The state of the US prison system.

[Saltyk]

One guy defended the rape conviction of Genarlow Wilson because oral sex was "illegal" according to a 1995 law.

Fun Fact: The guy who wrote the law said it was never intended to be used to convict a teenager for having oral sex with another teenager.

I'm curious if he was actually aware that there is a law against oral sex, it certainly isn't a law I would expect to even exist. Going from your post it was a consensual act, rather sad that this probably ruined the life of someone.

Most likely, he didn't. It's said you and I break laws everyday. Many of them without even knowing it. And how many people on the Escapist alone had sex when they were 17 (or younger) with a partner who was roughly the same? That use of the law would likely land most people in jail.

In the case of Wilson it was actually worse. While the girl had performed oral sex on him, he had several friends who had sex with her and took plea deals to avoid the same fate. He fought it thinking the law didn't actually apply to him and a jury wouldn't convict him. From what I read, even members of the jury that convicted him thought it was wrong.

I don't remember the exact wording of the law (this case is years old) but I do remember that it was intended as a good law. It was intended to harshly sentence older people who sexually abuse children. However, it was not intended to punish teenagers for having sex with other teenagers. But the prosecutor abused that particular law in this case. He followed the letter of the law, but not the spirit.

And, yes. It was consensual. I think the girl in question even testified on his behalf, if I remember correctly[footnote]I know I'm saying "I think" and "if I recall" and such a lot. This case is nearing a decade old and I don't feel like looking up all the details for this. I'm about 90% certain of what I have said here. Just lacking on details.[/footnote].

 

[The Bucket]

snip/quote]

If someone has broke the law 3 times, then do they really deserve nice treatment? I would rather see them in maximum security shitting themselves in the hope that maybe they will stop breaking the law, because obviously more lenient treatment hasn't worked.

OT: You guys seem to have the exact opposite problem from the UK: We have to treat every scumbag like a golden child. The police themselves are treated more like criminals because of shit birds like the Daily Mail trying to hype up cases of 'police brutality' and all the softies in the political system insisting we need to treat everyone 'equally', not matter if they have never broken a law in their life or been a gang member for 10 years.

If someone broke the law three times, I think the prudent thing to do would be to look at what laws they broke, and decide whether it is worth sending them to a maximum security prison with a minimum sentence of 25 years, rather than just automatically doing it. If the whole "punishment as a deterrent" thing didn't work back in the medieval ages (hanging for theft, first offence), it sure as shit won't work these days with a custodial sentence.

Also, prisoners are not treated like golden children in the UK, and the Daily Mail is the last rag you will find defending criminals. The Daily Mail is all about depriving criminals of basic rights like voting and oxygen ("hangin's too good for 'em!" etc.). The British prison system has very much the same problems as other prisons, in that they primarily operate on humiliating and demeaning their inmates. Rather than make them fear or respect authority, it just encourages criminals to resent them even more for their arbitrary, bureaucratic and unfair practises. It then ejects these prisoners out into the world, mostly unprepared to become a productive part of society, and shrugs its shoulders at the high recidivism rates.

To be honest, prisoners don't deserve the vote. Why should scumbags who make society worse get to decide its future. I sure as hell don't considet it a basic right.

The problem with the UK is that we can't encourage fear or respect because that would be a beach of their poor 'rights', and the papers would have a field day. We are too lenient, giving people way too short sentences or not even imprisoning them at all for crimes. Maybe if the UK would actually allow officers to be intimidating, things would be different. Instead, we give them a playstation and nice treatment in the hope that we can make them happy enough to not start riots. A lack of prison space and resources sure doesn't help.

The fact we don't have a police 'force', but a 'service' now, says it all to me.

Can you cite some countries where rehabilitation of prisoners through fear, substandard prison conditions and brutality have had a net positive for society?

And I dont know why you're so dismissive of rights, do you want your government to have the power to ignore yours if they feel like it?

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

Exactly. Which is why "It's opinion" isn't a good counter-argument. That's the point I was making.

My opinion IS a counter-argument. You use facts to back up your argument. I'm not really sure what this has to do with that though: Again, i don't wish to sound rude, but how am i wrong in giving my opinion on a topic that is open to discussion?

You used "That's opinion" as a counter-argument against someone. I'm calling you out on that.

 

[renegade7]

If someone doesn't learn the first time they will never learn. Most of the people who go on to commit really heinous crimes like rape and murder have a long criminal history before that point. If you can't follow simple rules that society has set forth, then you don't deserve to be a part of that society. It isn't any more complicated than that.

So shouldn't the focus be on prevention then? Getting people into the system for the minor crimes and rehabilitating them effectively before they have the chance to become lifetime career criminals sounds like a better plan than an entirely reactive system where all the law does is punish people after they've already done their damage. Sure, I'm all for rapists and murderers being isolated from the rest of society, but that won't un-rape people or bring murder victims back to life.

 

[chocolate pickles]

Snip

Exactly. Which is why "It's opinion" isn't a good counter-argument. That's the point I was making.

My opinion IS a counter-argument. You use facts to back up your argument. I'm not really sure what this has to do with that though: Again, i don't wish to sound rude, but how am i wrong in giving my opinion on a topic that is open to discussion?

You used "That's opinion" as a counter-argument against someone. I'm calling you out on that.

Except that's not the case. You are literally trying to call me out on giving my own opinion on a topic. Should I call you out on the fact that I disagree with your opinion?

I'm not even arguing with you at this point, I don't get why it's wrong for me to express MY opinion. Your opinion IS your argument!

 

[chocolate pickles]

snip/quote]

If someone has broke the law 3 times, then do they really deserve nice treatment? I would rather see them in maximum security shitting themselves in the hope that maybe they will stop breaking the law, because obviously more lenient treatment hasn't worked.

OT: You guys seem to have the exact opposite problem from the UK: We have to treat every scumbag like a golden child. The police themselves are treated more like criminals because of shit birds like the Daily Mail trying to hype up cases of 'police brutality' and all the softies in the political system insisting we need to treat everyone 'equally', not matter if they have never broken a law in their life or been a gang member for 10 years.

If someone broke the law three times, I think the prudent thing to do would be to look at what laws they broke, and decide whether it is worth sending them to a maximum security prison with a minimum sentence of 25 years, rather than just automatically doing it. If the whole "punishment as a deterrent" thing didn't work back in the medieval ages (hanging for theft, first offence), it sure as shit won't work these days with a custodial sentence.

Also, prisoners are not treated like golden children in the UK, and the Daily Mail is the last rag you will find defending criminals. The Daily Mail is all about depriving criminals of basic rights like voting and oxygen ("hangin's too good for 'em!" etc.). The British prison system has very much the same problems as other prisons, in that they primarily operate on humiliating and demeaning their inmates. Rather than make them fear or respect authority, it just encourages criminals to resent them even more for their arbitrary, bureaucratic and unfair practises. It then ejects these prisoners out into the world, mostly unprepared to become a productive part of society, and shrugs its shoulders at the high recidivism rates.

To be honest, prisoners don't deserve the vote. Why should scumbags who make society worse get to decide its future. I sure as hell don't considet it a basic right.

No - I want them to ignore the rights of the type of scum who have breached the rights of offers.

The problem with the UK is that we can't encourage fear or respect because that would be a beach of their poor 'rights', and the papers would have a field day. We are too lenient, giving people way too short sentences or not even imprisoning them at all for crimes. Maybe if the UK would actually allow officers to be intimidating, things would be different. Instead, we give them a playstation and nice treatment in the hope that we can make them happy enough to not start riots. A lack of prison space and resources sure doesn't help.

The fact we don't have a police 'force', but a 'service' now, says it all to me.

Can you cite some countries where rehabilitation of prisoners through fear, substandard prison conditions and brutality have had a net positive for society?

And I dont know why you're so dismissive of rights, do you want your government to have the power to ignore yours if they feel like it?

No - I want them to ignore the rights of scum who infringe on the rights of law abiding citizens.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

Exactly. Which is why "It's opinion" isn't a good counter-argument. That's the point I was making.

My opinion IS a counter-argument. You use facts to back up your argument. I'm not really sure what this has to do with that though: Again, i don't wish to sound rude, but how am i wrong in giving my opinion on a topic that is open to discussion?

You used "That's opinion" as a counter-argument against someone. I'm calling you out on that.

Except that's not the case. You are literally trying to call me out on giving my own opinion on a topic. Should I call you out on the fact that I disagree with your opinion?

I'm not even arguing with you at this point, I don't get why it's wrong for me to express MY opinion. Your opinion IS your argument!

I didn't say that. What I have been getting on you from the very start was for when you said "What constitutes as an unjust law is opinion" and I was trying to turn your logic on its head to show the flaws in it.

 

[chocolate pickles]

Snip

Exactly. Which is why "It's opinion" isn't a good counter-argument. That's the point I was making.

My opinion IS a counter-argument. You use facts to back up your argument. I'm not really sure what this has to do with that though: Again, i don't wish to sound rude, but how am i wrong in giving my opinion on a topic that is open to discussion?

You used "That's opinion" as a counter-argument against someone. I'm calling you out on that.

Except that's not the case. You are literally trying to call me out on giving my own opinion on a topic. Should I call you out on the fact that I disagree with your opinion?

I'm not even arguing with you at this point, I don't get why it's wrong for me to express MY opinion. Your opinion IS your argument!

I didn't say that. What I have been getting on you from the very start was for when you said "What constitutes as an unjust law is opinion" and I was trying to turn your logic on its head to show the flaws in it.

Except that doesn't point out any flaws. Both use opinion - why does that matter?

 

[briankoontz]

It's generally considered true that a terrorized populace is a controlled populace. The worse that prisoners are treated, the deeper one's control over the (temporarily) non-imprisoned populace. The less and less secure the world's power system is, the deeper the inclination to further terrorize prisoners in order to maintain control. That's the primary purpose to the deterioration of treatment of prisoners. This is why in many areas of South America (and elsewhere) torture expanded greatly in scope in the 1970s, in response to the terror that the system of power (and those who most support and wield it) felt at certain events during the 1960s.

People who support the power system logically should support this - it's not like methods of maintaining power grow on trees - if an effective method isn't used and the system collapses those most saddened by the collapse would otherwise have deep regrets.

Without a sufficient number of people who actually oppose the system of power, we'll always have people either apathetic toward the situation or who make excuses for it. People who are temporarily not imprisoned understand that they can only operate as such so long as they are allowed to - and it's very impractical to live one's life as a "free" person while opposing the very system that defines whether one is "free" or imprisoned.

 

[The Bucket]

snip/quote]

If someone has broke the law 3 times, then do they really deserve nice treatment? I would rather see them in maximum security shitting themselves in the hope that maybe they will stop breaking the law, because obviously more lenient treatment hasn't worked.

OT: You guys seem to have the exact opposite problem from the UK: We have to treat every scumbag like a golden child. The police themselves are treated more like criminals because of shit birds like the Daily Mail trying to hype up cases of 'police brutality' and all the softies in the political system insisting we need to treat everyone 'equally', not matter if they have never broken a law in their life or been a gang member for 10 years.

If someone broke the law three times, I think the prudent thing to do would be to look at what laws they broke, and decide whether it is worth sending them to a maximum security prison with a minimum sentence of 25 years, rather than just automatically doing it. If the whole "punishment as a deterrent" thing didn't work back in the medieval ages (hanging for theft, first offence), it sure as shit won't work these days with a custodial sentence.

Also, prisoners are not treated like golden children in the UK, and the Daily Mail is the last rag you will find defending criminals. The Daily Mail is all about depriving criminals of basic rights like voting and oxygen ("hangin's too good for 'em!" etc.). The British prison system has very much the same problems as other prisons, in that they primarily operate on humiliating and demeaning their inmates. Rather than make them fear or respect authority, it just encourages criminals to resent them even more for their arbitrary, bureaucratic and unfair practises. It then ejects these prisoners out into the world, mostly unprepared to become a productive part of society, and shrugs its shoulders at the high recidivism rates.

To be honest, prisoners don't deserve the vote. Why should scumbags who make society worse get to decide its future. I sure as hell don't considet it a basic right.

No - I want them to ignore the rights of the type of scum who have breached the rights of offers.

The problem with the UK is that we can't encourage fear or respect because that would be a beach of their poor 'rights', and the papers would have a field day. We are too lenient, giving people way too short sentences or not even imprisoning them at all for crimes. Maybe if the UK would actually allow officers to be intimidating, things would be different. Instead, we give them a playstation and nice treatment in the hope that we can make them happy enough to not start riots. A lack of prison space and resources sure doesn't help.

The fact we don't have a police 'force', but a 'service' now, says it all to me.

Can you cite some countries where rehabilitation of prisoners through fear, substandard prison conditions and brutality have had a net positive for society?

And I dont know why you're so dismissive of rights, do you want your government to have the power to ignore yours if they feel like it?

No - I want them to ignore the rights of scum who infringe on the rights of law abiding citizens.

You didnt answer my first question, when has treatment of prisoners and offenders with brutality and inhumane conditions actually decreased things like re-offending rates and general crime rates? Because it definitely hasnt in the US, which seems to have the kind of system you're lobbying for.

 

[chocolate pickles]

snip/quote]

If someone has broke the law 3 times, then do they really deserve nice treatment? I would rather see them in maximum security shitting themselves in the hope that maybe they will stop breaking the law, because obviously more lenient treatment hasn't worked.

OT: You guys seem to have the exact opposite problem from the UK: We have to treat every scumbag like a golden child. The police themselves are treated more like criminals because of shit birds like the Daily Mail trying to hype up cases of 'police brutality' and all the softies in the political system insisting we need to treat everyone 'equally', not matter if they have never broken a law in their life or been a gang member for 10 years.

If someone broke the law three times, I think the prudent thing to do would be to look at what laws they broke, and decide whether it is worth sending them to a maximum security prison with a minimum sentence of 25 years, rather than just automatically doing it. If the whole "punishment as a deterrent" thing didn't work back in the medieval ages (hanging for theft, first offence), it sure as shit won't work these days with a custodial sentence.

Also, prisoners are not treated like golden children in the UK, and the Daily Mail is the last rag you will find defending criminals. The Daily Mail is all about depriving criminals of basic rights like voting and oxygen ("hangin's too good for 'em!" etc.). The British prison system has very much the same problems as other prisons, in that they primarily operate on humiliating and demeaning their inmates. Rather than make them fear or respect authority, it just encourages criminals to resent them even more for their arbitrary, bureaucratic and unfair practises. It then ejects these prisoners out into the world, mostly unprepared to become a productive part of society, and shrugs its shoulders at the high recidivism rates.

To be honest, prisoners don't deserve the vote. Why should scumbags who make society worse get to decide its future. I sure as hell don't considet it a basic right.

No - I want them to ignore the rights of the type of scum who have breached the rights of offers.

The problem with the UK is that we can't encourage fear or respect because that would be a beach of their poor 'rights', and the papers would have a field day. We are too lenient, giving people way too short sentences or not even imprisoning them at all for crimes. Maybe if the UK would actually allow officers to be intimidating, things would be different. Instead, we give them a playstation and nice treatment in the hope that we can make them happy enough to not start riots. A lack of prison space and resources sure doesn't help.

The fact we don't have a police 'force', but a 'service' now, says it all to me.

Can you cite some countries where rehabilitation of prisoners through fear, substandard prison conditions and brutality have had a net positive for society?

And I dont know why you're so dismissive of rights, do you want your government to have the power to ignore yours if they feel like it?

No - I want them to ignore the rights of scum who infringe on the rights of law abiding citizens.

You didnt answer my first question, when has treatment of prisoners and offenders with brutality and inhumane conditions actually decreased things like re-offending rates and general crime rates? Because it definitely hasnt in the US, which seems to have the kind of system you're lobbying for.

Look at Countries like Russia and Siberia. They're systems are notoriously brutal, yet crime in these countries has, in modern history, never been a major problem. Why? Because people are scared of these brutal conditions, and those stupid enough to break them are held as long as possible, in unpleasant conditions.

 

[Maze1125]

To be honest, prisoners don't deserve the vote. Why should scumbags who make society worse get to decide its future. I sure as hell don't considet it a basic right.

If someone is in prison for an unjust law then they deserve the right to vote for a party that would repeal that law.
Everyone deserves the right to vote. If a person's opinion is wrong they their voice will be overwritten by the majority. That's the whole point of the system.

How do you decide what an 'unjust' law is? That's an entire matter of opinion.

Yes exactly. Which is why everyone needs to be allowed to voice their opinion. Regardless of who is right.

 

[Maze1125]

Anyway, as regards to re-offend rates, rehabilitation has a far better effect on reducing crime on a individual and national level:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bast%C3%B8y_Prison
https://www.salve.edu/sites/default/files/filesfield/documents/Incarceration_and_Recidivism.pdf

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I've always been of the opinion that the United States' prison system as a whole is absolutely disgusting and is structured to do way more harm than good.

Absolutely. With California's ridiculous ''3 strikes'' law you can get thrown into Pelican Bay amongst the rapists and murderers over the most trivial shit. For life(!) I'm all for putting away deliberate killers and violent career criminals for good, but so many 'crimes' are committed out of ignorance, stupidity, poverty or impulse. Sure, there should be a sanction for bad behavior but when most 'criminals' locked away in correctional facilities are either ethnic minorities or other economically disenfranchised people there is no denying a high degree of class justice is at play here as well.

Not just that, but the sentences themselves and the conditions inmates have to deal with are absolutely brutal as well. People locked in cells for 23 hours a day, people getting raped and murdered, solitary confinement to the point people are losing their sense of self.

I once read somewhere that you can determine how civilized a society is by the way it treats its prisoners, and I think there is definitely some truth to that. Prisoners can't vote so they aren't politically interesting. They don't have the sympathy from the media or society in general b/c they made a mistake and/or did something bad. Nobody gives a shit about them, so they are left to the mercy of a justice system that seems content mopping up the underclass in a self-sustained economy of prison centers and aggregate industries outsourced to the private sector.

For the prisoners that aren't bad people, it's sad really.

You know, I'm actually super down with California's 3 strikes law.

The law only applies to felonies and is at the discretion of the judge as to whether to apply it, so really it only gets applied to serious felonies (the exceptions being the ones you end up hearing about on the news, because they end up sounding somewhat bizarre), and I think that anyone who commits 3 serious felonies should be permanently removed from society because they clearly cannot willfully live within the confines that govern normal people.

As far as the prison system goes, yeah, our prison system is kind of a mess. We have too many prisoners in there for minor drug charges and each prison doesn't have nearly enough guards to keep the prisoners safe from one another, and they can't afford to hire more guards because no one wants to spend extra money to make criminals safer and more comfortable when that's money that could be spent elsewhere, like schools, infrastructure, etc.

The sad thing really though is that the prisons in the US aren't even bad compared to the rest of the world. Sure, there are Scandinavian countries that have much more humane and reasonable prisons, but those are also countries with low populations and fairly low crime rates, so they aren't really comparable to a country like the US. Many European prisons are just as bad if not worse, most asian counties have much worse prisons, and every single third world country has prison conditions that make American prisons look like heaven. Prison reform isn't just an American problem, it's a world wide problem because it's hard to make people care about criminals who spend their lives preying on law abiding people.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

You think that would at least cause people to hesitate when committing crimes, but no.

If the criminals accept that a prison sentence is their fate when they break the law, and they break the law anyway, do they really deserve anything less?

Yeah, the problem is that so many people have pretty much been deluded into the fact that only truly terrible people go to prison because of how horrible the conditions are there.

So when someone breaks the law and California, and it's their third strike, they're gonna be surprised when their minor crime lands them in maximum security.

Oh, and most of the people in max are there for stupid shit like drug possession, because of stupidly puritan laws.

In short, people are thrown in max for the most stupid of fucking arbitrary reasons.

If someone has broke the law 3 times, then do they really deserve nice treatment? I would rather see them in maximum security shitting themselves in the hope that maybe they will stop breaking the law, because obviously more lenient treatment hasn't worked.

OT: You guys seem to have the exact opposite problem from the UK: We have to treat every scumbag like a golden child. The police themselves are treated more like criminals because of shit birds like the Daily Mail trying to hype up cases of 'police brutality' and all the softies in the political system insisting we need to treat everyone 'equally', not matter if they have never broken a law in their life or been a gang member for 10 years.

Considering that things like possessing drugs and stealing a slice of pizza have counted towards the strikes, no. Any system where you can be put away for 25 years because you committed petty theft is broken. And that's before you take into account the horrible conditions of the American prison system, where being murdered by gangs and being abused by gangs and guards are both a thing, and that's without getting into rape. I don't like the idea that someone can get raped for stealing a slice of pizza. And the problem with your argument. You assume that when someone goes to jail for twenty years and then gets out, they're not going to commit crime again. Except people can refuse to hire them after that on the basis of them being felons and there's a good chance they won't know how to function on the outside due to having no marketable skills and technology having advanced 20 years. You know what they do? Break the law again because it's the only option they have. The system is broken. It doesn't fucking work. It's a short term solution made by people who don't care about the future and just want a place to stuff all of the "undesirables" In Norway, they built what they proudly call the most humane system in the world, with cells that look like college dorm rooms. And for every criminal that gets released from prison and commits a crime again in Norway, three do it in America.

I wish the police in my country were treated like criminals. They sure as fuck act like them spending their favorite pastime of "shooting people and then lying about it because when you report police killing people, it goes to the police". Oh yeah, another reason I don't trust the prison system in this country. Corrupt cops.

I'd love to have your problems with the prison system instead of mine. I'd prefer to live in a country where police are under heavy observation and scrutiny instead of living in a country where large amounts of people will always defend the police when they decided to shoot another black kid.

People really don't seem to understand that the "pizza" case was not a 3 strikes law case.

Stealing a slice of pizza was not the guy's third strike. A non-felony cannot be counted as a strike for the three strikes law.

The guy who stole the slice of pizza already had 5 felonies on his record. Not 2, not 3, 5. That's the reason that the judge sent him to prison for 25 years. He already had more than 3 strikes on his record.

 

[EternallyBored]

snip/quote]

If someone has broke the law 3 times, then do they really deserve nice treatment? I would rather see them in maximum security shitting themselves in the hope that maybe they will stop breaking the law, because obviously more lenient treatment hasn't worked.

OT: You guys seem to have the exact opposite problem from the UK: We have to treat every scumbag like a golden child. The police themselves are treated more like criminals because of shit birds like the Daily Mail trying to hype up cases of 'police brutality' and all the softies in the political system insisting we need to treat everyone 'equally', not matter if they have never broken a law in their life or been a gang member for 10 years.

If someone broke the law three times, I think the prudent thing to do would be to look at what laws they broke, and decide whether it is worth sending them to a maximum security prison with a minimum sentence of 25 years, rather than just automatically doing it. If the whole "punishment as a deterrent" thing didn't work back in the medieval ages (hanging for theft, first offence), it sure as shit won't work these days with a custodial sentence.

Also, prisoners are not treated like golden children in the UK, and the Daily Mail is the last rag you will find defending criminals. The Daily Mail is all about depriving criminals of basic rights like voting and oxygen ("hangin's too good for 'em!" etc.). The British prison system has very much the same problems as other prisons, in that they primarily operate on humiliating and demeaning their inmates. Rather than make them fear or respect authority, it just encourages criminals to resent them even more for their arbitrary, bureaucratic and unfair practises. It then ejects these prisoners out into the world, mostly unprepared to become a productive part of society, and shrugs its shoulders at the high recidivism rates.

To be honest, prisoners don't deserve the vote. Why should scumbags who make society worse get to decide its future. I sure as hell don't considet it a basic right.

No - I want them to ignore the rights of the type of scum who have breached the rights of offers.

The problem with the UK is that we can't encourage fear or respect because that would be a beach of their poor 'rights', and the papers would have a field day. We are too lenient, giving people way too short sentences or not even imprisoning them at all for crimes. Maybe if the UK would actually allow officers to be intimidating, things would be different. Instead, we give them a playstation and nice treatment in the hope that we can make them happy enough to not start riots. A lack of prison space and resources sure doesn't help.

The fact we don't have a police 'force', but a 'service' now, says it all to me.

Can you cite some countries where rehabilitation of prisoners through fear, substandard prison conditions and brutality have had a net positive for society?

And I dont know why you're so dismissive of rights, do you want your government to have the power to ignore yours if they feel like it?

No - I want them to ignore the rights of scum who infringe on the rights of law abiding citizens.

You didnt answer my first question, when has treatment of prisoners and offenders with brutality and inhumane conditions actually decreased things like re-offending rates and general crime rates? Because it definitely hasnt in the US, which seems to have the kind of system you're lobbying for.

Look at Countries like Russia and Siberia. They're systems are notoriously brutal, yet crime in these countries has, in modern history, never been a major problem. Why? Because people are scared of these brutal conditions, and those stupid enough to break them are held as long as possible, in unpleasant conditions.

First off, Siberia is not a country, also not sure why you think one of the most corrupt political oligarchy's with a still thriving organized criminal organization has a low crime rate. Their crime rate has dropped since the 90's, but that's mostly because the collapse of the soviet union created anarchy in their crime enforcement efforts, so the only thing that proves is that a harsh system is more effective than no system at all.

Russia has a major crime problem, from organized crime, rampant drug use, and gang activity, where the hell did you get the idea that Russia doesn't have as high a crime rate as other countries, compared to much more leniant countries like the Netherlands and Germany, Russian violent and drug related crimes are generally considered to be higher.

If you are talking about Soviet Russia, then their are no statistics beyond their own propaganda, they spent so much time trying to paint serial killers as a purely Western problem that they let their most famous serial killer run unchecked throughout the country for years because they refused to actually inform their populace that a serial killer was on the loose.

Russia is really not a system that anyone should be emulating, where high profile political figures are killed on the street by, depending on which story you believe, organized gangs, a mafia hit, or the goddamn head of state Putin having him assassinated.

I mean holy shit, there were reports in the early 2000's that nearly half of Russia's economy could be linked to organized crime, they also have massive problems with human sex slave trafficking and drug abuse. Also a large part of Eurasian black market guns are run out of Russia.

 

[The Bucket]

snip/quote]

If someone has broke the law 3 times, then do they really deserve nice treatment? I would rather see them in maximum security shitting themselves in the hope that maybe they will stop breaking the law, because obviously more lenient treatment hasn't worked.

OT: You guys seem to have the exact opposite problem from the UK: We have to treat every scumbag like a golden child. The police themselves are treated more like criminals because of shit birds like the Daily Mail trying to hype up cases of 'police brutality' and all the softies in the political system insisting we need to treat everyone 'equally', not matter if they have never broken a law in their life or been a gang member for 10 years.

If someone broke the law three times, I think the prudent thing to do would be to look at what laws they broke, and decide whether it is worth sending them to a maximum security prison with a minimum sentence of 25 years, rather than just automatically doing it. If the whole "punishment as a deterrent" thing didn't work back in the medieval ages (hanging for theft, first offence), it sure as shit won't work these days with a custodial sentence.

Also, prisoners are not treated like golden children in the UK, and the Daily Mail is the last rag you will find defending criminals. The Daily Mail is all about depriving criminals of basic rights like voting and oxygen ("hangin's too good for 'em!" etc.). The British prison system has very much the same problems as other prisons, in that they primarily operate on humiliating and demeaning their inmates. Rather than make them fear or respect authority, it just encourages criminals to resent them even more for their arbitrary, bureaucratic and unfair practises. It then ejects these prisoners out into the world, mostly unprepared to become a productive part of society, and shrugs its shoulders at the high recidivism rates.

To be honest, prisoners don't deserve the vote. Why should scumbags who make society worse get to decide its future. I sure as hell don't considet it a basic right.

No - I want them to ignore the rights of the type of scum who have breached the rights of offers.

The problem with the UK is that we can't encourage fear or respect because that would be a beach of their poor 'rights', and the papers would have a field day. We are too lenient, giving people way too short sentences or not even imprisoning them at all for crimes. Maybe if the UK would actually allow officers to be intimidating, things would be different. Instead, we give them a playstation and nice treatment in the hope that we can make them happy enough to not start riots. A lack of prison space and resources sure doesn't help.

The fact we don't have a police 'force', but a 'service' now, says it all to me.

Can you cite some countries where rehabilitation of prisoners through fear, substandard prison conditions and brutality have had a net positive for society?

And I dont know why you're so dismissive of rights, do you want your government to have the power to ignore yours if they feel like it?

No - I want them to ignore the rights of scum who infringe on the rights of law abiding citizens.

You didnt answer my first question, when has treatment of prisoners and offenders with brutality and inhumane conditions actually decreased things like re-offending rates and general crime rates? Because it definitely hasnt in the US, which seems to have the kind of system you're lobbying for.

Look at Countries like Russia and Siberia. They're systems are notoriously brutal, yet crime in these countries has, in modern history, never been a major problem. Why? Because people are scared of these brutal conditions, and those stupid enough to break them are held as long as possible, in unpleasant conditions.

First off, Siberia is not a country, also not sure why you think one of the most corrupt political oligarchy's with a still thriving organized criminal organization has a low crime rate. Their crime rate has dropped since the 90's, but that's mostly because the collapse of the soviet union created anarchy in their crime enforcement efforts, so the only thing that proves is that a harsh system is more effective than no system at all.

Russia has a major crime problem, from organized crime, rampant drug use, and gang activity, where the hell did you get the idea that Russia doesn't have as high a crime rate as other countries, compared to much more leniant countries like the Netherlands and Germany, Russian violent and drug related crimes are generally considered to be higher.

If you are talking about Soviet Russia, then their are no statistics beyond their own propaganda, they spent so much time trying to paint serial killers as a purely Western problem that they let their most famous serial killer run unchecked throughout the country for years because they refused to actually inform their populace that a serial killer was on the loose.

Russia is really not a system that anyone should be emulating, where high profile political figures are killed on the street by, depending on which story you believe, organized gangs, a mafia hit, or the goddamn head of state Putin having him assassinated.

I mean holy shit, there were reports in the early 2000's that nearly half of Russia's economy could be linked to organized crime, they also have massive problems with human sex slave trafficking and drug abuse. Also a large part of Eurasian black market guns are run out of Russia.

And they have a higher rate of murder than the US

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

Still, it's a pretty minor misdemeanor at best. Not to mention while I was looking around about the three strikes law, the term "Felony petty theft" came up, and that made me want to rip my hair out.

 

[AgedGrunt]

From my perspective, the state of affairs is layered. From our prison system being more like a business construct than justice and rehabilitation to bad laws, worse politics and a society that is both paralyzed by the race factor and has sordid problems that demand better, moral families, upbringings and education for all.

I think this is about more than crime and punishment. However, there's a strong smell of lawlessness in the American air. If you ask me, the measure of the effectiveness and integrity of criminal justice must start not at the petty bottom but at the top, where people are to be held to the highest standards of good and decency. This is categorically laughable in the United States, where the privileges of identity and wealth protects you from the law.

If we wanted to better our people it will take a lot more than clearing out and cleaning up prisons; start with Washington D.C.

 

[Cowabungaa]

Prison reform isn't just an American problem, it's a world wide problem because it's hard to make people care about criminals who spend their lives preying on law abiding people.

No, the US is a unique case in this regard, definitely within the Western world. You're the only Western country with that insane kind of mass incarceration going on, caused, among other laws fueling that trend, by bullshit three-strikes laws.

Let's not forget that the US, a few years ago, with 5% of the world population had a little less than 25% of the world inmate population. That's insane! As I've said before, even the president who brought three-strikes into existence, Bill Clinton, heavily regrets doing so as he too realizes now how awful they are.