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Do most simple assaults/batteries result in jail time? I mean I'm sure they can but do they?
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Dec 2, 2014 20:40
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Ditocoaf posted:Yes, surely there is no middle ground between complete destruction of your future prospects, and having everything be all smiles. so what would you suggest? I've already made clear that I support a liberal view of diversionary programs for first time drug offenders...which is a victimless crime. But how would you handle someone who commits an assault? (Btw...the conviction will hurt them more than the incarceration period will so far as employment prospects...)
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Dec 2, 2014 20:41
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The Warszawa posted:Do most simple assaults/batteries result in jail time? I mean I'm sure they can but do they? no. they don't. generally probation. especially if it's a first time offender. At least here, if you are serving time on a simple assault it's either because you're a repeat offender or you're a probation violation case...in both cases you've demonstrated that rehabilitation didn't work. (or you've plead down from a more serious charge) ActusRhesus fucked around with this message at 20:44 on Dec 2, 2014 |
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Dec 2, 2014 20:41
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ActusRhesus posted:no. they don't. generally probation. especially if it's a first time offender. That's what I thought but again, huge square. Talmonis it seems like the system has sort of incorporated your concerns - or rather, the remedies are discretionarily available but may be inequitably applied.
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Dec 2, 2014 20:44
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http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/new-york-rep-michael-grimm-threatens-reporter-asked-fundraising-allegations-article-1.1594857 This fine upstanding gentleman committed aggrevated assault on camera. I'm sure we'll hear of his impending arrest any day now. The Warszawa posted:
This is exactly the issue.
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Dec 2, 2014 20:46
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The Warszawa posted:That's what I thought but again, huge square. stop trying to inject reality into Talmonis's world where prosecutors tent their fingers and cackle every time a promising youth is sent away fro 20 to life for schoolyard fisticuffs.
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Dec 2, 2014 20:46
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ActusRhesus posted:stop trying to inject reality into Talmonis's world where prosecutors tent their fingers and cackle every time a promising youth is sent away fro 20 to life for schoolyard fisticuffs. "Schoolyard fisticuffs" gets a certain class of people shot and killed in reality, while the sainted prosectuor shrugs and lets the murderer walk.
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Dec 2, 2014 20:50
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ActusRhesus, do you think that there is any inequality with the way that different people of different races are treated by your particular section of the judicial system?
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Dec 2, 2014 20:50
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Talmonis I'm phone posting and probably not reading your posts are carefully as I ought to, so it's my mistake, but I thought your issue was that certain crimes across the board could result in incarceration/loss of livelihood, not that the system enforces inequitably.
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Dec 2, 2014 20:52
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Talmonis posted:http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/new-york-rep-michael-grimm-threatens-reporter-asked-fundraising-allegations-article-1.1594857 you keep moving the goalposts so often it's hard to tell what point you are trying to make. Is your point people should not be arrested for assault? That they should be arrested for assault? or that they should be arrested if you think it's ok? By the way...you might want to pick a better example...because Grimm is currently pending trial on much more serious charges.
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Dec 2, 2014 20:52
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This discussion has me wondering what the effects of barring employers from inquiring about criminal records would be?
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Dec 2, 2014 20:53
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The Warszawa posted:Talmonis I'm phone posting and probably not reading your posts are carefully as I ought to, so it's my mistake, but I thought your issue was that certain crimes across the board could result in incarceration/loss of livelihood, not that the system enforces inequitably. he keeps changing the goalposts to make his argument easier. As to the question, I'm not naïve enough to claim there is no racism anywhere in the country, there are no racist cops, and there are no racist prosecutors. Of course there are. However, in my particular jurisdiction, no. I'd say we do a pretty loving good job of staying even handed. The case we are currently throwing the most resources at is a Kennedy, for gently caress's sake.
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Dec 2, 2014 20:55
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Accretionist posted:This discussion has me wondering what the effects of barring employers from inquiring about criminal records would be? It should probably happen except for certain crimes and certain positions (I don't have a problem with the bar requiring disclosure of crimes of dishonesty, like fraud, or with daycares making sure that they're not hiring child molesters) but like any job qualification it should be pertinent to the position.
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Dec 2, 2014 20:56
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Accretionist posted:This discussion has me wondering what the effects of barring employers from inquiring about criminal records would be? I'd support this. If a person has done their time, they've done their time. The only time I think it may be relevant is if it's for a bonded or licensed position, and only if the conviction is relevant to the employer's bond/license/insurance. Example: a conviction for larceny is relevant if the job is for a cleaning lady who will have unsupervised access to people's homes. A conviction for child abuse is relevant if the job is in daycare. A conviction for DUI is not relevant to either of them. ActusRhesus fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Dec 2, 2014 |
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Dec 2, 2014 20:57
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Talmonis posted:"Schoolyard fisticuffs" gets a certain class of people shot and killed in reality, while the sainted prosectuor shrugs and lets the murderer walk. please elaborate on this statement. You make these glib pronouncements, but then don't explain them, leaving others to guess at whatever it is you mean. Which murderer is being allowed to "Walk"? How does a schoolyard fight get someone killed. If you're going to make assertions like these, you need to explain them. ActusRhesus fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Dec 2, 2014 |
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Dec 2, 2014 21:01
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The Warszawa posted:Talmonis I'm phone posting and probably not reading your posts are carefully as I ought to, so it's my mistake, but I thought your issue was that certain crimes across the board could result in incarceration/loss of livelihood, not that the system enforces inequitably. It's both, to be honest. Conviction is a scarlet letter in this country, and it needs to be dealt with. It's especially bad when applied to poor people, and the worst when applied to poor people of color. Conviction needs to be reformed, particularly for first time offenses. The discretion isn't used, it's tossed aside in favor of plea bargains for that easy win. Better to threaten with more severe charges (with those delicious minimums), to get them to just plea out, right ActusRhesus?
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Dec 2, 2014 21:13
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Talmonis posted:It's both, to be honest. Conviction is a scarlet letter in this country, and it needs to be dealt with. It's especially bad when applied to poor people, and the worst when applied to poor people of color. Conviction needs to be reformed, particularly for first time offenses. The discretion isn't used, it's tossed aside in favor of plea bargains for that easy win. Better to threaten with more severe charges (with those delicious minimums), to get them to just plea out, right ActusRhesus? plea bargains usually work to the benefit of the defendant. Hate to break it to you. It's not "going for the easy win," it's "I have better things to do with my time than try this case so if he's willing to take 5 after 10 instead of risking 20 to serve, I'm cool with that." I would suggest you actually hang out in a prosecutor or PDs office and get a sense of how things actually happen. The hard cases are the ones that do end up going to trial because the defendant is willing to roll the dice. Do you really think there's this mustache twirling cabal of prosecutors who delight in the idea of locking up an innocent person to improve their win loss record?
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Dec 2, 2014 21:16
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ActusRhesus posted:he keeps changing the goalposts to make his argument easier. Do you think that the racial disparities that exist in each level of the judicial system only came about as the results of specific individual racists acting to bring about those disparities?
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Dec 2, 2014 21:18
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ActusRhesus posted:Do you really think there's this mustache twirling cabal of prosecutors who delight in the idea of locking up an innocent person to improve their win loss record? Yes
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Dec 2, 2014 21:19
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Actus, the issue with racism is that it takes one person handling the case to have an unconscious bias - the cop, the prosecutor, the judge - and the result is tainted. Don't be ridiculous. Mustaches went out of style decades ago.
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Dec 2, 2014 21:21
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Evil people have goatees now
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Dec 2, 2014 21:24
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The Warszawa posted:Actus, the issue with racism is that it takes one person handling the case to have an unconscious bias - the cop, the prosecutor, the judge - and the result is tainted. I agree with that. And those people should be removed. However, one can agree that racists have no place in law enforcement and the legal system, and support any and all efforts to eliminate the same, without also believing that everyone in the system is a racist and the prisons are chock full of innocent people.
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Dec 2, 2014 21:25
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e: nm, misread the subtext of an above post
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Dec 2, 2014 21:26
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ActusRhesus posted:you keep moving the goalposts so often it's hard to tell what point you are trying to make. Is your point people should not be arrested for assault? That they should be arrested for assault? or that they should be arrested if you think it's ok? My point is that only a certain class of people are ever arrested for assault. Your prior glib statement was having your life ruined by a felony conviction is being held responsible for your actions. Where is Mr. Grimm's trial for this affront? Why aren't you and your fellows clamoring for his immediate arrest for a slam dunk case? ActusRhesus posted:please elaborate on this statement. You make these glib pronouncements, but then don't explain them, leaving others to guess at whatever it is you mean. Which murderer is being allowed to "Walk"? How does a schoolyard fight get someone killed. If you're going to make assertions like these, you need to explain them. There are two high profile cases that involve young men of color being shot to death for the pant-making GBS threads fear of their mighty fisticuffs. Strangely, neither of which had prosecutors who wanted to do their job.
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Dec 2, 2014 21:27
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ActusRhesus posted:I agree with that. And those people should be removed. However, one can agree that racists have no place in law enforcement and the legal system, and support any and all efforts to eliminate the same, without also believing that everyone in the system is a racist and the prisons are chock full of innocent people. What if no one in law enforcement and the legal system were racist, but local and federal legislatures passed laws that contained systematically racist elements? Wouldn't there still be problems then, even if every police officer, prosecutor and judge in the country were acting with the best of intentions? Maybe racism in America is too pervasive across all portions of society and government for individuals with good intentions to have any kind of larger positive impact, no matter how many of them there are.
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Dec 2, 2014 21:32
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Talmonis posted:My point is that only a certain class of people are ever arrested for assault. Your prior glib statement was having your life ruined by a felony conviction is being held responsible for your actions. Where is Mr. Grimm's trial for this affront? Why aren't you and your fellows clamoring for his immediate arrest for a slam dunk case? You may want to pick a better straw man. Grimm is currently pending trial, last I checked.
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Dec 2, 2014 21:35
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ActusRhesus posted:You may want to pick a better straw man. Grimm is currently pending trial, last I checked. Just as a matter of principle, I don't know if a scattershot "he goes down for something" should be perceived as acceptable - if you're holding someone accountable, there aren't substitutes. He gets punished in accordance with X, he gets punished in accordance with Y.
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Dec 2, 2014 21:36
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ActusRhesus posted:You may want to pick a better straw man. Grimm is currently pending trial, last I checked. Not for assault. Nor are the Palin clan for brawling with other locals. Now why could that be?
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Dec 2, 2014 21:37
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The Warszawa posted:Actus, the issue with racism is that it takes one person handling the case to have an unconscious bias - the cop, the prosecutor, the judge - and the result is tainted. I've been wondering lately how much of it really is actually caused by the economic result of systemic racism. Clearly not all of, but I don't think think the class issue (with the cycle of poverty inflicted on minorities being a direct cause) and its intersection with inequalities in the justice system gets examined enough. Probably because its way easier to jump to blaming the actors in the criminal justice system then examining a pervasive societal problem. Likewise how much racism against blacks is not so much a result of prejudices that blacks are criminals, but rather prejudices that blacks are poor, and then prejudice against the lower class being attached to them. Obviously not all of it, but I think it plays into the issue and I'm curious how much. To be clear I'm not saying that the problem is classism instead of racism, what I'm speculating about is the nature of the racism.
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Dec 2, 2014 21:38
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GhostofJohnMuir posted:What if no one in law enforcement and the legal system were racist, but local and federal legislatures passed laws that contained systematically racist elements? Wouldn't there still be problems then, even if every police officer, prosecutor and judge in the country were acting with the best of intentions? Maybe racism in America is too pervasive across all portions of society and government for individuals with good intentions to have any kind of larger positive impact, no matter how many of them there are. Valid points. My issue here is that this is an incredibly complex issue that is woven into the fabric of our society. Racism is real. No one can deny that. But turning prosecutors into brown people hating boogeymen and saying things that are objectively not true distract from discussions we could be having on how to actually...you know...address institutional racism, which by its very name - "institutional" - suggests that it is not a matter of one person "ruining lives." This, however, would also require an honest discussion of the disproportionate rates of minority victims, and the disproportionate rates of minority offenders. Since we all know (or should know) that there is nothing that, genetically, makes a minority more predisposed to crime, why the disparity? Socio-economic factors, I would argue, which means that to address the disparity in minority prison populations we need to do more than scream about how prosecutors and cops apparently just have nothing better to do than lock up minorities, or making the disingenuous claim that prisons are full of the wrongfully accused, but address what it is in our society that keeps minorities socio-economically disadvantaged and therefore more likely to end up on the wrong side of the law. It's not a race issue, it's a economic status issue with a race overtone because minorities are disproportionately represented in the lower economic classes. But this is, you know, hard. So just keep yelling gently caress the police.
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Dec 2, 2014 21:42
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The Warszawa posted:Just as a matter of principle, I don't know if a scattershot "he goes down for something" should be perceived as acceptable - if you're holding someone accountable, there aren't substitutes. He gets punished in accordance with X, he gets punished in accordance with Y. what he's going down for is way more serious than shoving a reporter, though. If he were a different case and that were added on, the prosecutor would be being accused of stacking the charges.
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Dec 2, 2014 21:43
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Talmonis posted:Not for assault. Nor are the Palin clan for brawling with other locals. Now why could that be?
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Dec 2, 2014 21:44
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The Warszawa posted:Totally relevant stuff I just meant that I wasn't trying to say that you were wrong about it being a gray area, and that I thought of it differently. I'm no stranger to arguing.  And yeah, I do absolutely understand where your gray comes from. I certainly don't think it's a good thing to allow law enforcement to use secondary issues to cast dragnets, and I definitely do see the other side of the coin in that too much clamping down could be abused (heaven forbid anyone try to say you can't run an arrestee's prints based on some bright-line "rule"). I just lean more toward wondering if we would see a decrease in harassment for petty/non-victimizing criminal violations if the cops had to prove that they weren't using that enforcement, at that time, to make an end run around PC for the greater crime they were really going for. (I also think it's kind of sad that TV crime shows tend to treat this as "smart cops getting 'r done" rather than "potential 'general warrant' territory", not to mention the lionizing of 4A violations that keeps getting pushed in so much popular crime fiction.) EDIT: Not to get too tangential, but I wonder how pervasive "crime drama" is in the popular opinion of police action. I know I've personally had to inform a few people that Horatio Caine is not a good role model for an aspiring cop, SVU is nearly a how-to guide for running a corrupt office, and that if they think that either of those shows indicates how things should be happening they are part of the problem. Kugyou no Tenshi fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Dec 2, 2014 |
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Dec 2, 2014 21:56
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Grimm didn't assault anyone and I don't think anyone bothered to press charges against any of the Palins. I'm going to clue you in on something, the vast majority of empty threats and drunken party punch-ups don't bring the long arm of the law down on anybody. He threatened to throw a reporter off a balcony and said he'd break him in half. I'm sure if the tables were turned and someone got up in a congressman's face and did the same, nothing would have happened.
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Dec 2, 2014 21:56
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hobotrashcanfires posted:He threatened to throw a reporter off a balcony and said he'd break him in half. Now we wouldn't want to stack charges!
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Dec 2, 2014 21:58
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ActusRhesus posted:Valid points. My issue here is that this is an incredibly complex issue that is woven into the fabric of our society. Racism is real. No one can deny that. But turning prosecutors into brown people hating boogeymen and saying things that are objectively not true distract from discussions we could be having on how to actually...you know...address institutional racism, which by its very name - "institutional" - suggests that it is not a matter of one person "ruining lives." This, however, would also require an honest discussion of the disproportionate rates of minority victims, and the disproportionate rates of minority offenders. Since we all know (or should know) that there is nothing that, genetically, makes a minority more predisposed to crime, why the disparity? Socio-economic factors, I would argue, which means that to address the disparity in minority prison populations we need to do more than scream about how prosecutors and cops apparently just have nothing better to do than lock up minorities, or making the disingenuous claim that prisons are full of the wrongfully accused, but address what it is in our society that keeps minorities socio-economically disadvantaged and therefore more likely to end up on the wrong side of the law. It's not a race issue, it's a economic status issue with a race overtone because minorities are disproportionately represented in the lower economic classes. But this is, you know, hard. So just keep yelling gently caress the police. A black person who commits and gets convicted of the exact same crime as a white person will on average receive a harsher sentence. Socioeconomic factors are not the only reason for racial disparities in our judicial system.
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Dec 2, 2014 21:58
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hobotrashcanfires posted:He threatened to throw a reporter off a balcony and said he'd break him in half.
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Dec 2, 2014 22:05
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CheesyDog posted:Now we wouldn't want to stack charges! I'm not sure you understand what I actually said, so let me spell it out for you. If random minority defendant is charged with major felony and extra petty misdemeanors are added on, people in this forum would scream foul. (And I'd agree. It's a chicken poo poo way to charge.) Here, though, you have a guy who's been indicted for some pretty serious federal charges and you're whining he's not also being charged for yelling at a reporter who, so far as I can tell, is not asking for charges to be brought. Not sure I see the injustice, here. And I guarantee arguing for the inclusion of every...single...known violation on a charging document would not work out well for most defendants, black or white.
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Dec 2, 2014 22:07
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Rent-A-Cop posted:An assault generally has to actually cause a person fear. Was the reporter afraid? Did he press any charges? Sending the justice system hunting for every rear end in a top hat who throws out an "I'mma gently caress you up son!" would have the courts full till judgement day. It's true that he declined to press charges. However sending the justice system hunting for assholes and congressmen who threaten to throw reporters off of balconies for doing their job, would not, in fact, have the courts full till judgement day. Especially ones who do it on camera just to make things abundantly clear. Seems like just the thing to utilize the justice system in order to deter such behavior.
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Dec 2, 2014 22:12
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If a sitting congressman and former FBI agent (who is apparently dirty enough to be facing federal charges later on) threatened my well-being I would have a reasonable fear. Guess that's just me, and that I should feel more threatened leaving an office building when it's dark outside.
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Dec 2, 2014 22:14
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