Posted on 08/24/2007 5:39:54 PM PDT by Mr. Silverback
If anyone wants on or off my Chuck Colson/BreakPoint Ping List, please notify me here or by freepmail.
BreakPoint/Chuck Colson Ping!
If anyone wants on or off my Chuck Colson/BreakPoint Ping List, please notify me here or by freepmail.
Amen!
I visited 4 prisons and was appalled by what I saw. We are making things worse, and people worse. We must change our system!
Good op-ed, until the 2nd-to-last sentence. Those non-violent offenders (as he reference earlier) are mostly folks with drug-possession convictions. Some are lifers because they’ve had three convictions on minor war-on-drug offenses. They’re not pushers, or folks who provide drugs to get kids hooked. Instead they are victims of the latter-day Prohibition, except without Prohibition’s attention to Constitutional niceities.
“Three strikes” is not the biggest problem with prison overcrowding; the unconstitutional War On Drugs is.
Oh just shoot the damn things!
However;
But for nonviolent offenders, more appropriate punishments such as restitution and community service make so much more sense—for our communities, for victims, and for the overcrowded prison system."...is a statement I can, in general, agree with.
If your back is against a wall and the choice is to let repeat nonviolent offenders go vs even one time violent offender it is, GENERALLY SPEAKING, a no-brainer.
Not to say that violent offenders should not be punished, but if they are ever going to be let out into society again they need to be rehabilitated too. Not doing so practically guarantees they will victimize someone else.
Ah, the typical response = F’em.
The point is that if these guys are going to be released back into society, why are we making them worse?
You see, Chuck Colson is a Christian, as am I. We have a different view....we want to make things better.
As we sit around, there are special needs children and elderly who need care. I suggest we use some of the non-violent types to help. Just throwing them in the same bucket as the violent criminals and then forgetting about them is not an intelligent act; vengeful, yes; but not intelligent.
YEP....I thought it was a stupid waste to send MARTHA STEWART to prison.....just give her a big ole fine, a really big one!
YTou’re not going to get a prison approved for some of the most valuable development land left in socal.
If the guard union could be told where to go, we'd have a bunch of private prisons in Cal run at lower costs.
There are only two solutions- build more prisons, and release a small number of non-violent marajuana offenders.
No reply? Thought so.
Kinda shortsighted don’t ya think????? Or is superfluous vengeance now a plank in the conservative movement??? Give the one’s who want it training, then maybe they won’t go out and steal a car again and become guests at the Graybar Hotel to the tune of $45,000 a year with the bill going to John Q. Taxpayer.
"Superfluous vengeance"? And all this time I thought it was called justice.
I have news for you. We have a major recidivism problem in this country and regardless of how pleasurable you wish the criminals stay in prison to be, the FEAR of going back is the single most likely thing to keep them from repeat offenses.
Shortsighted.
> I visited 4 prisons and was appalled by what I saw. We are making things worse, and people worse. We must change our system!
I too am not convinced that Gaol is an appropriate remedy for all crimes. Warehousing people for extended periods of time is really only effective if the criminal presents a clear-and-present threat amongst the community. But as a punishment, and as a rehabilitation, it doesn’t seem to do much.
I *would* be in favor of the return of Corporal Punishment. Forty-strokes-save-one with the cat o’nine tails is sufficiently unpleasant that it would not be something most people would want a second helping of, and yet it is over-and-done-with in an afternoon, plus a day or two in sick bay thereafter.
A day or two in the pillory, similarly, would be sufficiently unpleasant and embarassing that most folk would not come back for a repeat dosage. And if they did, there’s always the Cat. Or the Rotan.
Most offenses could be easily, cheaply, efficiently and swiftly dealt to with these remedies: there is no reason why most judicial punishments could not be dispensed within a week of passing sentence.
I am opposed to Community Service as a sentence because all good Citizens should serve their communities as a matter of course. It should be a pleasure to do so, not a punishment. And fines are just money, and they land heavily on those who can least afford them, and are ignored by those who can.
And of course there is the Death Penalty. It is cruel and unusual punishment to expensively warehouse people in a Gaol until they rot, and equally it is unsafe to release some people back into Society. Death by hanging is still a very swift and humane way to launch a crim from this mortal coil, whereas lethal injection takes much longer. DNA and forensic science make the Death Penalty a much safer sentence than in times past, meaning that the likelihood of hanging an innocent is extremely unlikely.
Should any of these remedies be judicially applied, they should naturally be done in full public view as a matter of accountability and good governance.
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