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A man who was accidentally released from prison 88 years early

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Re: A man who was accidentally released from prison 88 years early

#61

Post by kazinator »

happyscrappy wrote: post #58
kazinator wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He should have ran for the Canadian border the day he was released by mistake. (Probably wouldn't have helped since we extradict.) In Canada, you can kill someone and get only six years. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/killer-of-thai-welder... http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/glowatski-sentenced-to-six-yea... http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/northern-sask-man... http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundlan…

If I wanted to murder someone what would be the best country to do it? Obviously not the US. Edit: I mean get caught, do my time and be on my way.

Arguably, the best country to murder someone (as in, get away with it) would be any dictatorship where you are one of the thugs employed by the murderous regime, with the task of making people "disappear".

Also, in any country in which the justice system is broken, you can murder people and get away with it by getting a job as an executioner. What your state considers a lawful execution is regarded as murder in the eyes of the sane world, and so you're getting away with murder.

Re: A man who was accidentally released from prison 88 years early

#63

Post by maxerickson »

atlantic wrote: post #19
hyperbovine wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fifteen years while loved ones of the deceased spend the rest of their lives in mourning? Thank God I'm not.

Which deceased is that? This person was convicted of robbery, not murder.

The hypothetical deceased German that would lead to the hypothetical 15 year maximum in the top comment of this subthread.

Re: A man who was accidentally released from prison 88 years early

#64

Post by sickpig »

speeder wrote: post #57
sickpig wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main function of prisons is to keep the criminals away from law-abiding society Really? I thought it was about correcting/reforming.

Depends on the country maybe? Here in Brazil no one believes criminals can be fixed, here we want them away, locked up or dead.

They should change name from correctional facilities to something else then.

Joking aside, I think that using prisons just for isolation is a waste of tax payer money.

Just think about at the case at hand, we are wasting the money needed to keep this guy in jail for another 8 decades with no actual reasons.

edit: fix grammar

Re: A man who was accidentally released from prison 88 years early

#65

Post by nknighthb »

venomsnake wrote: post #49

> and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment. And why is he not rubberstamping such when the prison situation in US is cruel, sadly not unusual and definitely unjust.

The offenses were not against the United States. This man is in a Colorado prison for crimes under Colorado law. The President has no authority in this case.

Re: A man who was accidentally released from prison 88 years early

#66

Post by ta0967 »

mikeash wrote: post #60
theorique wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're robbing a place and your punishment for being caught is effectively life in prison, what reason do you have not to murder all the potential witnesses to improve your odds of getting away with the crime? All you have is morality, and I don't want to rely on the morality of criminals. In Heat , Al Pacino's character summarizes this attitude in a quick line (paraphrase): "Once it escalated to a murder-one for…

Right. In that scene, the criminals (aside from the nutjob who shoots the first guard) are somewhat moral, but once the first guard dies, the cold calculations outweigh their somewhat loose morality. (Great movie, too. If anyone else is reading this and wonders wtf it's all about, go check it out.)

The movie stands out for the actoring duel between Pacino and DeNiro, as well as (IIRC) sound.

Re: A man who was accidentally released from prison 88 years early

#67

Post by r00fus »

psychometry wrote: post #36
waterfowl wrote: post #29

The insanity of the charges/sentencing reminds me of a passage from The Hot House (which is excellent, Pete Earley somehow got permission to go mingle with prisoners at USP Leavenworth for a year and write about it). A Bank Robber, 45 'They originally charged me with murder, kidnapping, and bank robbery, but I'm really just a bank robber with really bad luck. You see, my buddy and me were robbing this bank, and when…

The deal you get from prosecutors is only as good as your lawyer and good lawyers cost money. This is what happens when the criminal justice system is run by politicking judges and prosecutors elected by a public whose understanding of punitive systems doesn't get any more nuanced than "let's be hard on crime!"

Sounds not unlike the non-insured experience at any hospital - you get charged with insane amounts of stuff so they can negotiate discounted reasonable rates with insurance companies.

If you don't have representation you basically get shafted.

Re: A man who was accidentally released from prison 88 years early

#68

Post by Zikes »

merpnderp wrote: post #56
qiqing wrote: post #27

The U.S. incarcerates more people than China. Not per capita, mind you. More total people. If ever there's a stellar example of the kind of disaster that can result from privatizing a government function, this is it. Private prisons have a strong profit motive to increase the number of people behind bars until we have the kind of situation we have today in the U.S. These are folks who can afford to pay lobbyists to c…

I don't know that you can directly compare the two judicial systems. Especially when China executes roughly 61 times as many prisoners - often for petty crimes from repeat offenders. That being said the US puts far too many people in jail, often for far too long of sentences.

I think that's sort of the idea behind the comparison. Even a country with a bar so low for punishment is far outpaced by our own judicial system.

Re: A man who was accidentally released from prison 88 years early

#69

Post by protomyth »

mschuster91 wrote: post #4

Talk about cruel punishments, locking up someone for two fucking robberies without any deaths for nearly a century is unreasonable, cruel and defies everything our civilization stands for. But hey, private prison operators need to make money and police/DA/any part of the justice system profits from being "tough on crime"... Thank God I'm German, even if you end up killing someone you'll at most get 15 years (okay, th…

"private prison operators need to make money"

Public unions in many states (California being the major example) lobby for longer sentences all the time. Many spend more money than private companies. It's a humans acting selfishly problem, not a corporate problem.

The profit incentive we use for prisons (occupancy number) is the wrong profit incentive. We should pay on capacity and recidivism numbers (bonus after some number of years).

Re: A man who was accidentally released from prison 88 years early

#70

Post by Squarel »

yodsanklai wrote: post #24
joshstrange wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI "because I want the person to suffer" is not a valid reason to lock someone up. We lock people up as a punishment just like your parents may have sent you to your room when you were acting up. We do it under the thinking of they won't do it again once they've paid their debt but that thinking is flawed on SO many level. Among them are: 1. Prison does NOT reform people in fact it pushes many deeper into a life of…

> FYI "because I want the person to suffer" is not a valid reason to lock someone up. I don't know if it's valid, but it certainly a reason why we lock people up. "An eye for an eye" is a universal principle and I assume victims expect some type of revenge. Maybe that's something we should refrain from in a perfect world, but I don't think we're there yet!

Other countries put people in prison to protect the public, not to make them suffer. Many countries dropped the victorian method (lock people up and throw away the key, and lock them up in fairly nasty conditions)of prisons when they figured out it does not work.

How much they have varied from the Victorian method of prisons depends on the country, from Scandinavia at the one end,to the UK at the other.

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