When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment

UCLA criminologist Mark Kleiman says he’s “angry about having much too much crime and an intolerable number of people behind bars.” Kleiman believes America’s astronomical incarceration rate isn’t making us safer.

Long prison terms are wasteful

He argues that the prison system is abusive yet neglectful, ineffective, and based on vengeance rather than justice or even public safety.

What we currently have should be replaced with swift and consistent punishment rather than the drawn out inconsistent system we've been using.

He also says prisons are for people we're afraid of yet we've filled them to the brim with people who we are simply mad at.

reply to post by thisguyrighthere



I say they should allow people to duel if they should choose to do so. Sell tickets even, gather around on the court house lawn with a judge to play referee, enforcing the guidelines that the duelists set forth prior to the duel. Then for other cases, public punishment and/or humiliation will go a long way.

reply to post by thisguyrighthere


The part that stood out to me was the the land of the free has 25% of the worlds prisoners.
Land of the FREE,yet 25% of the worlds prisoners?
The irony!!

My opinion is that prisons aren't there to rehabilitate people.
It should be about teaching people how to be productive members of society,yet its not.
Prison institutionalizes people more then it rehabilitates them.

reply to post by DrumsRfun


Possibly having substantial freedom causes one to commit more crimes maybe?

I think we should replace prisons with gulag's and make it so miserable nobody want's to come back. Forced labor breeds disipline in my opinion.

Originally posted by DrumsRfun
reply to post by thisguyrighthere

 

The part that stood out to me was the the land of the free has 25% of the worlds prisoners.
Land of the FREE,yet 25% of the worlds prisoners?
The irony!!

That is incredible, isnt it? I can feel the pride swelling inside like a hot burning vomit.

My opinion is that prisons aren't there to rehabilitate people.
It should be about teaching people how to be productive members of society,yet its not.
Prison institutionalizes people more then it rehabilitates them.

That's more than your opinion. That's the fact of the situation. There is no rehabilitation. Just simple petty vengeance. Caesar pointing his thumb down while the spectators foam at the mouth for blood. It doesnt help anyone other than the police state and the private interested profiting from incarceration.

reply to post by kro32


At least that would be a swift and consistent punishment unlike what we have going now. Forcing labor for the good of society as in tarring roads 20 hours a day would at least be productive and the lack of potholes may cause a chain reaction of joy and happiness to reduce criminal behavior in the long run.

I think the war on drugs is responsible for much of the "crime" we have.

People should not be locked up for crimes against themselves. Only for crimes against others. And we need to make white collar crime equivalent to any other crime, and make those who commit them serve the same miserable prison terms any robber of some convenience store does.

Part, but not all, of the problem is that the upper classes commit the same crimes the lower classes do, when torn down to their bare mechanics, but they get away with them, or are even praised for them. And when people on smaller scales commit those same mechanical actions, they are punished harshly for them.

We need to be consistent in terms of what is and is not acceptable. And people who kill people with their chemicals and drugs or dumping of wastes, for example, need to serve the same manslaughter sentences someone who drives recklessly would. When people see some people getting away with, and being rewarded for, criminal behavior that is logically the same as the acts THEY engage in, its hard to make the argument the act itself is wrong. You are instead making a case that being caught and punished is the wrong, and the act itself, if pulled off successfully, is just fine.

Originally posted by kro32
reply to post by DrumsRfun

 

Possibly having substantial freedom causes one to commit more crimes maybe?

I think we should replace prisons with gulag's and make it so miserable nobody want's to come back. Forced labor breeds disipline in my opinion.

WOW! Not big on the Constitution ,eh? and Gulags? Man the Soviet Union broke up yrs ago and those Gulags were one of the thing Reagan pressured them on. But you say "bring 'em back". I am old enough to remember a time when the mainstream American would call you a Red Commie for saying such in America.Now I suppose there will be posters cheering this notion. Times change, the mighty fall.
seed

reply to post by thisguyrighthere


The problem with forced labor is that it could have unintended consequences. IE, they might start jailing people just FOR forced labor for more and more petty trumped up crimes. It could be very beneficial for a state to have a free labor force. Much like an argument can be made that privatizing prisons has created an incentive to keep people locked up for longer periods of time.

While the people who profit from prisons cant actively make more people come in, they can, through various means, keep them there longer by creating conditions in which it is very likely a prisoner will commit some offense or behavior that can extend their prison stay.

Im all for making crimes that deserve punishment very undesirable to commit, but you do have to really look ahead and try and anticipate the ways in which those punishments can lead to unintended consequences. You would be, in effect, creating a slave labor class with forced prison labor, and its not hard to imagine an economic incentive which would lead to various abuses of that.

And of course it serves society to lock up people who can't pay their child support, they have lost their job due to the economy, or lock the guy up who can't pay his back taxes for the same reason.

Originally posted by Illusionsaregrander
reply to post by thisguyrighthere

 

The problem with forced labor is that it could have unintended consequences. IE, they might start jailing people just FOR forced labor for more and more petty trumped up crimes. It could be very beneficial for a state to have a free labor force. Much like an argument can be made that privatizing prisons has created an incentive to keep people locked up for longer periods of time. .

Definitely a concern. It has already been an issue with private and government run prisons.

In the end where corruption is concerned as long as we have simple corruptible people running these institutions and systems there will always be corruption. Whether it's the POTUS, the SCOTUS, a county jailer or a night manager at a WalMart.

Which brings me to my disdain for all authority and government but that's another thread.

S+F for the post!


On a side note, I read the topic title and saw it as "When Bruce Lee Fails"


It still kind of works.

Originally posted by barkingdogamato
And of course it serves society to lock up people who can't pay their child support, they have lost their job due to the economy, or lock the guy up who can't pay his back taxes for the same reason.

Fining the homeless:

Bill said Fletcher comes through The Lot several times a day. About a week ago, he spotted Bill and Dottie on a bench on Orange Street. Under the bench was a bottle of vodka. Fletcher slapped them each with a $91 ticket for public drinking—a charge the pair denies.

Fine a homeless man and he'll pay with what? Let it ride unpaid it becomes arrestable and he ends up in jail. Lot of good that did everyone.

Which brings up something from the article. It's about $40,000 a year to keep somebody locked up. Was it a $40,000 crime? Granted, the government has never really been very good at balancing the books but you'd think sooner or later somebody would have stopped the crazy train at that road sign.

reply to post by thisguyrighthere


This is why forced labor is a good idea. Won't even need prisons just have movable labor camps. We could easily get 40,000 worth of work out of an individual while fixing up America's infrastructure in the process. Want to get rid of illegals? Send the prisoners to pick berries and if they try to run shoot em in the back or better yet implement the chain gang again.

People who kill children should be shot. Yes they should have a fare trial and found guilty beyond all reasonable doubt. All means of science should be used to prove guilt and once done.
Child molester should be used for medical experiments. They have given up there human rights, so why should some ape that never hurt anyone pay, when we have monsters to use.
Once a murder has been proven guilty they should be bent over a giant hole with molten lava on the bottom, then shot in the back of the head and thrown into it. What’s a bullet worth? A lot less than another execution method we use. Bring back the guillotine, quick painless and reusable.
All criminals in jail should be forced to wear a collar like a dog, if riots break out the collars should be electrified, so with the push of a button all the prisoners will be tassed. Bet they would want to control themselves if they knew what could happen. Oh ya and every cell would be monitored with a camera.
They should be treated with dignity until they prove different. They all should be educated and cooperation in the education would be mandatory. 4 hours of school 10 hours of work.
All prisons should be self sufficient they grow their own food make their own power. By the time prisoners go the sleep they should be too tired to cause problems.
We coddle our prisoners too much I don’t believe in inhuman treatment but if you go to prison you have given up your rights of freedom, so you should be used to work on improvements to the world around you.
Violent prisoners should have to sever their time working and improving the lives of others in prison, prisoners who are not violent should have the opportunity to work outside the prison (with supervision) to help wherever they are needed. (With the collars on wired with the group)
Once in prison you have no rights. Just like today there should be different prisons for different offenders but they should all be run the same. I am tired of hearing about riots in prisons and rape and murder and all the other stuff that happens behind bars. If this stuff happens then they have too much free time on their hands. They are there to do time not have time to think about ways to hurt each other or escape, give me the chance to run a prison and id show you the best behaved prisoners in the world.
And all execution would be watched by the prisoners.

You can thank the effective War On Drugs for the 25% stat...

“According to the US Department of Justice, 30-40 percent of all current prison admissions involve crimes that have no direct or obvious victim other than the perpetrator,” the report shows. “The drug category constitutes the largest offense category, with 31 percent of all prison admissions resulting from such crimes.” Nearly a third of all prison admissions are from non violent drug offenses!

... and let's look further into the most heinous of them all: Marijuana!

Marijuana arrests accounted for 47.4% of the drug abuse arrests

Clearly, marijuana is an intense focus of police interest and activity; far more, apparently, than the less important crimes occurring at the same time on Wall Street.

Source

I think that prisons are wasted on something that could be remedied through proper education. The cause of the social problems causing these "crimes" is not addressed and the band-aid fix of "locking them away" is not working. I can't foresee all the repercussions of my next statement, but I truly believe that if drugs weren't illegal, there would be no drug crimes (just drug problems that would have to be dealt with through social programs). I also think that by abolishing money you could get rid of the need to steal from each other and therefore eliminate a lot of other crimes... but that is a different discussion all together...

Originally posted by thisguyrighthere

Which brings up something from the article. It's about $40,000 a year to keep somebody locked up. Was it a $40,000 crime? Granted, the government has never really been very good at balancing the books but you'd think sooner or later somebody would have stopped the crazy train at that road sign.

Except for the fact that the politicians often have friends and donors who are in the business of holding prisoners.

Again, its the way the incentive system works. When you have politicians who are motivated to please big donors, and some of those big donors make their money holding prisoners, you have created an incentive for laws that keep people in prison who dont belong there, unintentionally.

Ultimately, you need to keep private money out of elections if you want policies and laws to serve the majority. And its all down to following the trail of incentive and motivation.

Punishment for non-violent offenders should be a fine. Something suitably sized to be an "oh crap I'll never, ever do that again because I'll be living on the street in poverty due to that fine" type of thing.

Punishment for violent offenders should involve something along the lines of "I don't know why this guy wakes up screaming in the middle of the night 'no no please no more!', but at least he doesn't hurt people anymore" type of thing.

The only thing that will empty prisons is making sure people are too terrified to be incarcerated. Well, that and repealing moronic laws.

/TOA

Originally posted by The Old American
Punishment for non-violent offenders should be a fine. Something suitably sized to be an "oh crap I'll never, ever do that again because I'll be living on the street in poverty due to that fine" type of thing.
We already have law as revenue source why not make it more profitable?

Punishment for violent offenders should involve something along the lines of "I don't know why this guy wakes up screaming in the middle of the night 'no no please no more!', but at least he doesn't hurt people anymore" type of thing.
and don't worry none about that whole cruel and unusual thang they was only kidding about all that.

The only thing that will empty prisons is making sure people are too terrified to be incarcerated. Well, that and repealing moronic laws.
I think that is called terrorism by some but I think opression is more accurate.Seen some pretty scary opinions lately. Bring on Gulags, peace through terror. That ol' HEMP rag is finally wearing thin enough to shred.Looking a lot like Reich 4.0 lately,eh?


/TOA

edit on 29-6-2011 by The Old American because: (no reason given)

reply to post by The Old American


I disagree. Because economic crimes are largely non-violent, directly, but they can result in someones death. (IE; you swindle someones life savings and they can no longer house, feed, or afford medication and medical treatment for their families.) The physical harm caused by a non-violent crime can go all the way to death, and it should be considered that way.

The violent/ non violent distinction is exploited by white collar criminals who actually wreck much more havoc upon society than some moron who knocks someone down to take their wallet or beats some guy up who slept with his wife.

The total impact of the crime should be considered, not just the actual technique used when determining how harsh a sentence should be. If you dump toxic waste in a residential area, and 20 people die as a result, thats "non-violent" but, imho, you should be charged with causing 20 deaths, and you should get the same sentence someone who recklessly caused 20 deaths by violent means would.