Should society be nicer to criminals?

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VonDerTann said:
–Does that mean no minimum sentences?
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Don’t switch the question. No minimum sentences means nothing except there is not a mandatory minimum. The rest of that post can be seen in that light.
 
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My questions are real: you’re opposed to minimums sentences? OK, for what specific crimes? Theft? To the value of what? What’s a “property crime?”
 
VonDerTann said:
My questions are real: you’re opposed to minimums sentences? OK, for what specific crimes?
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Drug possession. Theft. Property crimes. Non-aggravated assaults. Basically, anything for which some alternative punishment can be derived should be sufficient.
VonDerTann said:
What’s a “property crime?”
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In the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, property crime includes the offenses of burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson. The object of the theft-type offenses is the taking of money or property, but there is no force or threat of force against the victims. The property crime category includes arson because the offense involves the destruction of property;

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/property-crime
 
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So, no minimus sentence for any of the looting or fire starting in the USA during the last 2 weeks?

What in your opinion would be appropriate punishments?
 
I am always amazed at what kindness can achieve; when dealing with violence.

I have been a Street Pastor for the last twelve years, we are volunteers from many different churches. We wonder the streets until around 4 am, we go out because we care about our town, we listen and help when we can. We have come across a lot of drunken violence.

I can remember the first big fight; we saw, about a dozen drunks punching the living daylights out of each other. We walked in the middle and tried to keep people apart, using no physical contact. I can only say, I experienced a profound sense of peace that is beyond my understanding. It is like the drunks absorbed my peace, and I soaked up their anger like a sponge.

After a while the fight ended, we stopped with them, and when it was time to leave, we had so many hugs, handshakes and kisses. I was in my sixties at the time, and the two ladies with me were both in their seventies.

Every time we go out, people thank us and they say we respect what we do. We have been told many times that we help change people’s lives. People know we are volunteers and don’t get paid a penny.

On two occasions I have asked people to hand me their knife. We have stood between angry drunks and the police, we have stood between angry drunks and doormen. We have had big burly doormen phone and ask for our help in angry situations.

A crowd of angry drunks came towards us shouting I am going to f… hit someone, I am angry; after their football team had lost. Seconds later they were all around us, one angry lad came up to us and shook our hand, Street Pastors, if anyone gives you any trouble come and see me and I will f… sort them out. We stopped with them a while and were gently able to say we always look for peaceful solutions.

Next time we were out we saw the angry drunk, he came over to us and apologised for his past behaviour.

There are many stories from over the years, and it amazes me that none of us have been hurt. I know we have a very different roll to the police, we have no power to do anything, we have no targets to meet. This makes our roll much easier because we just try and spread a bit of kindness around.
 
VonDerTann said:
Really, your entire argument comes down to you not liking anal inspections. If you really know prisons as you say, you would know these searches are necessary given the ways inmates smuggle weapons, drugs, etc., into jails. You’d also know that pre-court searches are generally done at judicial direction, not those of the prisons themselves.

–As to doing away with mandatory sentences, a child rapist in Vermont a few years ago was sentenced by a judge to essentially no jail time, so he could “get help.” The judge was nearly tarred and feathered, righty so: I’d be curious exactly what crimes you’d like no minimum sentences for.
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What is necessary is not always pleasant nor does it have to be worse. Your statement that prison is too easy is facile and ignores prison realities. You say you are a lawyer but decry the legal libraries in prison? Gideon v. Wainwright was not researched in a white shoe law firm and it is a landmark as to our judicial system. It was filed based on research in a FL prison library.

There will always be outliers in sentencing. Some prison escapees have led successful, lives with positive impact on the community and not just because the person fear’s detection. Alternatively, we had in IL last week a young lady who was arrested for looting 2 days after she came off parole! Individuals vary quite widely.

Mandatory minimums take away some of the discretion from judges hearing the cases, which is wrong. Particular circumstances and particular individuals vary too much.

Finally, is there anyone (me included) who a person would like less to share a cab with than an ex-offender? I am reminded of the call to do well for ‘the least of my brothers’.
 
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VonDerTann said:
Some thoughts:
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phil19034:
We MUST treat prisoners as humans & with human dignity. But that doesn’t mean they need hotel accomidations.

But it does mean that prisoners should be protected against being raped, beat up, or killed in prison.
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–I would argue that prisoners (i.e. those already convicted) in the US are already treated with enormous dignity: As I said before, they get gyms; law libraries; and TV; medical care; nutritious meals; access to lawyers; and the new “model for prisons” is lots of common areas and less time locked in cells.

–As to protections against rape, beatings, etc., there is absolutely no foolproof system against any of these. Guards can’t be everywhere, and many assaults are of the “sucker punch” variety for which there’s often no defense. Assaults are ALWAYS going to happen when 1) large numbers of people are locked up together; 2) those people are criminals to begin with; and 3) many of those inmates are used to using violence to address their problems.

Prison cultures have essentially almost always been examples of kakistocracy (admit it, all you lurkers: I taught you a new word, didn’t I?), namely, “government by the worst elements of society,” where the worst inmates often control others. I’m sorry, inmate-on-inmate violence will always occur.
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Naah, I already knew that word from the TV show QI … 🤓🤓🤓
 
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Do I have a problem with prison libraries or specifically prison law libraries? Absolutely not. They are a necessary part of our justice system. The fact that they are freely available to prisoners, at taxpayer expense, is merely another plank in my platform that prisoners’ rights are already well respected in the USA.
 
MNathaniel said:
This is not a zero sum game where we have to decide between “police lives” OR “criminal lives”. We can value all human lives and work towards helping police safely, professionally, humanely protect the communities they serve.
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This is an extremely important point. Police are learning that they keep everyone safer if they refrain from escalating a situation towards violence or the use of force. That’s not to knock the past as being inherently violent in its intent. It is one of those “when we know better, we do better” things.
 
I think that absolute majority of heavy criminals had difficult childhood, dysfunctional parents, bad surroundings, no good examples to follow.
Heroization of the criminal world, “perverted criminal pedagogy” also begins with children’s gangs, with children’s prisons, etc.
How to measure the guilts, if all around him/her were guiding him/her to bad road in life?
 
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There are also historical, trans-genetic problems that have passed on from parents and have influenced the future generations.
Often children are a mirror image of their parents.
I think psychology knows more deeper answers for these questions, if to compare the nations with colonial, totalitarian past, or where the drugs, alkoholism massive problems…
Unfortunately, entire nations are reaping the consequences in future generations.
 
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