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A living death: Sentenced to die behind bars for what?

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Re: A living death: Sentenced to die behind bars for what?

#281

Post by mossplix »

drivingmissm wrote: post #263
grey-area wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should try looking at prison differently. It's incredibly expensive to lock someone up for their life - that's four walls, meals, space to exercise and guards for say another 40 years. We shouldn't spend that unless the alternative would cost a lot more (say violence against another person, a person's life). he woke two vacationing golfers as he entered the room and stole a wallet, then pretended to be a security…

U.S. violent crime rates have plummeted in part because of higher incarceration. A lot of people on this list don't remember when cities like New York and Washington, DC were very dangerous places and all native born inhabitants were leaving.

Put all the population in prison... and bingo all crime solve d

Re: A living death: Sentenced to die behind bars for what?

#282

Post by waps »

dodyg wrote: post #255
rfnslyr wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anybody else constantly live in a state of guilt? So many lives lost and wars fought just to get us to where we are, and we reap the benefits. I feel so guilty for having a good paying job in the city. I'm not adding any value to the world, none at all. I tinker with a few codes every day and make silly amounts of money, when there's people struggling to put food on the table working 18 hour days. I need to do s…

I am a third worlder currently living in Cairo - if you think a bit of poverty here and there in the US is bad, here in this city we are surrounded by it. Being poor is not a moral flaw and I see people everyday go out of their bed and try to win most of their days. Still people manage to find happiness within the most dire constraints. You cannot do everything and nobody expects to. Take comfort in that. We are all…

I have visited, amongst other places, Cairo. I wouldn't be able to live there for the guilt it would instil in me. Sadly, Cairo is by far not the worst place (compared to New Delhi, government services are quite good in Cairo. Yes, really), and several "first world" locations are, at best, a degree of difference with Cairo (Hong Kong would be a good example).

People don't seem to be able to imagine just how bad life is in the third world for the majority of people.

And frankly, sorry to put it so bluntly, but here's a thought people should think about. Given you are a third-worlder, would you want to be one of the exploited or one of the non-exploited. Given that in practice most third-worlders still choose what job they want, the answer is obvious : with very few exceptions, people want to be one of the "exploited". Visit a third-world city, turn a few non-approved blocks, and you'll understand why.

Btw: one of the things that amazed me about Cairo is that they've created a "fake" city center, where the poverty you see is almost absent, in a way that I've seen nowhere else. So in Cairo, you definitely have to turn a few non-approved blocks.

Re: A living death: Sentenced to die behind bars for what?

#283

Post by waps »

EliRivers wrote: post #252
thaumasiotes wrote: post #47

My thoughts on the best and the worst: > Anthony Jackson has a sixth-grade education and worked as a cook. He was convicted of burglary for stealing a wallet from a Myrtle Beach hotel room when he was 44 years old. According to prosecutors, he woke two vacationing golfers as he entered the room and stole a wallet, then pretended to be a security guard and ran away. Police arrested him when he tried to use the stolen…

I can't get too worked up about a system that sentences this guy to life in prison. Is that seriously the best fucking option you can come up with? A massively expensive revenge-trip that causes far, far more damage than the theft of a wallet? Perhaps there's some kind of much, much more effective way to get him to stop taking things that don't belong to him. I say perhaps; of course there are. Lots, that are cheaper…

I wonder what his three strikes are ? I thought that for three strikes you're only fucked if at least one of those strikes involved violence and a victim ?

Re: A living death: Sentenced to die behind bars for what?

#284

Post by downandout »

spodek wrote: post #7

It's a crying shame. Normally that's an empty phrase, but it describes this. I can't imagine reading this and not feeling tears well up. No sense of what I would call humanity. From what perspective does this make the world a better place? What am I missing about being human that this fits into that I don't understand?

> It's a crying shame.

That is an appropriate reaction, but the ACLU's focus on life without parole sentences grossly understates the savagery of US sentencing schemes. Tens of thousands more inmates are serving life with the possibility of parole for non-violent crimes. These inmates may very well never be released, and if they are they will have served so long that they will never be able to recover.

In Nevada, for example, 1 in 5 prisoners is serving a life sentence with the possibility (but no guarantee) of parole. Our version of the 3 strikes law, which is used in several other states as well, enables any three felony convictions to qualify an offender for a life sentence. This can and has included repeat drug offenders (including those who were not dealing), those committing multiple relatively minor property crimes (vandalism, theft, etc), and those with multiple DUI's that never resulted in accidents.

Simply put, US habitual offender laws defy all sense of logic, humanity, and reason. The political will to change this does not exist within either of our major political parties, so the problem is likely to expand over time.

Re: A living death: Sentenced to die behind bars for what?

#285

Post by jmadsen »

I think at the root of this is a very prevalent attitude among a many people in America toward "not letting people get away with things"

I don't think you can look at this in a vacuum - you need to see these punishments as simply another manifestation of this attitude. This is not a "this group vs. that group" thing; you may find this among "fire and brimstone" Democrats just as often as your "Limburgh Republicans".

I've often said the difference between these groups is: given 100 people asking for a free meal, the liberal will take satisfaction in feeding 99 hungry ones; this type of conservative will fret over the one person who "got away with" getting a free lunch he could have afforded himself.

(Side rant: these people tend to be among the loudest Bible-thumpers, and think "the Good Lord helps those.." is an actual biblical passage.)

Rehabilitation as a way of dealing with miscreants doesn't work in the US for the main part because there is too large a segment of the American populace who feel that these various programs equate to giving them a reward for bad behavior. Why should they (the convicted) get a free hand with job placement when no one else is "being coddled"?

(The wonderful quote "born on third base and thinks he hit a triple" always comes to mind here.)

So you see, Americans understand perfectly well all the logical and economic aspects of this issue. The fact is, it is built into our culture to punish people. We get satisfaction from it. We're not after what's best for the country, we're after revenge.

It's ugly, but I've been around for many years & I stand by that statement.

Re: A living death: Sentenced to die behind bars for what?

#286

Post by conorwade »

waps wrote: post #279
vijucat wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Here is the US, we're allowed to criticize the government. Mostly true, I suppose, but I remember this : "TSA loudspeakers threaten travelers with arrest for making jokes" : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkWPMeLSk6M

I think that falls under the "yelling fire in a crowded theatre" rule [1]. Yes, the US has freedom of expression, and you can claim whatever you want about the government (you can even lie). But if you yell 'fire' in a theatre with 500 people and 1 small exit, or 'allahu akbar' in a TSA line, you deserve to get sued and punished for that. That is not legally considered to be freedom of expression. Personally I don't…

So what you have said is that if someone says "God is great" in a TSA line they should be sued or punished.

Does your opinion change if it is spoken in English? Or is it just Arabic? Should it be taken more seriously if a person is wearing a turban or not? Or maybe their skin color… does that matter?

Re: A living death: Sentenced to die behind bars for what?

#287

Post by collyw »

clarky07 wrote: post #232
collyw wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"insider trading -traumatic to no one." When the whole Enron thing went down a few years back, my flatmate at the time lost her job, as an accountant in the UK as a result of that.

Losing a job is traumatic. Enron though, wasn't about insider trading. Yes several of the guys at the top were charged with insider trading, but they were also charged with fraud, money laundering, conspiracy, bank fraud, making false statements to banks and auditors, securities fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, obstruction of justice, among other crimes. Insider trading, not the thing that caused trauma, and in f…

It is still fairly naive to think that it is traumatic to no one.

Re: A living death: Sentenced to die behind bars for what?

#288

Post by aquadrop »

I don't understand how mad those judges should be to send those people in jail for life... Life imprisonment for that... It's like the ultimate punishment (because death penalty isn't worth it) for evilest people. Or is it mad laws? I understand when two adults are sentenced for life because they were torturing and killing random homeless people just for fun (real example from my city). They are very dangerous to the society and should be kept away forever, that I understand. But I don't see how driving a company's truck is an immense menace for the society.

Re: A living death: Sentenced to die behind bars for what?

#289

Post by x0054 »

joyeuse6701 wrote: post #197
fleitz wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't Snowden have to flee to China and then Russia so he could criticize his government with out fear of summary execution?

Criticism of government has it's limits. Snowden is questionable because what he said was not public knowledge and had crippling negative effects towards security of the state, but say, expressing your criticism of government by blowing up a federal building...

So releasing documents that prove that US Government is knowingly violating its citizens constitutional rights is equivalent in your mind to killing a lot of people with an explosive?

Re: A living death: Sentenced to die behind bars for what?

#290

Post by _pmf_ »

latch wrote: post #125
lostlogin wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Failure to sign the Ottawa treaty (anti landmine) and the international criminal court agreements, execution of minors (and execution at all), assassination of opponents even if citizens (via drones), torture, war crimes, illegal invasions, use of phosphorus (probably comes under war crimes), continual killing of civilians in non declared wars, massive prison population, secret prisons, outsourcing torture, supportin…

It's easy to distill these issues and hold a self-righteous opinion, but I personally find most too complex to form anything resembling an educated opinion. Take land mines. I've heard that they play a critical role in South Korea's defense, which was a major reason Clinton didn't sign. Military experts talk about how it's an effective tool that, when used responsibly, can benefit civilians more than harm them. They…

> It's easy to distill these issues and hold a self-righteous opinion, but I personally find most too complex to form anything resembling an educated opinion.

Ah, yes, complexity explains everything from the role of private oil companies in Iraq to the ties of the Bush family with the Bin Laden family.

> But, I fundamentally can't shake the feeling that I have no clue what's going on, so maybe I shouldn't be too quick to judge.

I think a very safe way, given the histoy over the last decaded, to form an opinion, is to consider everything the US defense industry-slash-ministry proclaims an outright lie and only accept very small points as true when they have been verified.

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