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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?

#461

Post by jnbiche »

javajosh wrote: post #410
jnbiche wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it would arguably contribute greatly to society. It would contribute to the system that is perpetuating these kinds of injustices. Recall that a good portion of these people serving life sentences for non-violent crimes are in state prisons. How is helping them build their software systems going to find justice for a man in jail for life for stealing some tools? By the way, this is not a rhetorical question: I'm ho…

In this case, technology could have helped in (at least) two places: 1. In the courtroom. These people could have received a faster, more painless, and more just trial. The proceedings could have been more open, easier to search and data mine, and hence easier to react to faster. Additionally (and somewhat science-fictiony) I personally would like to see us experiment with alternative juries - particularly much large…

I wasn't asking about how could technology help these poor people (I agree that it could possibly help, or at least holds that promise), I was asking how helping the court system build their software would help them.

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

#462

Post by jmadsen »

jmadsen wrote: post #285

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".…

The problem remains that we have a prison system that serves to punish, not rehabilitate.

If you take a defective part & try to fix its deficiencies, it has a better chance of fitting back into the machine it was intended for.

If you toss it into a box full of other rusty parts and let it sit neglected for several years, it is more likely to come out rusty & more defective rather than useful. If we were discussing machine parts, no one would ever argue otherwise.

If your entire policy is based around putting that part back in the box over and over, then blaming the part for being bad & eventually throwing it away, then you're not being honest about trying to fix the part.

A country that is as full of smart people as the US is, that has accomplished as many things as that country has done, and that cannot come up with a system better than what it has, cannot be honestly trying to "fix its parts".

I say it is that way because people are not interested in fixing the parts; that they simply want to throw them away. They want punishment, not improvement.

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

#463

Post by AnthonyMouse »

rayiner wrote: post #355
michaelt wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be less biased to show statistics for the kind of people sentenced under the three strikes law, but that wouldn't tug the heart strings as much. Perhaps we could aspire to have a law that works right in outlier cases, not just on average?

One of the most basic principles of system design is that there will be edge cases. Every engineer knows that. In a country with 300 million people, enough will fall into these edge cases for the ACLU to put together a pamphlet with a few examples. That's inevitable. That said, with three strikes laws, you don't need to resort to sob stories. The statistics are evidence enough: about half of three strikers in Califor…

> That's much more persuasive, to a rational thinking person, than a few examples of people who fell into the edge cases of the system.

The problem is not convincing rational thinking people. Are there really some nontrivial group of informed rational people without an ownership stake in a private prison company who genuinely believe that three strikes laws are good policy?

The problem is not the rational thinking people at all. The problem is politics and rational ignorance. It's the swarms of busy people who don't have the time or the education to understand the statistics, who consequently go back and vote for the people who enacted these laws.

I get where you're coming from. The world would be a better place if all policy decisions were based on evidence and reasoning rather than emotion. But when you have the prison lobby heaping the corpses of teenage girls on their side of the scale, you need to put something visceral on the other side to shock complacent people into realizing that something is very wrong here.

Politics is a popularity contest. It's important that the side with the best argument wins, but how do you get that to happen when people have limited time and limited resources and the winner is decided by voting rather than correctness?

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

#464

Post by jdboyd »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #402
omni wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grabbing a stat off of Wikipedia, almost 18,000 people died in drinking-related vehicular accidents in the US in 2006. Maybe attempted murder is a little extreme, but I think negligent homicide would be right on the mark. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunk_driving_in_the_United_Sta...

Every vehicular accident where any party has any sign of drinking is counted as "drinking-related". If a drunk guy jumps out in to a busy street and is hit by a stone-cold sober driver, that's "drinking-related", though obviously not a case for further-strengthening DUI laws.

For that matter, if the drunk guy was a sleeping passenger in a car with a sober driver and there is an accident it is also "drinking-related".

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

#465

Post by MikeTLive »

three times you have been caught doing something we don't like. you will now be banished from the planet and into this concrete and steel facility.

a facility whose operation is a business and the more residents the more the business makes.

tell me.

why would a business ever want to not have a guaranteed permanent paying member?

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

#466

Post by AnthonyMouse »

infinite8s wrote: post #418
enko wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No second chances eh? Very "tough on crime" - you should run for office.

Driving is a privilege granted by society, not a right. If you Demonstrate that you no longer deserve that privilege, then yeh you should lose it for life.

"Driving is a privilege, not a right" is just something MADD made up to justify unusual penalties. You could just as well say "fire is a privilege, not a right" and claim that arsonists should be prohibited from heating their homes in the winter. As a policy it doesn't make any sense.

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

#467

Post by MikeTLive »

MikeTLive wrote: post #465

three times you have been caught doing something we don't like. you will now be banished from the planet and into this concrete and steel facility. a facility whose operation is a business and the more residents the more the business makes. tell me. why would a business ever want to not have a guaranteed permanent paying member?

if prisons were by law NEVER private entities, and instead ALWAYS funded by and of the society from which the people interned were taken from, and that the cost of housing a person would not end with their life, would we be so quick to lock so many up forever?

solve the problem that led to the person doing what we do not like.

unless that problem is unique to this specific individual, removing the person will not stop the problem manifest on another individual.

we here are all smarter than this.

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

#468

Post by AnthonyMouse »

greedo wrote: post #452
tehabe wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If anything it makes it a lot worse, because now whatever car they're driving doesn't require them to breathe into it in order to start it, and now when they drive into your parked car (or worse) they have a huge incentive to commit a hit and run to avoid being caught driving with a suspended license.

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

#469

Post by toomuchtodo »

silverbax88 wrote: post #417
mgkimsal wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But... murder implies intent. The driver did not get in the car to say "I'm going to try to kill silverbax88", or even "I'm going to try to kill someone".

If you get drunk and get behind the wheel of a car, it's the same to me as walking around with a loaded gun and firing randomly. Does it matter that you didn't set out to shoot someone?

Unfortunately, this is not the case. You still are conscious of your decisions when you walk into a bar and fire randomly. There is a reason its considered rape if you have sex with someone who is intoxicated; they can no longer provide consent. The no longer have the ability to reason for themselves.

Are we going to argue that you're a murder if you drink to excess while your keys are still in your pocket? Because that's when the decision was made, not when you get in your car drunk. At that point, its not you making the decision.

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

#470

Post by smm2000 »

thecodeore wrote: post #460
rayiner wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pers…

what felony conviction can you get in the course of regular life? I do not have a single friend who was threatened with one much less was convicted.
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