The Glade 4.0

Wow.

http://www.cdispatch.com/news/article.asp?aid=13347

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

I don't care if they die in the street or in their own bed, as long as I'm not paying tax money to keep a criminal alive. The system shouldn't be releasing them to other care facilities. They should be releasing them to family members or to the cold, uncaring world.

Hrm, stupid is, as stupid does?

I guess if they simply go crawl under a rock and die, it is cost effective. But if they leave and go get care at a county facility, it still cost someone money. Most likely the state, as they use the same facilities often.

It still saves the cost of housing them in prison in the first place. A wise move.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

You're still paying for them. Either through medicare or via increased costs levied by healthcare to cover the cost of treating them.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Why not it worked for the Lockerbie bomber.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

If they're terminally ill, we'll likely end up paying to house them in a medical facility, which is way more expensive than housing them in a prison.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

If you're gonna force someone into a cage, you're at least obligated to take care of them.

You say that like it's true...

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In time, this too shall pass.

Not according to the article.

If it saves the state money, then it's a good idea. If it doesn't, then it isn't. "Deterrence" is a non-issue with terminally ill people. Also, "because they deserve it" is not a good reason to keep them in prison, in fact it's a terrible reason to do anything.

Actually, they'd most likely go to home-based hospice care or a hospice facility than a medical facility. Hospice care is significantly cheaper than medical care.

And treating prisoners in a hospital is way, way more expensive than a "regular" patient. Patients who are prisoners need guards too. At my hospital, patients who are prisoners come with two around the clock armed guards from whichever jail/prison system they came from.

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Women are from Hoboken, men are from Trenton. ~ Jimmy Kimmel

We shouldn't be paying for medical treatment for the scumbags in prison in the first place.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

bread, water, four walls and a roof - floors optional~

i thought the purpose of prison was supposed to be punishment for the incarcerated, not hospice care facility

Yeah, all those tens of thousands of people in there for nonviolent drug offenses are total irredemable scumbags that we should just let die.

While I don't support just letting inmates die, or returning to 16th century prison conditions, the fact is Xeq, that a lot of "nonviolent" drug offenders are pretty irredemable because they really do not give a **** about getting off drugs. They're not, as a rule, all that "nonviolent" either; they may not be in for a violent offense at the moment, but they most likely have some sort of violence in their past.

"Nonviolent drug offenders" may not be hardened criminals, but they are not, as a rule, otherwise successful everyday joes that happened to get busted experimenting with coke. A few may be, but that's far from the rule. They may not be murderers, but they aren't in there for singing too loud in church either.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

That's just one example. Martha Stewart went to prison. Clearly we should have let her die if she had contracted some kind of illness while in prison because she's completely worthless to society. There are plenty of low level white collar criminals in the prison system that are not "worthless" or "irredemable" in any sense of the word.

Also, the main reason for harsh prison conditions is to scare inmates away from crime and back into gainful employment, but since we don't allow convicted felons to have gainful employment, the whole exercise is pointless and just comes off as petty vengeance.

Very few illnesses will kill you in 6 months, and in any case, Martha Stewart is anecdotal. More importantly I already said that I wasn't in favor of such treatment in the first place, so I don't know why you're arguing with me.

[quote[Also, the main reason for harsh prison conditions is to scare inmates away from crime and back into gainful employment, but since we don't allow convicted felons to have gainful employment, the whole exercise is pointless and just comes off as petty vengeance.[/quote]

Actually we don't disallow felons from having gainful employment at all; it's just harder, and where, pray tell, would the jobs come from?

Second, retribution (not "vengenace") is part of justice; a person should suffer a consequence for a wrongful act; not simply deterrence. That is part of how society knows that it is protected from criminals.

Third, the fact is that this crap about "nonviolent drug offenders" and "low-level white collar criminals" is a way of minimizing the crimes these people have committed. Yes, some of them had a moment of weakness, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of these people, whether they embezzeled a few grand, or tried coke a few times, or whatever, simply don't give a ****. They don't give a **** that that money wasn't theirs to take, and they aren't sorry for what they did, they just resent being punished and blame everyone but themselves.

"Nonviolent drug offenders" sounds all benign, but the fact is that, debates about the war on drugs and the right to use them aside, most people taking anything heavier than weed simply don't give a **** either, about what they cost their families, society, or whoever else, and a lot of them are violent to some degree.

Frankly, all this reveals is that you're more interested in pontificating about "petty vengenace" because it just sounds too mean or something, than in really knowing anything about criminals. Want to look for people that might be redeemable? Go look at murderers. You'll find plenty of them that are only in there because someone did something to their wife, mom, girlfriend, or daughter.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Retribution doesn't protect society from criminals. Retribution in and of itself does nothing. A justice system protects society from criminals when it reduces the frequency or severity of crime. If the best way to do that is to have no retribution whatsoever, (not that I'm saying that this is actually the case) then that's what should be done. Retribution for its own sake, because they "deserve it" is petty vengeance.

Right now we have a justice system that turns low-level, nonviolent criminals into hardened criminals. These people get out with no job prospects regardless of their skills or experience. They're relegated to low-importance manual labor jobs where they face stiff competition from millions of illegal immigrants. The blue-collar fields that used to hire people with criminal records like construction are in steep decline.

The fact is our justice system pretty much guarantees that anyone who goes to prison is a lifetime criminal, and increasing the harshness of prison just makes them commit worse crimes to avoid going back. We can't scare them straight because we don't let them go straight.

No, this is not true. Like I said, retribution (in addition to the fact that it IS a deterrent) is partly about society knowing that it is protected. Victims, for example, know that the state is going to take some action against their aggressor, because they were wronged. Yes there are victimless crimes and law doesn't dictate morality and blah blah blah, but the basic crimes that every society prohibits in some way such as robbery, burglary, rape, murder, assault and the like are things pretty much everyone understands to be wrong by the definition any society uses regardless of philosophical debate.

Justice is not served merely by s utilitarian comparison of aggregate crime. Justice must be served in individual cases, and it is not served without an approriate consequnence for the guilty. "Petty vengeance" is different; that is about emotional satisfaction which is why we don't allow the victim to actually determine the consequence.



You're ***** about the specifics of how the justice system is run. This is fairly typical for you, just throw up a bunch of problems that you try to make sound unsolveable in a one-line non-analysis. It's particularly hilarious in this case, since you can be counted upon to be the first one to be complaining about anything involving getting rid of illegal immigrants. Ok, so industries that hired criminals are in decline, right now. This is a specific problem, right now, not a matter of the general principle we're talking about here.

Again, where would we get these jobs? If I said get rid of illegal immigrants, you'd have some nonsense about Americans not wanting the jobs, and all the usual lines, and again, where would the jobs come from?



Have you got anything remotely resembling a statistic to back this up? Probably not; this is yet another case of you just making broad assertions based on nothing more than your gut instinct of how things are. The fact is that most convicted felons can get some kind of decent job; the big problem is with those that don't want an honest job because they make more money selling drugs, or because it wasn't what they made before going to prison.

Moreover, prison is not that harsh for the vast majority of inmates. Most inmates are not in maximum security. It is not uncommon for inmates to become institutionalized, and not really want to leave, or even commit crimes to get back.

Either way, the prospect of prison keeps quite a few honest people honest, protects society from the criminal for at least as long as he's in there, and again, shows that justice was done. It is not just about a utilitarian calculation of crime rates.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Sure, there's plenty. First, the recidivism rate in the US is increasing despite a general decrease in the crime rate. Less people are becoming felons, but once you're branded as one that's what you are for the rest of your life. Property crimes also have a much higher recidivism rate than violent crimes. Second, the recidivism rate in the US is much higher than the rate in Europe, despite their much softer prisons, which indicates that making prison nastier doesn't really work to deter criminals from committing more crimes.

The fact is, the US focus on punishment is the problem. The "need" to see the person that "wronged" you hurt is exactly where the problem comes from. It actually increases the crime rate down the line, but we do it anyway because we need to have our revenge. Our justice system teaches prisoners that they are no longer full members of society and never will be again, why should they bother to respect it in that case?

Except that we haven't made prison nastier; prison has gotten easier and easier here and I could just as easily say that softer prisons have hurt recidivism, and lower rates in Europe are due to other factors. There are all kinds of major sociological differences between Europe and the U.S. and you can draw no single causal connections in that fashion, which does not help your case either.

Also, where are you getting your recidivism information from?



Except that this is not a problem. Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. There is no good reason anyone should take a risk on a convicted felon if they do not wish to; as it happens plenty of people do.

Furthermore, you continue to blame recidivism on the justice system when in fact the combination of economic conditions (which changes int he justice system could not help anyhow) and the fact that most criminals are not just regular people that got caught in a bad situation but people whose entire lives have been lived in conditions that encourage disregard for the law because it is not to their advantage strongly indicate it is not simply a matter of "oh, prison is too hard, and people with felony convictions aren't treated like everyone else therefore they re-offend." You are vastly oversimplifying a complex cause.

Again, the jobs need to come from somewhere, and you're just ignoring the fact that they don't exist because you know damn well you A) can't create them out of thin air B) can't seriously suggest hiring felons in preference to non-criminals and C) are already backed into a corner on booting illegal immigrants.

You're just flailing about with this nonsense about how "revenge" is the "problem" when in fact you have not demonstrated a problem at all. Again, justice is not served when the only goal is overall crime rate reduction; it must include retribution at the individual level of each crime or the person has been rewarded for committing it.

The attacks in Norway illustrate precisely this problem; the man who did it can only be given 15 years or something like that, no matter how many people he killed! This is positively appalling; Norway has crippled its ability to deal with individual crimes by excessive concern with A) the treatment of criminals and B) overall crime rate and has only gotten away with it because it is a small, ethnically mostly homogenous country that lacks many of the social problems present in this country. If we had such conditions here, it would be an utter disaster.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

When I talk about our justice system being unfair, I am of course doing it from the perspective of the criminal who has at least some desire to reform after committing a crime. Of course there are some that don't care at all, but you can't rehabilitate them no matter how harsh or soft you make the prison system. It's the same logic as with welfare, sure there are some people that will only mooch of the system and never improve, the idea is still to help the people who won't.

We have sex offenders who after being released have to live under bridges because the barrage of living restrictions imposed on them basically makes it illegal for them to own property or even live with family members. Why should this individual bother to respect any of society's rules? There are plenty of people that were making relatively high salaries that end up with a felony conviction because they had a bad day. You can go from making $80k a year, to being able to make $20k max because of that brand even if you serve no jail time and your skills and experience are still relevant. How are you going to support your family now with a legitimate job?

Also, I don't think felons should be hired preferably over non-felons, I just think that they should have a chance which in a wide variety of industries (I would guess the majority of all industries to be honest, but I don't know that for sure) they currently don't. Anything in health care or that involves handling money, or involves traveling to a customer's house, or involves security bonding are 100% barred to felons even if there is a labor shortage and the felon has the relevant skills and experience.

You seem to accept that Norway's justice system reduced the crime rate. Given that, how can it possibly be an "utter disaster" if implementing it here also decreases the crime rate? By definition, fewer people are getting victimized. I don't believe such a system would decrease the crime rate, but that just leads into the "utilitarianism" you don't like saying it's a bad idea.

I also see paroled and released criminals being treated as second class citizens. I feel that if they are released from prison that they need all of their rights returned, not this hybrid "seperate but equal" crap.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

Lots of criminals have the desire to reform in the same sense that a lot of alcoholics have a desire to stop drinking. They are perfectly willing to do it, as long as it's easy.



Again, where is that job going to come from? Special preferences for prior convictions? Or are we now going to make it illegal to discriminate based on prior conviction status? If we're going to do that, why allow people to mandate qualifications for jobs at all; if you can't keep someone out of an investment job because they embezzled last time they had one, how can you justify any qualification?

The incentive this person has is that if they obey the law, they get to be out of prison, and at least do what they want to do on a daily basis. Have you ever been inside a prison? Not been incarcerated, but physically set foot inside one? It's not pleasent to be there; the removal of freedom is the punishment, never seeing anything else but the prison for days on end. That's the deterrent. Of course, some people institutionalize and don't want to leave, but the softer we make prison, the more of those people we get. Prison is not that harsh; it's just harsh compared to the Hiltons that Europeans like to run. Inmates, however, don't really have it that bad except for the small percentage that are truly unmanageable; they get TV, exercise, activities, and the like, which has the benefit of reducing how frequently they shank each other or the guards.

As for sex offenders, yes, many of the restrictions on them are over the top and unnecessary, but that does not speak to the basic reality of having a felony conviction. Part of the reason that felony conviction exists is so people can protect themselves against that person in the future; they have already demonstrated untrustworthiness in some regard, and people should be allowed to judge for themselves whether to deal with that person. Just ebcause they have a "desire to reform" doesn't mean anything; the burden is on them to demonstrate to the satisfaction of a prospective employer or whoever that they've rehabilitated, not on society to rehabilitate them. If economic times are tough, then tough. Once you've crossed certain lines you simply cannot go back. I don't think you quite grasp this.



So? Again, how are they supposed to "have a chance"? You don't have a clue; you're just saying "it's not fair" by looking only at the felon's perspective and not that of anyone else. There's really not any way to be more "fair" except getting rid of illegal immigrants, since the job fairy is not likely to visit us any time soon.



No, I don't accept that. I accept that Norway has a lower crime rate, which it indisputably does. Crime rates, however, are largely a product of the overall social structure of a country and Norway's is different from ours in ways that simply cannot be altered; it's history, geography, and the size, density, and makeup of its population are fundamentally different and those differences alone are massive factors in the difference in crime rate; not the way their justice system works. Their justice system is getting away with being able to be so lenient because they do not have the same social problems as we do and aren't likely to. Moreover, those differences I mentioned are only the tip of the iceberg.

More importantly, as I pointed out, the justice system is an utter disaaster because it is not able to serve justice in the case of a truly heinous crime like what happened earlier this year. It is not serving justice; it's simply pointing to a low crime rate, pretending that "enlightened" justice practices such as absurd 15 year sentences for mass murder are somehow the cause of that, and pretending this is justice. When a case like this comes to light it illustrates the failure; the system is concerned only with avoiding the appearance of abuse of inmates and overall crime, not with justice for society or the victims.

In fact, the ugly truth about all of these European soft systems is that they're really about the never-satisifed need in Europe to show that you're A) not a Nazi B) not a "right-winger" and C) not a stupid American who doesn't do what "civilized" Europeans do. The first of those drives the other two; Europeans in general and Germans in particular are desperate to avoid anything anyone could remotely call Nazism, Facism, or anything like that. Nazis had concentration camps and killed people? We have to have soft prisons with amenities and 15 year sentences to prove we aren't like them, and if someone still says we're being too harsh, then we'll soften it even more!

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."