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This is a good step forward IMO. Life sentence was pretty harsh for 3 strikes on drug charges - 25 years is still a lot, but this sets the bar for the next iter

by nsx147 8y ago

This is a good step forward IMO. Life sentence was pretty harsh for 3 strikes on drug charges - 25 years is still a lot, but this sets the bar for the next iteration to keep getting lower

jimmy1 8y ago
Not meaning this in a combative fashion, but why is only what you think right in this case? I think there are plenty of people that were actually OK with the 3 strike penalty, and more that would be OK with 25 years. Why set the bar for the next iteration to keep getting lower? A large segment of the population does not agree with decriminalization of drugs as policy. Personally I would be a fan of 3 strikes and you are committed to mandatory drug rehabilitation, and aren't let out until you are clean for x number of whatever amount of time seems fair and reasonable.
- scarface74 8y ago
  Because I don’t really care about someone’s moral belief in what’s right or wrong as long as it doesn’t effect anyone else. We have an existence proof that the “War on Drugs” has been a failure, has not made drugs any harder to get, and penalties are unequally applied on the poor and minorities.
  - jimmy1 8y ago
    > Because I don’t really care about someone’s moral belief in what’s right or wrong as long as it doesn’t effect anyone else. Moral beliefs tend to eventually end up externalized in some form or fashion. What then? What if I told you that everything we do affects someone else? This post-modernist idea that you can do whatever you want as long as it doesn't affect someone else is a fallacy. Unless you live in an isolated, self sustaining biodome in Antartica, chances are you are impacting at least one other life in extreme cases, if not more. The "Desert Fathers" of the ancient Church, of whom left the holy cities with the extent purpose of leaving the world to not impact others (or be bothered by the cares of the world) ironically, impacted millions.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      Yes and someone else’s moral belief led to miscegenation (interracial marriage) being illegal into the late 60s, Jim Crow laws, laws against homosexuality, and the War on Drugs. Let’s not forget if those preaching “morality” had their way they would also ban birth control. You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t pay too much credence to the “moral majority”.
      - jimmy1 8y ago
        This is flawed perspective and your three examples are a very mixed bag of unequal occurrences. All three of those situations are unlike the other. Jim Crow laws were very much not due to a "majority" -- if you remember, the country went into civil war over the issue of slavery, and the North has always been the more populous part of the country. Laws against Homosexuality were part of the fabric of pretty much most of the world (still so in 72 countries, as well as 70% of the commonwealth states), so not sure you can attribute that to any one particular moral majority, it was more of a global majority, so there goes that comparison out the window. And finally, the War on Drugs had nothing to do with morality, but basically one man's smart campaign to manipulate the public so that he could target minorities and anti-war protestors (later -- the CIA learned you could make a nice dime, so they continued it in the name of "national security" -- wonder where we heard that before) And finally, your argument is very flawed because systems of morality are what have lead to the greatest human progress for thousands of years, and you are invalidating all of that on some unfortunate decade-long (strong emphasis on decade long, not millennium long) effects of fundamentalists and charlatans who, as history has already judged, were on the wrong side of things? You must have a very bleak outlook on humanity.
        scarface74 8y ago
        As far as US history. Should I start with the mass slaughter of native Americans, slavery, Japanese internment camps, etc? All the while the “good Christians” either actively took part or looked the other way?
- danso 8y ago
  The 3-strikes law had an ostensible worthy purpose, which was to prevent incidents in which judges made ill-informed lenient sentencing decisions, which could happen through pure incompetency or ignorance. But like all simplifying algorithms, the downside was a sentencing system that was indifferent and uncompromising to absurdities, such as sentencing someone to life in prison no matter how relatively minor the first- and second- strikes were. Even the name and implementation of the law -- "3 strikes" -- feels absurd. IIRC from the Congressional debate, the choice of 3 strikes is rooted in the familiarity of the term from America's pastime, not based out of an analysis of penalties and recidivism outcomes.
  - burfog 8y ago
    The problem of ill-informed lenient sentencing decisions was already dealt with by mandatory minimum sentences. The 3-strikes laws serve a different purpose. The trouble is that some people simply won't get the message that crime is unacceptable. It doesn't matter how long we keep them in prison. Letting them out is like being an accomplice, because they are going to commit that crime. The only solution is to separate these criminals from society.
    - cwkoss 8y ago
      Creating a legal framework for all recreational substances could be another solution.
    - danso 8y ago
      They are the same purpose and the same thing. 3-strikes is by its very definition a mandatory minimum sentencing guideline. Moreover, not every kind of felony has a mandatory minimum statute, whereas a broad range of serious crimes could qualify as part of 3-strikes sentencing. It's true that some criminals may be irredeemable. The ideal is that only these criminals face the punishment intended by 3-strikes, the reality is that otherwise rehabilitatable criminals might be unduly punished. For example, prosecutors can use the statute to pressure a defendant to plead guilty or testify as state's witness, with no ability for judges to act as a check on sentencing if the defendant goes to trial and loses. And of course, there are the criminals who get life in prison for minor, usually drug-related crimes [0]. [0] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/cruel-and-unusual-punishment-the-shame-of-three-strikes-laws-92042/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/cruel-an... https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/opinion/sunday/california-horror-stories-and-the-3-strikes-law.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/opinion/sunday/california...
- moftz 8y ago
  Certain addictions are pretty much life sentences. Heroin addicts will always want another hit regardless of how good they are at suppressing the addiction. A lot of people OD because they've been clean for so long that their tolerance isn't what it used to be. Maybe rehab should be the first step and not the third. Catch someone as early as possible into their addiction and they might have a fighting chance. Catch them when they've already been through the prison system a couple times and there's little hope. No one wants to hire a recidivist junkie.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Not meaning this in a combative fashion, but why is only what you think right in this case? The law of noncontradiction: to believe X is necessarily to believe they the belief in not-X is incorrect. One may believe it is right to tolerate or accommodate the incorrect belief, but that's not the same as viewing it as correct. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_noncontradiction https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_noncontradiction
  - KSteffensen 8y ago
    The law of non-contradiction is valid for mathematics and propositional logic, not politics and ethics.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      And as far as the law is concerned. The only “ethics” that the government should legislate are behaviors that infringe on someone else’s liberty/property/rights. If someone feels that drug abuse is “unethical” shouldn’t matter as long as the drug addict is not breaking into your home or otherwise causing you harm.
      - KSteffensen 8y ago
        I think ethics do (or should) play a part in large areas of politics, e.g. taxation, healthcare, foreign policy, criminal justice sanctions, et.c. Governments should legislate based on more than economics alone.
        scarface74 8y ago
        I agree but the war on drugs and deciding that someone should be convicted for using or buying drugs is based solely on someone’s personal belief about what someone else should do with their own body.
        drewmol 8y ago
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
  The purpose of prison should be to keep dangerous people out of society. It costs society to keep people in prison, so naturally this makes sense - in a way it's our tax for the privilege of not having dangerous people around. Non-violent offenders should not be in prison. Punishing people with prison doesn't fix the problem, better mental health services and education (real education, not lies about drugs == devil) does much better. If you want to punish drug users, you're right (and in morally questionable standing imo) and you'll have to pay for that, but if you want to reduce the drug problem you're not in the right.
  - sthomas1618 8y ago
    > The purpose of prison should be to keep dangerous people out of society Whatever happened to purpose of prison being rehabilitation? I mean... they are called correctional facilities. Are we so far gone now that we think criminals are beyond redemption and change?
    - Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
      There are better ways to rehabilitate non-violent offenders. Prisons should focus on rehabilitation, but what sets it apart from other methods of rehabilitation is that they keep dangerous people out of society in the meanwhile.
    - philwelch 8y ago
      > Whatever happened to purpose of prison being rehabilitation? You can't change someone's behavioral tendencies against their will. The criminal has to choose for himself to change and to be rehabilitated. The most you can do is to provide the resources and support he needs to carry out that decision once he's made it. What you can do is (a) provide a disincentive for committing crimes and (b) separate people with a known tendency for committing crimes from the rest of society. Prison and the death penalty both accomplish these goals, but prison is cheaper and more reversible.
      - Bjartr 8y ago
        > The most you can do is to provide the resources and support he needs to carry out that decision once he's made it. To the best of my knowledge, one of the problems with US prisons today is that the resources and support you describe are not widely available.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- diob 8y ago
  3 strikes is a lie as a policy though. You can get in trouble once and use up all three strikes if they do separate charges. Don't fall for it.
- philwelch 8y ago
  There's two overlapping issues being conflated here: whether drug possession and use should be a crime, and how criminals should be punished. I have no problem with the notion that violent criminals, thieves, and con men should be punished, and that those who persist in their crimes should be permanently removed from civil society. I do have a problem with the notion that someone only guilty of carrying two ounces of cannabis or transporting a particular species of fish across state lines should be punished in a similar fashion. That's because I think one category of felonies should continue to be felonious, and the other category should cease to be felonious.
turc1656 8y ago
I've always found it fascinating how people are still willing to risk life imprisonment for a third strike after getting caught twice already. It really boggles my mind. I'll never quite understand this mentality. Whether the punishment is life, 25 years, or something else - I just don't understand how the risk/reward ratio plays out in their mind. I get that one argument is that many have "nothing to lose". And yeah, maybe they are very poor, unemployed, without a proper education or skills so their situation doesn't look great. But to then say "well, doesn't matter if I end up in prison for the rest of my life is truly mind-boggling.
- _ah 8y ago
  You're confused that people who (by definition) make poor life choices are unable to evaluate consequences and make better life choices?
  - turc1656 8y ago
    Honestly, yes. I realize that response sounds stupid but we're talking about something pretty obvious. Like "hey, if we catch you selling drugs again you go to jail for the rest of your life." Why anyone would ever take that gamble is simply lost on me. I don't care how uneducated or unintelligent a person is - everyone who isn't very mentally handicapped can understand that. And they still do it. I just can't wrap my mind around it.
    - KSteffensen 8y ago
      Poor impulse control. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunedin_Multidisciplinary_Health_and_Development_Study https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunedin_Multidisciplinary_He...
      - ozzmotik 8y ago
        i agree with the poor impulse control claim but beyond that, for people who feel disenfranchised by the system and as though they have no other qualities they can actually use to survive in society, at least wrt the concept of selling drugs, that is an extremely reliable way to make enough money in order to support your life and the pursuit of your desires. that being said, i do believe that anyone can improve their position in life if they stop allowing themselves to believe that they are completely limited by their societal status. however, as someone who struggles to integrate into society in any meaningful way and ultimately support myself, I do get how easy it is to convince yourself that there is no other choice other than what you currently have. it's a super toxic line of reasoning and antithetical to the pursuit of happiness as it were, but man its really easy to do. and as we all (likely) know, many humans tend to prefer to just do things the easy way and rely on what they know or are comfortable with
maxlybbert 8y ago
I have no idea if this is still the case, but I was surprised to learn about twenty years ago that Brazil’s constitution prevented anyone from getting a prison sentence longer than 35 years. Brazil also doesn’t have capital punishment. Most violent crimes are committed by young men, say from teenagers to early twenties. I don’t know anything about Brazil’s juvenile justice system, but a twenty year old who gets a 35 year sentence is very unlikely to be a violent person at 55. And if not, another 35 year sentence puts him away until he’s 90. It doesn’t take very many prison sentences like that to completely get rid of the risk of recidivism.

by nsx147 8y ago

This is a good step forward IMO. Life sentence was pretty harsh for 3 strikes on drug charges - 25 years is still a lot, but this sets the bar for the next iteration to keep getting lower

jimmy1 8y ago

Not meaning this in a combative fashion, but why is only what you think right in this case? I think there are plenty of people that were actually OK with the 3 strike penalty, and more that would be OK with 25 years. Why set the bar for the next iteration to keep getting lower? A large segment of the population does not agree with decriminalization of drugs as policy. Personally I would be a fan of 3 strikes and you are committed to mandatory drug rehabilitation, and aren't let out until you are clean for x number of whatever amount of time seems fair and reasonable.

scarface74 8y ago
Because I don’t really care about someone’s moral belief in what’s right or wrong as long as it doesn’t effect anyone else. We have an existence proof that the “War on Drugs” has been a failure, has not made drugs any harder to get, and penalties are unequally applied on the poor and minorities.
- jimmy1 8y ago
  > Because I don’t really care about someone’s moral belief in what’s right or wrong as long as it doesn’t effect anyone else. Moral beliefs tend to eventually end up externalized in some form or fashion. What then? What if I told you that everything we do affects someone else? This post-modernist idea that you can do whatever you want as long as it doesn't affect someone else is a fallacy. Unless you live in an isolated, self sustaining biodome in Antartica, chances are you are impacting at least one other life in extreme cases, if not more. The "Desert Fathers" of the ancient Church, of whom left the holy cities with the extent purpose of leaving the world to not impact others (or be bothered by the cares of the world) ironically, impacted millions.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    Yes and someone else’s moral belief led to miscegenation (interracial marriage) being illegal into the late 60s, Jim Crow laws, laws against homosexuality, and the War on Drugs. Let’s not forget if those preaching “morality” had their way they would also ban birth control. You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t pay too much credence to the “moral majority”.
    - jimmy1 8y ago
      This is flawed perspective and your three examples are a very mixed bag of unequal occurrences. All three of those situations are unlike the other. Jim Crow laws were very much not due to a "majority" -- if you remember, the country went into civil war over the issue of slavery, and the North has always been the more populous part of the country. Laws against Homosexuality were part of the fabric of pretty much most of the world (still so in 72 countries, as well as 70% of the commonwealth states), so not sure you can attribute that to any one particular moral majority, it was more of a global majority, so there goes that comparison out the window. And finally, the War on Drugs had nothing to do with morality, but basically one man's smart campaign to manipulate the public so that he could target minorities and anti-war protestors (later -- the CIA learned you could make a nice dime, so they continued it in the name of "national security" -- wonder where we heard that before) And finally, your argument is very flawed because systems of morality are what have lead to the greatest human progress for thousands of years, and you are invalidating all of that on some unfortunate decade-long (strong emphasis on decade long, not millennium long) effects of fundamentalists and charlatans who, as history has already judged, were on the wrong side of things? You must have a very bleak outlook on humanity.
      - scarface74 8y ago
        As far as US history. Should I start with the mass slaughter of native Americans, slavery, Japanese internment camps, etc? All the while the “good Christians” either actively took part or looked the other way?
danso 8y ago
The 3-strikes law had an ostensible worthy purpose, which was to prevent incidents in which judges made ill-informed lenient sentencing decisions, which could happen through pure incompetency or ignorance. But like all simplifying algorithms, the downside was a sentencing system that was indifferent and uncompromising to absurdities, such as sentencing someone to life in prison no matter how relatively minor the first- and second- strikes were. Even the name and implementation of the law -- "3 strikes" -- feels absurd. IIRC from the Congressional debate, the choice of 3 strikes is rooted in the familiarity of the term from America's pastime, not based out of an analysis of penalties and recidivism outcomes.
- burfog 8y ago
  The problem of ill-informed lenient sentencing decisions was already dealt with by mandatory minimum sentences. The 3-strikes laws serve a different purpose. The trouble is that some people simply won't get the message that crime is unacceptable. It doesn't matter how long we keep them in prison. Letting them out is like being an accomplice, because they are going to commit that crime. The only solution is to separate these criminals from society.
  - cwkoss 8y ago
    Creating a legal framework for all recreational substances could be another solution.
  - danso 8y ago
    They are the same purpose and the same thing. 3-strikes is by its very definition a mandatory minimum sentencing guideline. Moreover, not every kind of felony has a mandatory minimum statute, whereas a broad range of serious crimes could qualify as part of 3-strikes sentencing. It's true that some criminals may be irredeemable. The ideal is that only these criminals face the punishment intended by 3-strikes, the reality is that otherwise rehabilitatable criminals might be unduly punished. For example, prosecutors can use the statute to pressure a defendant to plead guilty or testify as state's witness, with no ability for judges to act as a check on sentencing if the defendant goes to trial and loses. And of course, there are the criminals who get life in prison for minor, usually drug-related crimes [0]. [0] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/cruel-and-unusual-punishment-the-shame-of-three-strikes-laws-92042/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/cruel-an... https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/opinion/sunday/california-horror-stories-and-the-3-strikes-law.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/opinion/sunday/california...
moftz 8y ago
Certain addictions are pretty much life sentences. Heroin addicts will always want another hit regardless of how good they are at suppressing the addiction. A lot of people OD because they've been clean for so long that their tolerance isn't what it used to be. Maybe rehab should be the first step and not the third. Catch someone as early as possible into their addiction and they might have a fighting chance. Catch them when they've already been through the prison system a couple times and there's little hope. No one wants to hire a recidivist junkie.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> Not meaning this in a combative fashion, but why is only what you think right in this case? The law of noncontradiction: to believe X is necessarily to believe they the belief in not-X is incorrect. One may believe it is right to tolerate or accommodate the incorrect belief, but that's not the same as viewing it as correct. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_noncontradiction https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_noncontradiction
- KSteffensen 8y ago
  The law of non-contradiction is valid for mathematics and propositional logic, not politics and ethics.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    And as far as the law is concerned. The only “ethics” that the government should legislate are behaviors that infringe on someone else’s liberty/property/rights. If someone feels that drug abuse is “unethical” shouldn’t matter as long as the drug addict is not breaking into your home or otherwise causing you harm.
    - KSteffensen 8y ago
      I think ethics do (or should) play a part in large areas of politics, e.g. taxation, healthcare, foreign policy, criminal justice sanctions, et.c. Governments should legislate based on more than economics alone.
      - scarface74 8y ago
        I agree but the war on drugs and deciding that someone should be convicted for using or buying drugs is based solely on someone’s personal belief about what someone else should do with their own body.
        drewmol 8y ago
Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
The purpose of prison should be to keep dangerous people out of society. It costs society to keep people in prison, so naturally this makes sense - in a way it's our tax for the privilege of not having dangerous people around. Non-violent offenders should not be in prison. Punishing people with prison doesn't fix the problem, better mental health services and education (real education, not lies about drugs == devil) does much better. If you want to punish drug users, you're right (and in morally questionable standing imo) and you'll have to pay for that, but if you want to reduce the drug problem you're not in the right.
- sthomas1618 8y ago
  > The purpose of prison should be to keep dangerous people out of society Whatever happened to purpose of prison being rehabilitation? I mean... they are called correctional facilities. Are we so far gone now that we think criminals are beyond redemption and change?
  - Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
    There are better ways to rehabilitate non-violent offenders. Prisons should focus on rehabilitation, but what sets it apart from other methods of rehabilitation is that they keep dangerous people out of society in the meanwhile.
  - philwelch 8y ago
    > Whatever happened to purpose of prison being rehabilitation? You can't change someone's behavioral tendencies against their will. The criminal has to choose for himself to change and to be rehabilitated. The most you can do is to provide the resources and support he needs to carry out that decision once he's made it. What you can do is (a) provide a disincentive for committing crimes and (b) separate people with a known tendency for committing crimes from the rest of society. Prison and the death penalty both accomplish these goals, but prison is cheaper and more reversible.
    - Bjartr 8y ago
      > The most you can do is to provide the resources and support he needs to carry out that decision once he's made it. To the best of my knowledge, one of the problems with US prisons today is that the resources and support you describe are not widely available.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
diob 8y ago
3 strikes is a lie as a policy though. You can get in trouble once and use up all three strikes if they do separate charges. Don't fall for it.
philwelch 8y ago
There's two overlapping issues being conflated here: whether drug possession and use should be a crime, and how criminals should be punished. I have no problem with the notion that violent criminals, thieves, and con men should be punished, and that those who persist in their crimes should be permanently removed from civil society. I do have a problem with the notion that someone only guilty of carrying two ounces of cannabis or transporting a particular species of fish across state lines should be punished in a similar fashion. That's because I think one category of felonies should continue to be felonious, and the other category should cease to be felonious.

turc1656 8y ago

I've always found it fascinating how people are still willing to risk life imprisonment for a third strike after getting caught twice already. It really boggles my mind. I'll never quite understand this mentality. Whether the punishment is life, 25 years, or something else - I just don't understand how the risk/reward ratio plays out in their mind. I get that one argument is that many have "nothing to lose". And yeah, maybe they are very poor, unemployed, without a proper education or skills so their situation doesn't look great. But to then say "well, doesn't matter if I end up in prison for the rest of my life is truly mind-boggling.

_ah 8y ago
You're confused that people who (by definition) make poor life choices are unable to evaluate consequences and make better life choices?
- turc1656 8y ago
  Honestly, yes. I realize that response sounds stupid but we're talking about something pretty obvious. Like "hey, if we catch you selling drugs again you go to jail for the rest of your life." Why anyone would ever take that gamble is simply lost on me. I don't care how uneducated or unintelligent a person is - everyone who isn't very mentally handicapped can understand that. And they still do it. I just can't wrap my mind around it.
  - KSteffensen 8y ago
    Poor impulse control. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunedin_Multidisciplinary_Health_and_Development_Study https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunedin_Multidisciplinary_He...
    - ozzmotik 8y ago
      i agree with the poor impulse control claim but beyond that, for people who feel disenfranchised by the system and as though they have no other qualities they can actually use to survive in society, at least wrt the concept of selling drugs, that is an extremely reliable way to make enough money in order to support your life and the pursuit of your desires. that being said, i do believe that anyone can improve their position in life if they stop allowing themselves to believe that they are completely limited by their societal status. however, as someone who struggles to integrate into society in any meaningful way and ultimately support myself, I do get how easy it is to convince yourself that there is no other choice other than what you currently have. it's a super toxic line of reasoning and antithetical to the pursuit of happiness as it were, but man its really easy to do. and as we all (likely) know, many humans tend to prefer to just do things the easy way and rely on what they know or are comfortable with

maxlybbert 8y ago

I have no idea if this is still the case, but I was surprised to learn about twenty years ago that Brazil’s constitution prevented anyone from getting a prison sentence longer than 35 years. Brazil also doesn’t have capital punishment. Most violent crimes are committed by young men, say from teenagers to early twenties. I don’t know anything about Brazil’s juvenile justice system, but a twenty year old who gets a 35 year sentence is very unlikely to be a violent person at 55. And if not, another 35 year sentence puts him away until he’s 90. It doesn’t take very many prison sentences like that to completely get rid of the risk of recidivism.