14 ms·

I find it worse that San Francisco would possibly give 0 years to someone dealing heroin.

by mrits 10y ago

bluejekyll 10y ago
Do you believe prison should be used punitively or for rehabilitation? Prisons currently fail very badly at rehabilitation, and actually tend to make worse criminals. We should be spending less money on punitive unfair sentences and more on trying to make people productive members of society through good rehab and education programs. This would actually make society better. Fixing the root of the problem rather than ignoring it by just locking people away. We should reserve prison for only those people from which we need to protect the general population, e.g. violent crimes. Though I do have a special place in my heart for locking away fraudsters and con artists.
- kiba 10y ago
  Are prisons here to punish people or to solve problems in society? Sometime people's sense of fairness is pitted against the idea of rehabilitation. Fixing the root of problems mean dealing with the dredge of society, the people who deserved it the least. Imaging rehabilitating a tinpot dictator who killed million so that he can feel remorse for what he did and find a productive living.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    A sentence of something like 20 years + evaluation of suitability for release does a fine job of dealing with the extreme cases you mention without discarding the idea of rehabilitation in less obvious cases. And yes, I think you go ahead and let the terrible dictator read books or whatever. That's much easier to accept than society occasionally getting together and executing an innocent.
- djrogers 10y ago
  Rehabilitation? The parent post was about dealing - not using. Someone who makes money off of the victims of drug dependence is horrible scum, and if you're willing to lock up con artists you should be able to work up the give-a-crap to lock up a heroin dealer.
  - lukeschlather 10y ago
    The vast majority of people arrested for dealing are the equivalent of grocery store clerks. (Really, their job has less prestige than grocery store clerks.) People are making a lot of money off of this, but not, for the most part, anyone who is at risk of getting arrested and charged with decades in prison. Furthermore, arresting them has about as much effect on the drug trade as locking up all the clerks in a grocery store. The demand is still there, the distribution networks are still there, all they're missing is people willing to work for minimum wage or less. (And obviously there's no shortage there either.)
  - CarpetBench 10y ago
    You're thinking of rehabilitation in the "recovery from addiction" sense. The poster you're replying to is using rehabilitation in the "correct this person's future behavior" sense. > lock up a heroin dealer The problem is that nearly 3/4 of all prisoners end up back in prison within 5 years [0]. Locking people up isn't changing their behavior. Locking up a heroin dealer isn't keeping them from dealing heroin once they get out. So, either we need to lock people up indefinitely (which costs $$$ even if you're not swayed by the humanitarian arguments), or we need to figure out something more effective than trying to hammer our square peg (prison) through this round hole (reducing criminal behavior). 0: http://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/pages/welcome.aspx http://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/pages/welco...
    - bluejekyll 10y ago
      Precisely. And since the other post mentioned my comment on fraudsters and con artists, dealers are not lying to people, they're just providing the consumer with what they want. The ones who should be locked up are the fraudsters, because they mix things like Fentanyl, which may directly lead to someone's death (not to say people don't OD without that, but it is less often). Honestly, I dislike anyone who takes advantage of other people's ignorance or incompetence. They are the bottom of the barrel of society in my opinion.
  - yusee 10y ago
    Lots of people make money off of the victims of drug dependence, including the entire pharmaceutical industry, Jack Daniels, Starbucks, psychiatrists, social workers, foster parents, and the entire law enforcement industry. Are all these people horrible scum?
- TheLarch 10y ago
  Clarence Darrow, in his autobiography, discusses his defense for Loeb and Leopold. L&L were wealthy Chicago teenagers who read Nietzsche and decided they were Ubermensch. They murdered a random boy to prove they could get away with it. Darrow argued that L&L would not consider murder again, and that their crime was something that would happen only once in 1,000 years. I found this repugnant. Who more deserves prison than those two? But with reflection my views have softened. At least one of the two seems to have wanted to be good. He lived out his life in prison quietly, spending his time writing an ornithology book. I can no longer honestly say I believe that society as a whole was better served by jailing them. Perhaps they should have been given the chance to redeem themselves by becoming productive citizens, and the chance to earn back a measure of dignity. (Certainly repeat offenders should be deemed a menace and incarcerated for the public good.) I feel the same confusion about Brock Turner, the Stanford swimmer who raped a woman behind a dumpster. There was a lot of outrage at his early release, but again I'm not sure the greater good is served by keeping him behind bars. I hope he will live in infamy for the rest of his days, as is just. But should he have stayed behind bars for longer, at the public expense? I can't give a really cogent reason why he should (I am not comparing his sentence to that of other rapists, or to that of other convicts by the way).
pavlov 10y ago
Locking more and more people up hasn't done much to solve America's drug issues. But if you feel it's a moral necessity, it's hard to discuss alternatives.
- yason 10y ago
  But mrits was talking about heroin dealers. I think the war on drugs is fundamentally flawed, and I don't think drug users should be convicted or sent to prison but I do think that dealing illegal drugs should definitely count orders of magnitude more heavily since the very activity of dealing enables the destruction of a large number of other people.
  - pinaceae 10y ago
    and dealers should primarily punished for tax avoidance, operating a unlicensed pharmacy, breaking DEA license terms. which would put them in prison for way longer. and for the right crime.
lhecker 10y ago
...which surely depends on the circumenstances. It could just as well be 3 years or more (for instance if you're part of a gang) and I think this is reasonably since you want that person to change (i.e. stop dealing) and not destroy his/her entire life, right?

I find it worse that San Francisco would possibly give 0 years to someone dealing heroin.

by mrits 10y ago

I find it worse that San Francisco would possibly give 0 years to someone dealing heroin.

Do you believe prison should be used punitively or for rehabilitation? Prisons currently fail very badly at rehabilitation, and actually tend to make worse criminals. We should be spending less money on punitive unfair sentences and more on trying to make people productive members of society through good rehab and education programs. This would actually make society better. Fixing the root of the problem rather than ignoring it by just locking people away. We should reserve prison for only those people from which we need to protect the general population, e.g. violent crimes. Though I do have a special place in my heart for locking away fraudsters and con artists.

kiba 10y ago
Are prisons here to punish people or to solve problems in society? Sometime people's sense of fairness is pitted against the idea of rehabilitation. Fixing the root of problems mean dealing with the dredge of society, the people who deserved it the least. Imaging rehabilitating a tinpot dictator who killed million so that he can feel remorse for what he did and find a productive living.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  A sentence of something like 20 years + evaluation of suitability for release does a fine job of dealing with the extreme cases you mention without discarding the idea of rehabilitation in less obvious cases. And yes, I think you go ahead and let the terrible dictator read books or whatever. That's much easier to accept than society occasionally getting together and executing an innocent.
djrogers 10y ago
Rehabilitation? The parent post was about dealing - not using. Someone who makes money off of the victims of drug dependence is horrible scum, and if you're willing to lock up con artists you should be able to work up the give-a-crap to lock up a heroin dealer.
- lukeschlather 10y ago
  The vast majority of people arrested for dealing are the equivalent of grocery store clerks. (Really, their job has less prestige than grocery store clerks.) People are making a lot of money off of this, but not, for the most part, anyone who is at risk of getting arrested and charged with decades in prison. Furthermore, arresting them has about as much effect on the drug trade as locking up all the clerks in a grocery store. The demand is still there, the distribution networks are still there, all they're missing is people willing to work for minimum wage or less. (And obviously there's no shortage there either.)
- CarpetBench 10y ago
  You're thinking of rehabilitation in the "recovery from addiction" sense. The poster you're replying to is using rehabilitation in the "correct this person's future behavior" sense. > lock up a heroin dealer The problem is that nearly 3/4 of all prisoners end up back in prison within 5 years [0]. Locking people up isn't changing their behavior. Locking up a heroin dealer isn't keeping them from dealing heroin once they get out. So, either we need to lock people up indefinitely (which costs $$$ even if you're not swayed by the humanitarian arguments), or we need to figure out something more effective than trying to hammer our square peg (prison) through this round hole (reducing criminal behavior). 0: http://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/pages/welcome.aspx http://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/pages/welco...
  - bluejekyll 10y ago
    Precisely. And since the other post mentioned my comment on fraudsters and con artists, dealers are not lying to people, they're just providing the consumer with what they want. The ones who should be locked up are the fraudsters, because they mix things like Fentanyl, which may directly lead to someone's death (not to say people don't OD without that, but it is less often). Honestly, I dislike anyone who takes advantage of other people's ignorance or incompetence. They are the bottom of the barrel of society in my opinion.
- yusee 10y ago
  Lots of people make money off of the victims of drug dependence, including the entire pharmaceutical industry, Jack Daniels, Starbucks, psychiatrists, social workers, foster parents, and the entire law enforcement industry. Are all these people horrible scum?
TheLarch 10y ago
Clarence Darrow, in his autobiography, discusses his defense for Loeb and Leopold. L&L were wealthy Chicago teenagers who read Nietzsche and decided they were Ubermensch. They murdered a random boy to prove they could get away with it. Darrow argued that L&L would not consider murder again, and that their crime was something that would happen only once in 1,000 years. I found this repugnant. Who more deserves prison than those two? But with reflection my views have softened. At least one of the two seems to have wanted to be good. He lived out his life in prison quietly, spending his time writing an ornithology book. I can no longer honestly say I believe that society as a whole was better served by jailing them. Perhaps they should have been given the chance to redeem themselves by becoming productive citizens, and the chance to earn back a measure of dignity. (Certainly repeat offenders should be deemed a menace and incarcerated for the public good.) I feel the same confusion about Brock Turner, the Stanford swimmer who raped a woman behind a dumpster. There was a lot of outrage at his early release, but again I'm not sure the greater good is served by keeping him behind bars. I hope he will live in infamy for the rest of his days, as is just. But should he have stayed behind bars for longer, at the public expense? I can't give a really cogent reason why he should (I am not comparing his sentence to that of other rapists, or to that of other convicts by the way).

pavlov 10y ago

Locking more and more people up hasn't done much to solve America's drug issues. But if you feel it's a moral necessity, it's hard to discuss alternatives.

yason 10y ago
But mrits was talking about heroin dealers. I think the war on drugs is fundamentally flawed, and I don't think drug users should be convicted or sent to prison but I do think that dealing illegal drugs should definitely count orders of magnitude more heavily since the very activity of dealing enables the destruction of a large number of other people.
- pinaceae 10y ago
  and dealers should primarily punished for tax avoidance, operating a unlicensed pharmacy, breaking DEA license terms. which would put them in prison for way longer. and for the right crime.

lhecker 10y ago

...which surely depends on the circumenstances. It could just as well be 3 years or more (for instance if you're part of a gang) and I think this is reasonably since you want that person to change (i.e. stop dealing) and not destroy his/her entire life, right?