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Frank Smith was locked up for 8 decades. At 98, what would it mean to be free?

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Re: Frank Smith was locked up for 8 decades. At 98, what would it mean to be free?

#51

Post by Mechanical9 »

mongol wrote: post #39
lyu07282 wrote: post #34

there is a real problem with the elderly in american prisons, they sentenced so many people to absurdly high sentences in the 80s/90s that they basically ended up with nursing homes for the elderly except they are prisoners. https://www.aclu.org/report/americas-expense-mass-incarcerat... Its just the punitive culture that is deeply rooted in american society. Its one of the more depressing subjects in sociology when…

Let me tell you that it can go much too far in that direction too. We have repulsing examples of especially young criminals that get off very serious crimes with not much more than a slap on the wrist.

I've seen that too. IMO, neither "direction" is what matters here. Both cases are failures to apply justice appropriately. It's tiring that efforts to reform always seem to be led by people who are either "tough" or "soft" on crime.

Re: Frank Smith was locked up for 8 decades. At 98, what would it mean to be free?

#52

Post by greedo »

habitue wrote: post #30
nimbius wrote: post #16

what it means is less important than the real questions it raises. - if in the united states we refer to our prisons as 'correctional' facilities, what quantitative correction could require nearly a century of internment? - if by any study it costs nearly 40,000 dollars to house a prisoner for one (1) year, was the night watchmans life truly worth 3.2 million dollars of Connecticut taxpayers money? - what meaningful…

Prison has multiple purposes: retribution, incapacitance, deterrence, and rehabilitation. - retribution: gives victims and families of the victim retribution. This one doesn't seem important in the modern day, but if you ignore it you get vigilante revenge, blood feuds, honor culture etc. Having the state take on "revenge" kills these cycles. - incapacitance: straight up preventing dangerous people from being out and…

Deterrence? I don't think that long sentences deter any crime. If the ultimate sentence (DP) doesn't deter murder, then why would lesser sentences deter lesser crimes?

Re: Frank Smith was locked up for 8 decades. At 98, what would it mean to be free?

#54

Post by dsego »

greedo wrote: post #52
habitue wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prison has multiple purposes: retribution, incapacitance, deterrence, and rehabilitation. - retribution: gives victims and families of the victim retribution. This one doesn't seem important in the modern day, but if you ignore it you get vigilante revenge, blood feuds, honor culture etc. Having the state take on "revenge" kills these cycles. - incapacitance: straight up preventing dangerous people from being out and…

Deterrence? I don't think that long sentences deter any crime. If the ultimate sentence (DP) doesn't deter murder, then why would lesser sentences deter lesser crimes?

It's always weird for me to hear arguments about death penalty not deterring crime, then in the same breath they favor life in prison over death penalty. Not even aware of their double standard.

Re: Frank Smith was locked up for 8 decades. At 98, what would it mean to be free?

#55

Post by causi »

slashdev wrote: post #29
glimshe wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some countries limit the time you can spend in prison for this very reason, no matter what you did. For instance, Brazil sets it to 40 years total even if you killed 100 people.

I’m a fan of the death penalty for really egregious cases, given a hypothetical perfect Justice system. Some people are not worth trying to rehabilitate. However, the Justice system is flawed and a decent percentage of people who get the death penalty are innocent. So what do you do? I’d rather they be locked up for the rest of their natural lives, barring a change in evidence or technology that leads to a change in…

I wonder if something productive could be done by expanding the options beyond "guilty" and "not guilty" because someone can be found guilty by a jury for almost any reason. Perhaps if there was a further status of "guilty by egregious evidence" that required a higher standard of evidence such as direct recording of the commission of the crime by the perpetrator and the death penalty was only applicable in those cases. I'm not ok with a one percent chance of executing the wrong person for any crime no matter how horrific, and our justice system trends at least 4% wrongful conviction. I'm fully ok with a 0.001% chance of executing the wrong person for even second-degree murder.

Re: Frank Smith was locked up for 8 decades. At 98, what would it mean to be free?

#56

Post by dsego »

causi wrote: post #55
slashdev wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a fan of the death penalty for really egregious cases, given a hypothetical perfect Justice system. Some people are not worth trying to rehabilitate. However, the Justice system is flawed and a decent percentage of people who get the death penalty are innocent. So what do you do? I’d rather they be locked up for the rest of their natural lives, barring a change in evidence or technology that leads to a change in…

I wonder if something productive could be done by expanding the options beyond "guilty" and "not guilty" because someone can be found guilty by a jury for almost any reason. Perhaps if there was a further status of "guilty by egregious evidence" that required a higher standard of evidence such as direct recording of the commission of the crime by the perpetrator and the death penalty was only applicable in those case…

Isn't "beyond reasonable doubt" already a high standard? I've watched cases on youtube where it was really obvious from all the circumstances that the defendant did it. But it wasn't beyond reasonable doubt, so the jury had no choice but to declare them innocent.

Re: Frank Smith was locked up for 8 decades. At 98, what would it mean to be free?

#57

Post by dsego »

goodpoint wrote: post #33
nimbius wrote: post #16

what it means is less important than the real questions it raises. - if in the united states we refer to our prisons as 'correctional' facilities, what quantitative correction could require nearly a century of internment? - if by any study it costs nearly 40,000 dollars to house a prisoner for one (1) year, was the night watchmans life truly worth 3.2 million dollars of Connecticut taxpayers money? - what meaningful…

> if in the united states we refer to our prisons as 'correctional' facilities, what quantitative correction could require nearly a century of internment? It's only punishment, there is no correction at all. > if by any study it costs nearly 40,000 dollars to house a prisoner for one (1) year, was the night watchmans life truly worth 3.2 million dollars of Connecticut taxpayers money? Can we please not value people's…

> Can we please not value people's life in money? Because if we can then slavery would be justified.

That isn't a logical statement, one does not follow from the other.

Re: Frank Smith was locked up for 8 decades. At 98, what would it mean to be free?

#58

Post by ceejayoz »

dsego wrote: post #54
greedo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deterrence? I don't think that long sentences deter any crime. If the ultimate sentence (DP) doesn't deter murder, then why would lesser sentences deter lesser crimes?

It's always weird for me to hear arguments about death penalty not deterring crime, then in the same breath they favor life in prison over death penalty. Not even aware of their double standard.

You'll find a wide spectrum of beliefs within that "same breath".

Personally, I think life in prison is necessary in some cases - that there are people who will never be able to function safely in society - but that it is simultaneously overused (case in point: stealing four cookies; https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-jun-19-me-12244...).

There's also the "you can release someone from life in prison" aspect if there was a mistake, malicious prosecution, or they've shown signs of genuine rehabilitation.

Re: Frank Smith was locked up for 8 decades. At 98, what would it mean to be free?

#59

Post by HWR_14 »

ansible wrote: post #41
goodpoint wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if in the united states we refer to our prisons as 'correctional' facilities, what quantitative correction could require nearly a century of internment? It's only punishment, there is no correction at all. > if by any study it costs nearly 40,000 dollars to house a prisoner for one (1) year, was the night watchmans life truly worth 3.2 million dollars of Connecticut taxpayers money? Can we please not value people's…

> Can we please not value people's life in money? It feels quite icky to do this, but it is necessary when making policy decisions. Every day, governments and corporations decide to spend (or not spend) X amount of dollars to save Y number of lives. Does it make sense to spend some money on infant mortality prevention, vs research on cancer types that only really old people get? What about seatbelt laws? Or pollution…

That's distasteful but necessary. It's when we start making policy by valuing peoples live based on economic output that things get bad. Otherwise you end up killing a healthy young person to harvest their organs for old people at the top of their career.

Notice the comment being objected to was "is the night watchman's life worth 3.2 million"

Re: Frank Smith was locked up for 8 decades. At 98, what would it mean to be free?

#60

Post by numpad0 »

habitue wrote: post #30
nimbius wrote: post #16

what it means is less important than the real questions it raises. - if in the united states we refer to our prisons as 'correctional' facilities, what quantitative correction could require nearly a century of internment? - if by any study it costs nearly 40,000 dollars to house a prisoner for one (1) year, was the night watchmans life truly worth 3.2 million dollars of Connecticut taxpayers money? - what meaningful…

Prison has multiple purposes: retribution, incapacitance, deterrence, and rehabilitation. - retribution: gives victims and families of the victim retribution. This one doesn't seem important in the modern day, but if you ignore it you get vigilante revenge, blood feuds, honor culture etc. Having the state take on "revenge" kills these cycles. - incapacitance: straight up preventing dangerous people from being out and…

So where's the math in that? It makes absolutely no sense that entirely quantitative prison sentencing is at best qualitatively determined and completely devoid of metric tracking, everywhere on Earth. wtf is this.
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