got done drinking in their front yard. Yeah, I don't know whether it is the producers deciding "let's show what REALLY happens," or if cops really are getting worse and worse. Obviously they want ratings, too, and so to get that they have to do Maury-style tv, and like you said, "crack some skulls." Should people going to jail/prison really be that kind of TV? Now that I think about it I'm pretty disgusted.
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Aug 22, 2012 02:18
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Hey, it's entertaining and seems harmless as long as you don't recognize that anyone involved is actually human. The Hunger Games are a lot closer than everyone thinks.
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Aug 22, 2012 04:58
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nm posted:What exactly is an 18 year old going to learn with 100+ year jail sentence? To be a good person when he is 150 years old upon release? He'd be lucky to get 3 months where I live. Our crime rate is lower , btw.
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Aug 22, 2012 20:43
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A lot of Americans I talk to about prison sentencing in my country (Denmark) become really confused when I mention that sentences are not served consecutively. If you're sentenced to three life sentences, it only comes out to one effectively, and that's not "for life" either, you're eligble for parole after 12 years. The longest sentence I know of was Palle Sørensen who was released after 33 years for killing 4 police officers. Incarceration has increasingly moved away from punitive punishment to rehabilitation. Inmates have access to education and full access to libraries around the country if they want to read something. Of course there are problems in prisons with certain inmates but by and large we have well functioning prisons that seek to rehabilitate their inmates. We even have a system where, for certain crimes, you can ask to serve it later rather than now. For example its somewhat common for people to serve short sentences for non-violent crimes during their work holidays. Honestly, looking at the crime rates between the US and most European countries and comparing the prisons. It's a completely alien idea to me why the US would persist in with theirs. The social damage it causes is well documented and crime rates have been static or rising for decades.
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Aug 23, 2012 12:51
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Demiurge4 posted:A lot of Americans I talk to about prison sentencing in my country (Denmark) become really confused when I mention that sentences are not served consecutively. If you're sentenced to three life sentences, it only comes out to one effectively, and that's not "for life" either, you're eligble for parole after 12 years. The longest sentence I know of was Palle Sørensen who was released after 33 years for killing 4 police officers. Well, one of the answers is that a lot of americans consider us danes as EVIL SCARY SOCIALIsTS. Which is funny, because it's also starting to bleed into our own media.
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Aug 23, 2012 21:19
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Demiurge4 posted:A lot of Americans I talk to about prison sentencing in my country (Denmark) become really confused when I mention that sentences are not served consecutively. A lot of American sentences are served concurrently as well.
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Aug 23, 2012 21:45
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Demiurge4 posted:Honestly, looking at the crime rates between the US and most European countries and comparing the prisons. It's a completely alien idea to me why the US would persist in with theirs. The social damage it causes is well documented and crime rates have been static or rising for decades. If you mean in the US, the last part isn't true at all. Crime rates, especially violent crime but property crime as well, have dropped sharply in the last twenty years. In absolute terms, crime is back down to mid-1970s numbers. But that's not accounting for the hundred million people added to the population since then: if you go by per capita rates, US crime hasn't been so low since the 1960s. This isn't disagreeing with the rest: there's not a lot of indication that the punishment-happy attitude in the US was what drove that drop, while the evidence of the social harm it does is much clearer. And the war on drugs specifically? Absolute failure. It's just that any perception of crime being as bad or worse than it used to be is more due to the twenty years of falling crime also being the same time frame that popularized the 24 hour news network and its love fear-driven storytelling.
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Aug 23, 2012 22:12
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It's also true, though, that comparing crime rates between countries is pretty meaningless, at least in aggregate. Crime rates are reflective of reporting and conviction rates, which are often the result of having first world judicial and police systems capable of arresting and prosecuting criminals and maintaining complete and accurate statistics. Crime statistics are also dependent on what is considered a crime in different countries, on different methods of recording statistics in different jurisdictions, and on a population's willingness to contact authorities when a crime has been committed. That's why "per capita crime rate by country" lists, such as this one, have so many first world countries at the top. It's not that New Zealand, Finland, and Denmark are really the second, third, and fourth most crime-ridden countries, it's that when someone commits a crime in those countries they are more likely to be caught and convicted for it, and the crime and the conviction are more likely to be reported and thus reflected in the country's crime statistics. Different definitions of crimes and differing enforcement decisions will also affect the statistics--the Netherlands is likely to have a lower rate of drug crime and prostitution, not because people don't use and distribute drugs there, or engage in prostitution, but because those crimes are not pursued as heavily there. Rape is another example--the US and other first world countries frequently show up as having extremely high rape rates, but that is a result of those countries employing a broader definition of rape and maintaining better reporting statistics. That's not even getting into the problem of determining causation--is a higher crime rate the result of different sentencing, or is it the result of different gun laws, wealth distribution, drug laws, education rates, cultural factors, urbanization, demographics, etc., etc.? Sir John Falstaff fucked around with this message at 09:20 on Aug 24, 2012 |
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Aug 24, 2012 03:38
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HMDK posted:Well, one of the answers is that a lot of americans consider us danes as EVIL SCARY SOCIALIsTS. Which is funny, because it's also starting to bleed into our own media. It's funny now. Tell me how funny it is when they start privatising your prisons.
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Aug 24, 2012 11:54
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Orange Devil posted:It's funny now. Tell me how funny it is when they start privatising your prisons. I was being sarcastic. I don't find it funny at all.
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Aug 24, 2012 16:22
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HMDK posted:I was being sarcastic. I don't find it funny at all. Don't worry, if it's anything like the US most people won't even know that their prisons are being privatised.
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Aug 24, 2012 23:48
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Demiurge4 posted:Honestly, looking at the crime rates between the US and most European countries and comparing the prisons. It's a completely alien idea to me why the US would persist in with theirs. The social damage it causes is well documented and crime rates have been static or rising for decades. What's really scary is that social damage is a feature of the system for a large portion of America. Seriously, people enjoy the suffering that prisons bring.
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Aug 25, 2012 19:07
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Which was pretty evident when many people were calling for that Norweigen killer to be raped pretty much constantly for the 21 years of his sentence (potentially more if he's still considered to be a threat to society) then shot as soon as he stepped out.
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Aug 25, 2012 22:17
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It really is a massive divide in society. At its simplest, one part wants to live in a world where we help each other. The other wants a world based on suffering.
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Aug 26, 2012 04:40
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This seems relevant: "This year a black person has died on average every 40 hours at the hands of a police officer or — though to a lesser extent — a security guard or vigilante. In 1892, when lynchings reached their peak in the United States, a black person was strung up on average every 54 hours."
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Aug 26, 2012 23:08
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I honestly can't believe how barbaric and capitalist the American prison system is. I am not proud or bragging but when I was younger I served 15 months in a catagory B prison in London. I was not in for anything violent just copyright theft, I was selling fake DVD's on ebay fo about a year. I had a playstation, a VCR, a colour tv and a little cleaning job so I was able to buy some goodies at the end of each week. We had a nice menu to choose from for dinner, I would go and get my food and take it back to my cell and eat it whilst watching the tv. I was really scared of going to prison at first but once I was there dare I say it, I actually really enjoyed it and it wouldn't bother me in the slightest if I had to go back, not that I plan to anytime soon.
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Aug 27, 2012 09:36
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British Tim posted:I honestly can't believe how barbaric and capitalist the American prison system is. I am not proud or bragging but when I was younger I served 15 months in a catagory B prison in London. I was not in for anything violent just copyright theft, I was selling fake DVD's on ebay fo about a year. I had a playstation, a VCR, a colour tv and a little cleaning job so I was able to buy some goodies at the end of each week. We had a nice menu to choose from for dinner, I would go and get my food and take it back to my cell and eat it whilst watching the tv. I was really scared of going to prison at first but once I was there dare I say it, I actually really enjoyed it and it wouldn't bother me in the slightest if I had to go back, not that I plan to anytime soon. Clearly shows you were not raped enough and it didn't work 
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Aug 27, 2012 09:41
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dreamin' posted:Clearly shows you were not raped enough and it didn't work
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Aug 27, 2012 09:49
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