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Update: CNN reporting that "multiple" law enforcement sources claim that driver in Waukesha Christmas parade tragedy was "fleeing from another crime scene"

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  • Commissar SFLUFAN changed the title to Update: CNN reporting that "multiple" law enforcement sources claim that driver in Waukesha Christmas parade tragedy was "fleeing from another crime scene"
finaljedi

finaljedi

Posted
Posted
48 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

I’m not generally for things like life imprisonment, but, yeah maybe this guy isn’t cut out for life around others.

 

It's kind of frustrating that there's no solution without going full on authoritarian.  The three strikes stuff wasn't terribly effective, but I feel like there should be something different done with people who just commit regular minor felonies and never appear to be heading towards any kind of rehabilitation.  This guy apparently has a rap sheet like 50 pages long, I feel like around page 20 or so they should have just stopped letting him live in a normal society.

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SimpleG

SimpleG

Posted
Posted
9 minutes ago, finaljedi said:

 

It's kind of frustrating that there's no solution without going full on authoritarian.  The three strikes stuff wasn't terribly effective, but I feel like there should be something different done with people who just commit regular minor felonies and never appear to be heading towards any kind of rehabilitation.  This guy apparently has a rap sheet like 50 pages long, I feel like around page 20 or so they should have just stopped letting him live in a normal society.

What rehabilitation? This country thrives on punishment.  Instead of education and mental health , this country wants sadism. This person is beyond redemption at this point but just maybe this could have been avoided if we had a real working system. 

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b_m_b_m_b_m

b_m_b_m_b_m

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, SimpleG said:

What rehabilitation? This country thrives on punishment.  Instead of education and mental health , this country wants sadism. This person is beyond redemption at this point but just maybe this could have been avoided if we had a real working system. 

we're set up for recidivism and extreme punishment and act surprised when we get exactly that

  • True 1
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Fizzzzle

Fizzzzle

Posted
Posted

I know I've said it before a bunch, but I'll say it again: For as much as we harp on about rehabilitation, the reality is people don't want rehabilitation - they want punishment. People look at prisons in places like Norway and say "shit, that's basically a resort! Why *wouldn't* I commit crimes in Norway!" blindly ignoring all other social factors. The recidivism rate in Norway hovers at around only 20%. Only roughly 1 in 5 felons in Norway end up committing another crime within 5 years of release. In some places in America, that number is as high as 80%. Nearly 4 out of 5 American felons end up back in prison within 5 years of release.

 

Not that all of that matters in this particular case. The dude who did this will die in prison.

 

Still, it's worth looking at what led to him doing this. Going back to Norway, I'd argue they get around this issue by actually investing in their prisoners. They get fresh food, some modicum of privacy and comfort, education, job training, etc. In other words, they get taught better habits and how to be a productive member of society. Norway understands what America does not: The overwhelming majority of felons will be released back into society some day. What kind of person do you want them to be when that day comes? Someone who has been tortured, starved, raped, extorted, and beaten for years on end? Or someone who has spent time learning skills, getting educated, and generally learning to live in a healthy environment?

 

Obviously, when you put it like that, everyone will say they want the latter. However, whenever someone brings up serious prison reform, people revert back to wanting prisoners to be punished, not rehabilitated. Most prisons in the south don't even have heating or air conditioning. Maricopa County Jail famously has some inmates sleep outdoors. I can think of at least 2 prisons that don't have locks on cell doors. In Virginia, prison inmates eat food that was grown by prisoners in hellish conditions, leading to eating things like collard greens with maggots, bugs, and rocks in them. Most prisoners get food that literally did not pass the standards for dog food.

 

Anecdotally, I know one person who went to prison in another state where the wait list to get job training was like 8 years long. The reason? The prison used the prisoners as a labor source and sold the goods for profit. They didn't want to waste time training people who were going home, so they saved the job training for the lifers, which is ironic. "Oh, you're only here for 4 years (how long my friend was there)? Ha! ...no, you can't work in the wood shop, here's a bucket and a mop and $1.50/day."

 

I know it's been argued over and over again, that the constant revolving door of people going in and out of prison ends up costing our society FAR more than if we simply treated inmates like humans and invested in making them better people. People who, when they integrate back into society, will become a functioning cog in the economy, not a drain on it.

 

 

... Anyway, I didn't mean to write a novel, it's just one of the things that gets me riled up. The dude who did this would absolutely get the death penalty if Wisconsin had one (they don't*). He'll die in prison, though.

 

*Wisconsin is one of 23 states to formally have no death penalty. Alaska and Hawaii never had one, at least as states. Michigan also never *really* had one, but it was constitutionally abolished in 1963 anyway. Wisconsin was the first state to repeal theirs in 1853. Then Maine+ (1887), Minnesota (1911), West Virginia and Iowa (1965), Vermont (1972), North Dakota (1973), Massachusetts and Rhode Island (1984), New Jersey and New York (2007), New Mexico (2009), Illinois (2011), Connecticut (2012), Maryland (2013), Delaware (2016), Washington (2018), New Hampshire (2019), Colorado (2020), and Virginia (2021). California, Oregon, and Pennsylvania all still technically have a death penalty, but there have been governor-imposed moratoriums on executions.

 

+Maine is another interesting case. As far as I'm aware, they're the only state that has already started the process of abolishing solitary confinement as punishment. There's a documentary series about it called "Last Days of Solitary" that's really good. New York actually passed legislation this year that will abolish solitary confinement for longer than 14 days, it goes into effect next year.

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Guest

Guest

Posted
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I think we have to be careful not to go so far as to say that the system makes people commit crimes. What it does though is make committing more crimes an appealing path because so much of post release life stacks the deck against you. Working through the difficulty of post release requires a lot of community assistance, and lack of community assistance is often a factor that people initially find themselves choosing crime in the first place.

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Fizzzzle

Fizzzzle

Posted
Posted
3 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

The money Norway get from Oil & Gas allows them to do things other countries can't -- it's not really a fair comparison.

"we don't have the money to do it" isn't a great argument. It costs society far more to keep people in and out of jails and prisons their whole lives than it would to, like, offer college education to inmates. It costs $25-30k/year to incarcerate people. Investing in making sure that they *don't* keep getting incarcerated is just that... an investment.

 

Getting people to pass legislation that would actually do stuff like that is the hard part because people only want to see punishment and don't want their tax dollars wasted on criminals.

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SimpleG

SimpleG

Posted
Posted
6 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

The money Norway get from Oil & Gas allows them to do things other countries can't -- it's not really a fair comparison.

Sounds like we should raise taxes on Oil and Gas and use it for a proper system to deal with inmates and fix our current fucked up system. 

Where do I sign?

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b_m_b_m_b_m

b_m_b_m_b_m

Posted
Posted
24 minutes ago, SimpleG said:

Sounds like we should raise taxes on Oil and Gas and use it for a proper system to deal with inmates and fix our current fucked up system. 

Where do I sign?

No. 

 

We should nationalize the oil super majors and nationalize their reserve claims.

 

Whoops now we're Norway

 

(We should be doing this anyway because of climate change we should be winding these operations down)

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Guest

Guest

Posted
Posted
20 minutes ago, SimpleG said:

Sounds like we should raise taxes on Oil and Gas and use it for a proper system to deal with inmates and fix our current fucked up system. 

Where do I sign?


Not to get too into the weeds of this tangent as comparing a nation like Norway to the United States when it comes to crime is…unproductive.

 

But to achieve what Norway has in regards to oil and gas you can’t just tax more, you have to nationalize the resource as they did back in the 60s. I know @Commissar SFLUFANis on board with that :p 

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Fizzzzle

Fizzzzle

Posted
Posted
10 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

No. 

 

We should nationalize the oil super majors and nationalize their reserve claims.

 

Whoops now we're Norway

 

(We should be doing this anyway because of climate change we should be winding these operations down)

I like the new icon.

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