Should The Government Change Crime Penalties for Non-Violent Offenders?

[tjones80]

In the United States we are putting more people away for a long time for non-violent offenses. Wouldn’t it be more humane to put those convicted of non-violent offenses in for a short period of time such as for six months? Then the court could impose a income tax as punishment.

For example, a person that is convicted of a computer hacking crime would be convicted of a misdemeanor and would lose all tax deductions then have to pay a 5% flat tax, in addition to regular income taxes, as penalty for their crime for 5 to 10 years.

This could work great for first time offenders and the law would not apply to people convicted of other crimes. By having a misdemeanor conviction the person would still be employable and the additional taxes would create more revenue for the government. Instead of putting a person in prison for many years with a cost of approximately $30,000 per year.

The court can impose fines for a few thousand dollars now, but most of that is uncollected because the court does not have the time or resources to enforce such fines.

I just would like us to be more humane to non-violent offenders, save the taxpayers money from prison costs and raise revenue for those that we do jail.

If someone earns $35,000 per year they would have no tax deductions on that income and have in addition a federal or state 5% income tax. The collected income tax from that person would be about $5250 per year.

Any thoughts?

 

[Church_Militant]

You don’t want to do this because it creates the same kind of mess that causes municipalities to use their cops to create speed traps to increase revenue.

NVOs should have lighter sentences, but that precludes politicians from increasing the penalties in order to sell themselves to voters as being “tough on crime”.

 

[mikekle]

You don’t want to do this because it creates the same kind of mess that causes municipalities to use their cops to create speed traps to increase revenue.

Too late, this is already happening all over the place. I recently looked into our 2 local counties and was specifically looking for revenue resulting from DUIs, these 2 counties brought in 100s of thousands of dollars from DUIs, so this tells me, they, in NO WAY, want people to stop drinking and driving, Id say this is probably a big reason why we have not seen any new restrictions/regulations imposed on alcohol or its use/sale. They have all kinds of laws against street drugs, possession, sale, transporting it, etc and they CLAIM this is for the general health and safety of the public, but if this were accurate, why are they not taking more steps against alcohol?

ANY ER employee will tell you alcohol causes 95% of problems with people coming in, not street drugs, yet a big deal is made about the war on drugs and going after users and dealers…this makes no sense, why is there not a war on booze?

Dont try to say prohibition was already tried, but it failed miserably, the war on drugs is also prohibition, so why would they enact another type of prohibition, when they already know it does not work?

My point is, they (secretly) do not want DUIs to stop, or else they loose millions of dollars in revenue, so they must keep it going, the same goes for every other type of crime people are arrested for, in every case, there is court fees, and other charges, these fees are not small either. law enforcement is big business, plus FOR PROFIT jails probably play a big part in it too…have to keep them full somehow!!!

 

[Reep]

You don’t want to do this because it creates the same kind of mess that causes municipalities to use their cops to create speed traps to increase revenue.

You make a good point. Combining the violent power of government with a profit motive is very dangerous for all of us. The corruption of local law enforcement by forfeiture laws is almost inevitable when the money goes to the same agencies who decide whose property to steal. We should do two things:

1. 
   *]Move to a restitution based system that redresses the actual harm done to victims. The person harmed–not the state–is considered the victim.
   
   • 
     *]Abolish any crimes which do not have any identifiable victim other than the state itself.

 

[Mickey_Finn]

In the United States we are putting more people away for a long time for non-violent offenses. Wouldn’t it be more humane to put those convicted of non-violent offenses in for a short period of time such as for six months? Then the court could impose a income tax as punishment.

For example, a person that is convicted of a computer hacking crime would be convicted of a misdemeanor and would lose all tax deductions then have to pay a 5% flat tax, in addition to regular income taxes, as penalty for their crime for 5 to 10 years.

This could work great for first time offenders and the law would not apply to people convicted of other crimes. By having a misdemeanor conviction the person would still be employable and the additional taxes would create more revenue for the government. Instead of putting a person in prison for many years with a cost of approximately $30,000 per year.

The court can impose fines for a few thousand dollars now, but most of that is uncollected because the court does not have the time or resources to enforce such fines.

I just would like us to be more humane to non-violent offenders, save the taxpayers money from prison costs and raise revenue for those that we do jail.

If someone earns $35,000 per year they would have no tax deductions on that income and have in addition a federal or state 5% income tax. The collected income tax from that person would be about $5250 per year.

Any thoughts?

1. Taxes are not intended to be punitive in nature.
2. How about we just lock up the people we are afraid of instead of the ones we are mad at?

ATB