I feel it's all because of social competition...

that we live in an age where anything is possible AND all people want to do is subvert the system, scapegoat others for their own failings, etc...

and there's too much intolerance because of that competition, and people use that intolerance as an excuse to manipulate and get what they want because it's easier, etc...

And it's the leaders driving the masses into fearing everyone and everything that fuels it all,

(OKAY), it's a combination of things, that feed upon one another and spiral out of control...

Nice spelling. You put up a good arguement against decriminalizing soft drugs. Keep up the good work!

Wow thanks for completely misquoting me did you not see that i said "i dont think it should be that severe for petty crimes but they should understand that crime will cost alot." You should read the entire quote before posting nxt time.

Here's a question. What benefit to society does alcohol have?



So, entropy? Chaos . . . ? Isn't that a bit, well, prodigious of an argument? (Sorry, I really couldn't come up with a better word . . . large perhaps . . . ?)

Spacepony;

I'm not sure what its called in PA, but when you speak to the ACLU, you might want to talk to them about a Moral Obligation type Claim (Ie, suing the City/state for damages). By giving you an incorrect sentence, the city is technically responsible for your losses as a proximate result of the sentence (ie loss of job, home, etc).

Your burden is generally lower in civil court and all you would need to prove is the sentence was the probable cause of your loss.



It really depends on your state; you'd need over 100g of pot to even be arrested here. Anything less is a ticket. 100g doesn't souns like a lot, but its a good chunk (2 quart ziploc bagish). In a practical sense, if you're not dealing, you're not going to see serious time unless you have mountians of the stuff or a massive grow operation. Many get thier sentences suspended in leiu of a fine and drug counseling.



Which are all investigated like a crime, until determined otherwise. Sometimes that happens 30 seconds after I enter the door. Sometimes it may take six weeks.Perhaps using "murder" was a little over the top, but the death is still investigated like a crime.





Actually, you said "Crime rate" and did not mention violent crime. Then you mentioned violent crime, and went on to Mention general crime again.

So what exactly are you arguing about, Crime or Violent Crime?

Yes, the 60's were a different time. There were more race riots in the 60's than any other decade in history. like it or not, A crime report isn't generated for every broken item or hurt person. Also racism was institutionalized back then. There's a huge Dark Figure concerning crime in minority populations/neighborhoods. It can come from everything from cops not doing a report to victims feeling that nothing will get done and not reporting it.

The violent gangs of the 20's and 30's had but been wiped out, and the new, meodern gangs didn't really come into prominence until the 70's.

Also like I said, there were less crimes (legally speaking). DV was practically non-existant back then. Look it up. Today there is mandatory/preferred arrests concerning those crimes. There was a prefference to "keep things in the family" back then. That no longer exists.

edit - This doesn't even address the fact that you can't compare crime rates in the 60's to modern crime stats in the first place. NIBRS didn't exist untill 1988 and not every department uses it - Same w/ the UCR. The UCR only had 8 Class I crimes, couldn't differentiate between attempted/completed, and had very narrow definitions, excluding many many crimes. For example Rape was "the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will". Obviously, you thank think of several Rape scenarios that woulsn't fit into this category - hence not properly reported, if reported at all.



Exactly! Let me explain the first part to you. Yes, you need BRD and it is objetively defined (a very long definition too). But in the real world, its subjective - unfortunately. It's 12 people your trying to convince your are right. They are normal people all bringing thier beliefs, opinions, and feeling with them. Some will think the offender is guilty by virtue of being arrested, others will think that the gov't is out to get them and everyone is innocent. Yes, they screen juries, but its not perfect - never will be. Prosecutors will generaly offer a plea if its not a slam dunk - they think its better than to lose.

However, that's not the majority of plea deals. You are correct, Most plea deals are there to save $$ and time (I still think its overused). In some cases (DV usually) it can even be victim preference. For example they just want the offender to get mental/AA/drug help instead of Jail time (I think they should go to jail anyway - but that's just my opinion). In that case the Plea might be acceptable and the pros will stipulate that the treatment be necessary as part of the sentence.

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Personally, I think what really needs an overhaul is the Jail Bond system. Bonds are to low. Offenders get out the next day after serious crimes and big shocker - they do it again. While its great for job security - it sucks when you get the same guy 3 times in a row for braking into the same business and he gets out the next day every time.

already on top of that but thank you for mentioning it. The ACLU will not be handling that aspect of the suit. From what I have managed to piece together so far I will be givin $70,000 for each year that I was in jail plus the income damages. The people who fired me are good people and were just protecting their companies name. They are going to be contacted and will hopfully be willing to state that it was the m1 that made them fire me. (they broke no laws if they did) but with that information I will be able to show accual damages of about $315,000.00 in direct lost income plus the lost capital in my home of about $170,000.00 These are just the obious ones I already have listed.

After we get done with that I also have all of my medical records over the last eight years. My doctor has been very good about documentation of all my medical difficulties right back to the beginning of this. The diagnosis stated in my medical charts going back the last four years all state that the root cause of "ALL" of the phisical problems I have had are manifsations of the mental stress resulting from my incarceration and having to deal with parole! Talk about having things done right, I don't have to go find someone who will say "it might be from" the sentence, I have a doctor that has already documented from day one and who was my doctor prior to all of this that in his medical oppionion dating back to the very start of all of this that my difficulties are directly related to my sentence..... That kind of documentation is very hard to aquire... I have a great doc... He has told me from day one that he is sure that I will find a way to get past this and that in the meantime he was going to make sure I did not fall down during it!

When things got real bad he made sure that I had whateve medication I needed and when the money got real tight he even stopped charging me for visits. One time while I was in his office I over heard him say to a pharmisutical rep "I will recommend (name of drug) to my paitents but in order for me to do that I want you to give me (names of various drugs and the amount of samples he wanted)" "I have (x number) of patients that cannot afford those and need them. He did not ask for a rebate or for anything else, his only concern was making sure that his patients got what they needed.

Back in 1998 I was trying to quit smoking, my girl friend at the time was a paitent of his and we were at his office on an appoitment, while we were chatting and she mentioned to him I was trying to quit, he asked me a few quetions and such. Well what happened was I was not succedding in quitting on my own and he offered to see me and provide me with what ever assistance I needed to help me quit FREE OF CHARGE! He said that if I quit smoking I would owe him nothing, he saw me once a month for two years till I was able to quit and he provided me with all the tools and asistance to quit, he never asked me for a dime, not even for the office visits.

Wow - you have one hell of a Dr.! Most I've run into don't realy seem to care at all...

I wish you luck with your suit, I really doubt the city trying to fight it all the way, especially considering your evidence and documentation.

Denyasis, perhaps your problem is reading and writing what you're supposed to?

You said "As a civillian, If you kill anyone, for any reason, you've murdered them."

That's not even close to "As a civillian, If you kill anyone, for any reason, it's investigated as a homicide." Which would have been reasonable, irrelevant, but reasonable.

Then, I told you why plea deals were wrong. You apparently agree with me almost entirely but think that few percent that will get away is worth doubling the crime rate for.

"The prison population has quadrupled in the last fourty years, the violent crime rates at the peak of the idiocy in the ninties were over four times as high as they were in the sixties. Murder was relatively uncommon, only about twice as high."

It's not exactly unclear as to whether I was talking about violent crime or crime in general. I've also stated that crime across the board was higher. That doesn't mean violent crime plus nonviolent crime was lower than violent crime plus nonviolent crime plus the new drug crimes are now. That means that in every category, the crime rates increased.

You do have a point on race riots, odds are a lot of crimes went unreported. However, there are 300 million people in this country. A few thousand people rioting is a drop in the bucket. The race riots were not the majority of the population, they were minuscule minorities, mostly hoodlums looking for trouble like they would any other day. A severely overblown occurrence to boost advertising sales would not account for a fourfold drop in the real crime rate to the reported crime rate. Further, we already know that illegals, of which there may be 30 million, don't report crimes hardly any.

The organized crime issue is the same as the plea bargain issue. It is a failure of law enforcement to do their job. Gangs should be hunted down and eliminated, but we've let the legal system create so many rules for itself that even if the police were willing, at this point it's illegal. They've achieved the protected status of a political party or church group instead of being treated as what they are.

I think public flogging should be resurrected. Not enough to kill a man, but enough so that it hurts like heck and, like the OP said, for the pure humiliation.]

I am reminded specifically of a book by Robert Hienlen, called Starship Troopers (great book, by the way). What was basically said was this: If cruel and unusual punishment is against the law, then criminals have very little reason to worry about punishment. The truth is that punishment needs to be at least somewhat cruel to actually give the criminals a reason not to commit the crime.

Of course, I never said such a thing. I merely explained to you the reasons why the Plea deal exists and it used. Yes, they are over used, but as someone with first hand experience in the Justice system, I can tell you there are some(few) cases where it is warranted and the system has a whole, understands these cases and does compensate for the plea.

Overall, its a general lazines of a system that is unwilling to go through the expense of a trial that results in a plea of a violent offender that should really do hard time.



You might want to check your history. 125 race riots occurred in the 2 month period after MLK's assassination. That's just two months, never mind the other 9+ years. Thousand's hardly. There were thousands just in the large cities alone. In addition, this was just an example, not a total solution. There were plenty of other civil disturbances durring that time (not even mentioning other violent crime).



Again, the UCR and NIBRS are fundamentally incompatible. In 1960, if someone drove up to you, pulled out a gun said they were gonna kill you, shot at you, missed, and ran off, no crime would have been committed statistically. Today, it would have (2 possibly).
Now say the suspect shot you and hit. In 1960 that would be 1 crime statistially. Today, I can think of atleast 3 right off the bat. Same action, triple the crime rate.
Omnibus and GCA didn't even exist until 1968, neither did DV type crimes (considered violent crime). I haven't even mentioned drug crimes.

The point it is, was there a lower crime rate in the 60's? We simply don't know. We don't have a way to compare the crime stats in a very meaningful way.



I'm very interersted in this. You mind showing me the law or court case that established Criminal Gangs as protected groups?

Similar to a line in a David Drake book. "A comfortable detention facility is counterproductive." As previously stated, though, it's imposible to get truly effective punishments past the cruel and unusual standard.

Personally, and this is only my opinion, SpacePony got off entirely too easy. Absurdly easy, considering the nature of the offense. Sure, the sexual assault part is crap, but the beating described could easily have been fatal, and was grossly disproportionate to the original offense. The call to the lawyer shows clear premeditation and knowledge of the illegality of the action. Defense of self or others is one thing, vigilante justice is something else entirely.

While I guess congratulations are in order on a personal basis, the original sentence was wrong IMO.

Problem With Drugs or Alcohol? This Drug Rehab has Helped Thousands of Individuals to Recover. Drug Rehab

By that logic the Middle Ages would have been crime free, which it clearly was not.

How this is expressed by most people depends to a very large degree on one's basic belief - ie is "Jail" (etc) there to punish, ie legalised retribution, or is it there to re-educate to ensure as far as we can that criminals do not re-offend. It is almost inarguable that modern detention centers - of whatever nature - are very effective Degree Courses in Crime as far as inmates are concerned. Whether they do re-offend - and the latter is the biggest sector of recorded crime - will depend to a great degree on whether or not the inmates basic take on life and values has changed during incarceration. Rarely the case at present.

As always there are no simple solutions, no silver bullets, no "one size fits all". The latter applies just as much to the stentorian cry of "hang em all" as it does to the extreme liberal view on this topic. What is for certain, is we have not got the balance right yet, else we would not have the epidemic levels of re-offending from ex-inmates. Most certainly in reaching that balance each person must be taken as an individual, and "treated" from that point, blanket emotionally driven, or Vote seeking Policies are doomed to fail before the ink is dry on the Statute Book.

As a "race" Humans want instinctively to punish - get retribution - we've all been there. What is a much harder route is to change the mindset of those who have offended, or about to offend. A pure hang em all approach does not work, never has. Even the much quoted argument of the Middle Eastern practices does not hold true. If it did, there would be people only missing on limb, not two, three, or four of them out there! In any case the religious impact on crime is far far more palpable than with Christian religions.

Not a simple topic in truth, but neither is "Hang em All" the simple answer. The proponent may go to bed with a warm feeling and feeling great about themselves, but meanwhile in the real world it has done squat to solve the real problem. That approach has been tried too many times to mention, why would it work now? In reality, it will not, and frankly never will.

Regards
Zy

That could just be because most of the people in the middle ages were poor.

I agree, its most likely, and illustrates the whole point.

Crime is motivated by many scenarios, a large number are independent of "good practices" in being a "model citizen". A "Hang em All" approach does not address that, never will, the motivation and drivers for committing the crime are wholely independent of the thoughts on consequencies.

Its the thought process we have to address, and simplistic emotional approaches never work

Regards
Zy