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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?

#451

Post by meric »

clarky07 wrote: post #179
meric wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Breaking and entering: $1000's of damage, per instance. Insider trading: $100,000's of damage, per instance. Enforcement level of insider trading is also low, so a person can commit many more times the crime of insider trading before they're caught.

Breaking and entering - very traumatic to someone. insider trading - traumatic to no one. I'm not sure what these "damages" you speak of are. Someone wanted to buy or sell stock, and an insider bought or sold it. Sure, they have more information, but someone always has more or different information. carl icahn and warren buffett have more information than me about a lot of things. yet we trade on the same market ever…

Just because the damage is spread out to thousands of people doesn't mean it's a victimless crime. I'm trade stocks and I'm a victim, too. The damage to the share market's reputation may scare off some people, they will lose an avenue for investing their savings, as a result suffer a reduction on the return of their capital over their lifetime, with a significant chance of relying on the society for their retirement, because they were put off from investing, causing an increased drain on society's resources as well as a permanent reduction in their self esteem due to their lack of self reliance. In terms of damage to people's emotional state I still think insider trading is more insidious than breaking and entering. My home has been broken and entered into twice but I'm still more angry when insiders traded off private information in a company I invested in.

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

#452

Post by greedo »

tehabe wrote: post #350
reginaldjcooper wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiple DUIs do deserve a severe punishment IMO, because that is attempted murder basically and they are a danger to the public. The rest I agree are ridiculous. Huffing drugs three times does not deserve permanent incarceration.

Yes, like revoking the driver's license for good. Not a life prison sentence!

Take a good look at your city's crime logs. At least in the US, it's not unusual for most DUIs to be repeat offenders; and again, not unusual for people to drive with revoked licenses. Revoking a license does nothing to protect society from those willing to flout the law.

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

#455

Post by hmsimha »

clarky07 wrote: post #214
avenger123 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right, I do not know you. Anyways, let's agree to disagree on this.

ah quick edit there. I'll leave my response below. We can agree to disagree, but let me make a few more points first :-) I'll be civil I promise. He didn't get life for stealing the truck. he got life for stealing the truck in addition to the 2 other convictions. It's also not "any severity," but felony level severity. You can argue that the line in the sand has been drawn in the wrong place, but the line in the sand…

You may find it interesting that there's a guy in California who died in prison under the three strikes law for attempting to steal a candy bar, because a petty theft can be prosecuted as a felony for people with previous thefts. Another guy, who was never arrested for theft or violence of any kind, has been in prison for 20 years and will likely remain there for life after getting arrested with 13 sheets of LSD. The cost of keeping someone in prison can be over $100,000 a year. Regardless of the seriousness of the crimes committed by the people presented in the ACLU link (and I don't disagree with you that they are not trivial), the fact remains that we have the most overzealous criminal system in the world.

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

#456

Post by SilasX »

eropple wrote: post #448
SilasX wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The same ACLU is a strong Second Amendment supporter. Could you tell me specifically what definition of "strong supporter" you're using here? I can't think of any reasonable one that would make your claim true. Supporter, maybe. But a "strong supporter" is not someone who endorses a watered down version of the Second Amendment, and then spends zero effort defending infringements of that.

Disagreeing with your interpretation of the Second Amendment does not mean they do not support civil rights. Nor does spending their money and time defending civil rights that don't have massive organizations devoted to defending them.

Yeah, I get that the ACLU's actions regarding the 2nd Amendment are defensible.

That wasn't the topic.

The topic was the claim that the ACLU is a "strong supporter" of the second amendment. Do you know a definition of "strong supporter" that is appropriate for the ACLU's actions regarding the Second Amendment?

No, I don't want to hear about how great the ACLU is.

No, I don't want to hear about the ACLU really does support civil rights.

No, I don't want to hear about how their position on the 2nd amendment is reasonable.

No, I don't want to hear about all the other people who can protect the second amendment.

I want something responsive to my question: in what sense is the ACLU not just a "supporter" but a "strong supporter" of the Second Amendment?

Don't have anything to say about that? Then please stay out of the discussion rather than changing topics and blurring the issues. Thanks.

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

#457

Post by csomar »

grecy wrote: post #190
beloch wrote: post #149

The U.S. and Canada have very similar cultures, so comparisons here have some meaning. The U.S.'s per capita incarceration rate is 6.28 times Canada's [1] and the per capita number of police officers is 1.26 times higher in the U.S.[2]. However, the intentional homicide rate of the U.S. is 2.94 times that of Canada[3]. Certain types of offenses (e.g. drug offenses) are higher in Canada, but the violent crime rate is…

Many people don't appreciate how much a solid social net does to reduce crime. Even the poorest Canadians have access to good health care and education. In America, I have no doubt in my mind I'd steal to pay for an operation on my kids. Hell, I'd rob a bank at gunpoint if it came down to it. In Canada, I just walk into a Hospital.

I don't think making such a public comment is a wise idea in a surveillance state. I also think stealing is wrong whatever is the reason[1].

[1] I don't have kids but got at some point seriously sick and broke.

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

#458

Post by downandout »

reginaldjcooper wrote: post #331
downandout wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Multiple DUIs do deserve a severe punishment IMO, because that is attempted murder basically and they are a danger to the public. The rest I agree are ridiculous. Huffing drugs three times does not deserve permanent incarceration.

Murder, or attempted murder, is an intent crime in most states in the US. Generally speaking, that means that in order to be convicted, it must be proven in court that the defendant had the specific intent to cause the death of another person when they undertook the act that caused the death. That's why most traffic-related deaths are charged as manslaughter, or under traffic-specific statutes such as vehicular homicide or DUI resulting in death (depending on the specific state and circumstances).

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

#459

Post by pandaman »

GuiA wrote: post #71
anigbrowl wrote: post #4

This is poorly focused. I'm absolutely against 3 strikes sentencing laws and mandatory sentencing escalations that can put petty criminals in prison for life. On the other hand, I'm perfectly OK with some criminals dying behind bars, such as the recently sentenced Whitey Bulger, and so are most other people. By making the headline about the undesirability of custodial life sentences in general, they'er losing a large…

So, question- if you actively support putting people behind bars with the intent of seeing them die there, why not just kill them right away? If the intent is for them to not cause any harm to society, then that'll get the job done while saving money for society and making them suffer for a shorter period of time. Unless the goal is to make them suffer for their entire life as punishment; in which case, why not just…

Do you have any price quotes re: execution vs life sentence to support your assertion that money are to be saved?

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

#460

Post by thecodeore »

rayiner wrote: post #340
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?

The ACLU page is rather manipulative in that they construe the facts very favorably to the convicted. E.g. "After serving two years in prison during his mid-twenties for inadvertently killing someone during a bar fight." Oh yes, he just accidentally killed someone in a bar fight. Happens all the time really, right up there with leaving your credit card with the hostess after getting a little too tipsy. It would be le…

   Ordinary people don't live in the kind of circumstances where 
    they might wander into a felony conviction
Ohh I think you should be shocked at the number of felonies a person could commit on the course of everyday life. Felony is not just used for serious crimes. Almost every state have what are referred to a "catch all" felonies that can be brought against just about any one at any time if you piss off the right person in power.

dont fool yourself into think the legal system is anything other than a tool for oppression and control

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