Violent criminals need to be jailed, at least until they learn to control their rage. For some, that's a long, long, time. For others, less. However, we have far too many petty thieves in jail. Do we accomplish anything by that? I doubt it. Ditto marijuanna users.

The American "three strikes and you're out" approach isn't working. It's being abused by police and prosecutors. The long term effect will probably be to release a lot of very angry young men back into their society. Is that what they want?

BC is experimenting with "Alternative Justice" as a way to keep minor offenders out of the system. Worth a try.

She had some quite amazing stats, about who gets arrested in the first place, who gets charged, who goes to trial, who gets convicted, etc etc etc.

It was depressing then; it is depressing now.

She was, of course, talking about a different society from ours -- not Canada, and not even the U.S. now, although I believe that the U.S. still emprisons enormous numbers of people for minor drug offences, and that there is a severe race-slant in those stats.

She was also talking, of course, about all the people who never get charged. Those appeared to be a majority. Listening to Jessica, you could well have come to feel hopeless. Why not open the cell doors? There are more outside already anyway? Why are we bothering? That was kind of her message, as well as the race-based argument.

I found a slightly incoherent summary of her book about the American penal system here, which might interest some.

I mean: it's an oddly appealing idea, isn't it -- if we can't catch 'em all, why are we catching any?

There cannot be no punishment for crimes. But at the same time punishment for gratuitous purposes is counterproductive. Whapping a kid with a belt all the time doesn't make the kid behave. It just teaches him that the way to solve any problem is by hitting someone. That doesn't teach the social skills needed to properly function in society and it certainly doesn't teach much-needed conflict resolution skills.

Ideally, I would like to see relatively short sentences here compared to today's standards, except for the most severe crimes, and put into practice the "rehabilitation" aphorism attached to our penal system which currently is just bandied about like a catchword with no real substance except at the young offender level, and even that seems to be gutted in favor of political grandstanding with "cracking down on young offenders."

One of the single biggest problems with our penal system is that the resocialization of prisoners is being de-emphasized - what little there is anyway. In the United States, it's apparently even worse. At least here in Canada the philosophy still is somewhat extant that prisoners should more-or-less get their parole at two-thirds and be gradually reintroduced to society.

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Or how about the "petty theft is just as bad as murder" rule?

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I didn't say "jail for life", did I? Did anyone?

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The American "three strikes and you're out" approach isn't working. It's being abused by police and prosecutors.

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Thank you for at least acknowledging that its failures are due to abuse and human error, and not an inherent tragic flaw.

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BC is experimenting with "Alternative Justice" as a way to keep minor offenders out of the system. Worth a try.

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Absolutely, provided it's not toothless.

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There are individuals out there for whom jail is safer and more comfortable than their homes. Jail is not a deterrant for these people.

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We can work on that.

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I sure don't believe in the three strikes law - it is silly to jail people for a string of petty crimes - it is extremely expensive and just teaches such people to graduate to "real" crimes.

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I would love nothing more than for people to learn their lesson the first time and never need imprisonment, but there are still those who would, if we were foolish enough to let them, continue to prey on their communities in whatever-their-favourite way until the day they die, with no visible interest in obeying the law.

If you come up with a way of making these people into law abiding citizens then I'll back you on it, but until then I think that the rest of us have a right to live in peace, free from those who would stalk us, threaten us, steal our bicycles or our cars or vandalize our mailboxes or whatever.

I've never advocated a one-strike law, or a two-strike law... and I'm not even fixated on three strikes. I just think that if you continually, over and over, break the law that at some point the rest of society should have the right to say "enough".

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There are many forms of alternative sentences that can accomplish more (here they often have to perform community service in centres, etc.).

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But do they act as deterrents, or just substitutes for imprisonment? Is there less recidivism among criminals sentenced to community service?

[ 12 January 2004: Message edited by: Mr. Magoo ]

Ideally, rehabilitation of offenders should be the primary objective of the penal system, and there are many people behind bars who probably shouldn't be there. But then again I don't think that people like Clifford Olsen are in jail so that they can learn to control their violent impulses. Sometimes it is all about the punishment and I couldn't care less if Cliffy turns himself into a model citizen during his incarceration (or, more realistically, he fools his psychologists into believing he's turned into a model citizen), he should never get out. NEVER.

And since law is a human invention, and subject to revision and alteration, anyone can be a criminal, in theory.

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As soon as we start disregarding the rights of criminals we start devaluing their worth as human beings.

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I don't think their rights should be none, but in the list of society, victim and criminal I think it's appropriate to put them and their rights last. They're the ones who made the choice to commit a crime.

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And since law is a human invention, and subject to revision and alteration, anyone can be a criminal, in theory.

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Perhaps, but I don't think we should take all the tooth out of laws in case someday having brown hair is a crime. I think the bulk of todays crimes are pretty much the same as they always were: no killing, no raping, no stealing and no beating covers the majority of them. Drug laws may be one exception to this, and I certainly think that someone smoking a joint doesn't belong in jail.

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Someone close to me, a person with a job at least as "respectable" as Mr Magoo's, and a family, was wrongly accused of a rather serious crime.

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I play piano at a whorehouse.

I felt nauseated after my psych class...just think- how many of our elected officials, public service workers, as well as prisons are aware of the kind of psychology the prison environment fosters in both the prisoners and guards.

The site asks this question:

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What happens when you put good people in an evil place? Does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph?

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People can look there to see how this works with prisons. But I was thinking, the other day, about a social environment which tends to CREATE criminals. If you get stuck there, you had better try to get out as soon as possible.Otherwise. it seems like you get criminalized no matter what.

How do I feel about putting people in jail. I hate these discussions because I always come across as some naive bleeding heart. I don't like jail. At least not as it is now. When I say I don't like jail, I don't mean I don't like being in it I mean that I don't like it as the system we have.

I don't like the attitude that if we try to make jail a less violent and more humane place for inmates, we're turning it into "Club Fed". Look at the reaction when Karla Homolka had a picture taken of her with a party dress on. People threw their hands up in horror that she wasn't made to wear rags and eat bread and water every day. And yet, how would that help matters?

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Originally posted by Cougyr:
... Every small child steals. They don't know any better. They need to be trained not to. At about 5 or 6, most small children will get caught stealing; frequently from a local store. How the adults, particularly parents, react is critical. It is one of those life defining moments. I can still remember being dragged back to appologize to the local grocer.

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Cages are bad. Cages seperate the wronged from the wrong-doer, and, since they're not all that secure, cages cause a whole lot of night-terrors in the wronged and potentially wronged, while not really stopping the wrong-doer. They change nobody's mind or habits or side of the fence.

When someone has committed acts so far from the socially acceptable that they can never be rehabilitated, it makes sense to get rid of them altogether. If we can't stomach execution, or don't trust our justice system to get the right person and prove hir guilt beyond a doubt, cages may be the only solution.

Myself, I'd rather we shifted the emphasis on crimes of non-violence to one of restitution. People should take responsibility for thier actions.

Jailing a kid for car theft doesn't do anything for the victim. He or she is still out the deductable on the broken steering column, broken window and other damages, as is the insurance company. And in jail, the kid is more likely to learn from other inmates the finer points of car theft.

Having to work off the expenses may make him or her think twice, and the victim is made whole.

There are exceptions of course. If Bill Gates decides to break all the windows in your house every day, just because he can afford the restitution, we can't allow that kind of thing to happen, so maybe jail still has a role when restitution doesn't also contain an element of deterence.

Sometimes, I'd like to see offenders sentenced to getting a high school degree, perhaps within a jail setting. No term on the sentence-- you get to go when you get your diploma.

Violent offenders, however, I have little patience for, and I think jail should be used here not for punishment or rehabilitation, but to keep the rest of us safe from them.

I'm thinking of the more serious violent crimes here. I don't know why we insist on giving people a second chance to kill, rape or commit other aggravated crimes.

That's why we should have a prison on Ellesmere Island.

[ 15 January 2004: Message edited by: Tommy_Paine ]