Good point. But neither is prison. Maybe they get to choose: pay money or get flogged. $500 per whack.
If revolt is the product of societal laws then that revolt should be matched level for level.. Giving in to disobedience just empowers more for greater and lesser desires. See children, screaming for something they want, give in and it has learned that screaming for something results in reward..
No criminal justice system will ever be perfect, but justice only requires a fair trial. Justice does not require a correct verdict though that should be a goal.
Like I say, my experience! Even in the worst case, the courts are very positive about first offenses.
I agree with that. The system needs radical reform. Fast fair trials and no plea deals would be far more effective and just.
Im conflicted on this. Fines going to LE encentivise things like speed traps, but could also encentivise LE enforcing prohibited persons who knowingly try to buy guns, if that were made a fineable offense. Fines going to corrections create a self-sustaining system, so long as LE dilligently enforce fines. I think traffic fines should go to education, gun fines should go to LE and dissorderly type fines should support prisons... but thats perhaps too complicated. There is always an argument for simplicity...
That explains everything why California's jails and prisons are full of brown people from south of the border....free stuff.
More likely most people, rather than assume they will not be caught, conduct a risk analysis which as defined by Wikipedia is "determines possible mishaps, their likelihood and consequences, and the tolerances for such events."
It would be nice if funds flowing into government were directed toward doing good. You know, like the Social Security "Lock Box". But the money usually eventually goes into political slush funds.
AOC is late to the ball. The Trump administration just led the way on a big prison reform bill which was signed into law last December, and will cause the release of 53 thousand prisoners over the next ten years. https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/congress/article223414935.html
Ha! Do you really believe that...? Those animals were kept in a 'readiness' state at all times, but the German police didn't want them to just go nuts on anybody -- only on CRIMINALS. And, they did a very good job of that -- but unfortunately, the Nazis didn't restrict their activities to the apprehension of REAL criminals, and that's why we had to defeat them. But as a police force? They were quite good at what they did. Real crime in the Third Reich in Germany was almost non-existent....
And besides technology advances, what is required is humans of conscience. Humans interested in finding justice and truth.
It is a personal choice whether to be politically correct or not. I understand how it works, but I do not usually participate in political correctness. I try to be respectful to all, but I refuse to play the PC game. You can do it too.
I appreciate your finer points, but just where did I advocate for the abolition of prison? My position is clear, and always has been: Prison is useful and necessary to keep predators away from society. However our present methods greatly misuse and abuse prison. There are other ways to punish those who break the law besides prison, many other ways. Just as a good dog can be made vicious by keeping him in a cage, so too can a good person be made cruel and vicious by keeping him in prison. W.H. Auden put it well in 1939: "Those to whom evil is done do evil in return".
No more DA's only wanting to file another notch on their gun for a political rep. Get 'em, get 'em hard without mercy, but get 'em right.
Prison in of itself isn't the issue here, the issue is does our prison system actually rehabilitate such that when people are released they are less likely to re-offend? To me, the answer is it does a terrible job compared to other country's systems and that's where we should look to learn from. Abolish prisons? No, we need facilities to house people who have committed offenses. What needs to be abolished is the current system of letting people "rot" for five years and then returning them to society with zero help and no good way to make a living such that we almost guarantee they will turn back to crime.
Rehabilitate is 99% a pipe dream. Results of rehabilitation are bad. Punish harshly is best. Don't step out of line against the law or law abiding society closes ranks and casts you out like flotsam.
I like your analogy - In prison individual liberty is stripped away - you have some authority telling you what you can and can not do in the strictest sense - A socialist Utopian Dream.
Wow! That's a lot of people for us to care for for. I think that's what he did. But now there are a lot more who have been robbed of a family member by police under highly questionable methods that seem to be leaning towards police gangsters.
Can't speak for everyone, but I don't support eliminating prisons. I do wonder what good they do at this point. It seems a lot like sending kids to their rooms. While isolating them from society may have solved one problem, I don't know that it really changes much in the long run. It doesn't seem to be a deterrent to offenders, and it in some ways makes it highly likely that an offender will repeat after being released if that person is not able to find a job because of the past (and please don't fall back on the "he/she should have thought of that before"--it doesn't support any argument other than life in prison for all crimes). Like I said, we need to ask ourselves what our goal is in locking people up, and are there things we should also be doing while they're in prison? IMO, our current system is not much good.
I think the idea of level for level is part of the problem there. When the law becomes tyrannical and empowers police to execute people on the streets, it seems to establish a new level. In that sense, it just ratchets up. I see Duarte as a prime example of what not to do.
