Judge assails sentencing laws / He reluctantly imposes a 55-year prison term (must read)

thanks, I did not know that. so it works out to about 47 years at best. I agreee with the judge that it is excessive. I wonder if this harsh sentence will have any deterrence effect. probably not. the people who are doing these kinds of things are not paying attention to what is happening in the news, and they don't read FR. one thing for sure it will keep this guy from engaging in criminal activity until he is too old to care about getting rich the easy way. furthermore, it might cause his children to think seriously about the consequences before they follow his example.

"I wonder if this harsh sentence will have any deterrence effect. probably not. the people who are doing these kinds of things are not paying attention to what is happening in the news, and they don't read FR."

I think you pretty much nailed it there. If there were only three or four people out there doing smaller scale pot deals like this guy was this type of sentence might make a difference. But the reality is that there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of small time pot dealers out there and their ranks are constantly being replenished.

You are also right that this guy probably won't be engaging in more criminal activity out in the free world. That's good I suppose but in reality we can't lock everyone who commits crimes like he did for the rest of their lives. It would bankrupt us. And while many comment that the people like this ought to be taken out and summarily executed, that isn't realistic either in our society. In reality these cases would have to be litigated to the full extent at the trial level and they'd all be appealed. Our trial courts couldn't handle all of the litigation that necessarily comes with so many death penalty cases, nor could the appellate courts.

People who are deterable are deterred even by short prison sentences. I deal with people all the time who have been in prison and/or are on their way to prison. Almost all of them are terrified by the thought of even short stints in prison or even jail. No one wants to go there, even for a short time. But some people are going to commit crimes even though they risk going to prison, even if it could mean they'll go for a really long time. The length of the possible sentence doesn't really seem to matter, and it doesn't really seem to matter that much to those who are deterred by prison either. If they know they'll go even for a short time if they are caught, they won't do whatever it is that will land them in prison.

Personally I think pot should be legal and sold at the pot store, but it's not legal and people who break the law ought to be punished. But I think four or five years would have been more than enough to get this guy's attention and to deter whoever might be deterred. If he was selling to children or trafficking in huge quantities the punishment should have been worse, but I haven't read anything that would suggest he was doing either. The news reports say he sold a few hundred dollars worth of pot on a few occasions and that an informant claimed he was carrying a weapon during these transactions. It was his first offense. Fifty-five years for that seems a little on the harsh side to me and it's not only harsh for him, but it's a waste of my tax dollars. There are plenty of really bad people out there who need to be locked up for life for the sake of protecting us all. We shouldn't be wasting a prison bed for a half a century on fairly petty first time offenders like this. Stupid policies like this are why we waste billions and billions of dollars locking up more people per capita and in total than any other country in the world. There is nothing conservative about that.

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