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Greenspice - 2 ways to work quotation: either hit quotation and it will put the entire post between the UBBCode - then you can just delete what you don't want. OR highlight the part you want to quote - copy it (Ctrl - C) and then click on the Quote underneath where your post goes. Then paste (Ctrl -V) between the the UBB codes (they say quote and /quote with brackets around them)

Hope this made sense. If I try to type the code out, it just does it instead of demonstrating. <img src="/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />


Michelle Taylor
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Ok, now for my stance on this subject!

I have gone back and forth on this. Being the victim of rape, I was at one time very much a proponent of the death penalty. Vengeance was a word I fully believed in. And whenever I heard about child molesters I thought the best punichment would be just to turn them over to the parents of the child.

but over time I came to see, as I believe Sylvia pointed out, that we can never be 100% certain that someone is guilty. The death penalty is pretty final - no going back and saying "oops, sorry, we had the wrong guy." It's bad enough when someone has been locked away for half their life - but at least they can do something with the other half.

Now I do believe that our justice system has taken this "cruel and unusual punishment" thing a bit too far. i mean, we have innocent children on the streets that don't get treated a 10th as well as our rapists and murderers do!

Tvs, weight rooms, libraries, I've heard rumors of prisons with carpeting. These men have beds, hot meals, clothing, and free health care - that we as taxpayers take care of. And plenty of homeless families that have broken no laws except to be unlucky have none of this. Where's that justice? (I realize some people on the streets bring it on themselves - but not all of them - and definitely not the children).

Punishment should be something that is a deterrent to crime, not something that many people in this country could wish they coould have!


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The cost of housing a single inmate is $36,000 a year.

The US has more people in jail than any other country.

I have a statistic I put up in the Crime forum that something like 75% of people in jail have some form of mental illness. Could be higher or lower, I don't remember. But it is a significant factor.

I am for the cruel and unusual punishment clause, and I don't think putting folks in cement floored chicken coops is the answer. Altho tvs, weights, yep; why are they allowed and there is a book limit? lol!

All in all, there needs to be major prison reform in the US. What are we doing wrong that other countries are doing right?

For one, we criminalize minor crimes. Yep, legalization of some things needs to happen and then put it in the doctor's hands to monitor and eventually cure the rampant drug abuse. For every $4 spent to jail a person, it only costs $1 to rehabilitate them off drugs.

Three strikes is for sports, not crime. Power back in the judge's hands to really judge whether life in prison is right.

Just some small steps that might help our prison system, which is over-burdened. I realize these might be unpopular views, but clearly what we have in place now is not working. Recidivism is high; the gang culture in jail runs rampant. What can we do to stop both? Keep killing people on death row? These people live lives of violence already. You're not ending the violence by adding to it.


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Bella Harmony,

We could have a law that applies to the penalty with respect to outlining undenialble proof, eye witnesses, DNA evidence,
past etc attached to the penalty phase. The parameters would be set and met prior to penalty phase with the need for 2 eyewitnesses taking priority, or steep factual evidence before preceding. Of course all of this would delineated and should be well defined with no leniency in the definition of the parameters. Thats the best we can do before we hand it over to the switch puller, i.e. the family. There are ways. This isn't funny but here goes a riddle: A woman attends a funeral of her mother and at the funeral she meets a nice young man and speaks with him for a while. They hit it off. He leaves then she remembers that forgot to get his telephone #. After the funeral she immediately goes out and kills her sister why?


Here is the answer, She figured she could see him again at the sisters funeral. Now here is the scary part, this question was posed to inmates at one prison with every serial killer getting is right.


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Since many murders as done by criminal to criminal (gangs) or between people who know each other (this comes a recent NY city report) deterrence is hard to measure. Also coming into this is the common decades long time between conviction and punishment in these cases.

One thing I know is that the recidivism rate for those executed is zero, we can not say the same for those imprisoned and then released.

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Quote:
Also coming into this is the common decades long time between conviction and punishment in these cases.



Excellent point!

One of the first things we learn as parents of toddlers is that punishment needs to be dealt immediately after the child has done something wrong, or else they never connect the two incidents together.

Now of course adults on the surface know that they are being punished for the crime they committed, but could the sub-concious be down-playing the severity of it because of the lagtime? And also, what kind of message does it send to the public as a deterrant when the criminal just sits in stasis with no real punishment being done for their crime - Nothing!


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I think that rather than executing criminals they should be made to do really horrible jobs in specially built prison factories or recycling plants. 'Life imprisonment' usually means being let out after 3 years for good behaviour, which is hardly a deterrant (using the gym, watching tv and getting fed and watered for free...sounds good to me). If life imprisonment meant being bent over a conveyorbelt sorting out gargbage 9 hours a day, every day, for the rest of your life...then that would certainly deter the buggers.


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Koala
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Life without opportunity for parole, if incarcerated in a facility where the individual actually LOST rights to all things society deems wonderful (TV, books, contact with outsiders, exercise facilities, etc.), then it MIGHT deter some from committing certain crimes. But we, as taxpayers, would still have to foot a hefty bill--especially as so many crimes these days could likely qualify for "life".

There are no "good" answers. Both long-term warehouseing of criminals and putting people to death are horrid options.

I suppose we could cryo-freeze them... then wake them up if/when we find a way to actually "rehabilitate" people.

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Wasn't there a suggestion that the prisoners' own assets should be used, wherever possible, to fund their incarceration?
I know this too is fraught with problems, and is a potential minefield, given that they might have innocent dependents.... but something of that ilk....It's a hopeless question, isn't it....?

Last edited by Alexandra; 04/28/06 11:09 AM.
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Koala
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Many states in the US do seize personal assets or require inmates to pay for extras... but if the inmate has no assets or funds, the state still has to pick up the tab.

Crime is a lose-lose situation for everyone.

I don't know what other countries do these days... I've been out of this area of research for several years.

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