[muawiyah]

We do not have more folks in jail than any communist country ever thought of.

Your little friends at Wiki admit there were 5 to 7 million prisoners at any one time in the Soviet Gulag, and 10% of them died each year.

Our situation is not comparable.

Actually, there'd be many fewer prisoners in this country if plea bargaining was abolished. That way the criminals could face the REAL sentences for their crimes, rather than those winkydink sentences for pot possession.

That'd gobsmack 'em with real life soon enough that they'd not want to come back.

Oh, yeah, and END PAROLE.

[Dead Corpse]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/30/AR2006113000912.html http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm Make enough things a crime and soon enough, everyone is a criminal.

Your stance is not surprising from what I've seen of your posting history. Anything else you'd like to make illegal carrying an "instant" death sentence without trial?

[microgood]

Actually, there'd be many fewer prisoners in this country if plea bargaining was abolished. That way the criminals could face the REAL sentences for their crimes, rather than those winkydink sentences for pot possession.

97 million Americans have tried pot. What do you think gives you the right to destroy that many peoples lives? Sounds like you are looking for a Stalin-like cleansing of the unpure.

[CGTRWK]

Actually, there'd be many fewer prisoners in this country if plea bargaining was abolished. That way the criminals could face the REAL sentences for their crimes, rather than those winkydink sentences for pot possession.

Plea bargaining is a tool of the prosecution, not the criminal defendant. Accepting a deal is always at the prosecution's discretion.

That the 5 (or often as not, 15) seperate felony charge 'real sentence' is invariably many times more severe than what is ultimately plead isn't the criminal getting away with something. The prosecutor has no intention of getting that sentence, or evidence to make most or even many of the charges stick. He just wants to intimidate the accused out of requesting an expensive trial - and 19 times in 20 it works.