8 ms·

> It's a crying shame. That is an appropriate reaction, but the ACLU's focus on life without parole sentences grossly understates the savagery of US sentencing

> It's a crying shame. That is an appropriate reaction, but the ACLU's focus on life without parole sentences grossly understates the savagery of US sentencing schemes. Tens of thousands more inmates are serving life with the possibility of parole for non-violent crimes. These inmates may very well never be released, and if they are they will have served so long that they will never be able to recover. In Nevada, for example, 1 in 5 prisoners is serving a life sentence with the possibility (but no guarantee) of parole. Our version of the 3 strikes law, which is used in several other states as well, enables any three felony convictions to qualify an offender for a life sentence. This can and has included repeat drug offenders (including those who were not dealing), those committing multiple relatively minor property crimes (vandalism, theft, etc), and those with multiple DUI's that never resulted in accidents. Simply put, US habitual offender laws defy all sense of logic, humanity, and reason. The political will to change this does not exist within either of our major political parties, so the problem is likely to expand over time.

reginaldjcooper 13y ago
Multiple DUIs do deserve a severe punishment IMO, because that is attempted murder basically and they are a danger to the public. The rest I agree are ridiculous. Huffing drugs three times does not deserve permanent incarceration.
- enko 13y ago
  > that is attempted murder basically Oh come on. I've lost my license for what you'd call DUI - made a stupid decision to drive the 1.5km back home from a pub, got a 1 year ban and a hefty fine. Yes, it was a stupid thing to do and I deserve what I got, but attempted murder? Don't be ridiculous. At most repeated DUI is criminal negligence, and negligence on the part of whomever supplied the offender with the vehicle. It should be met with driving bans and escalating punishments if those are ignored. Life imprisonment is an amazingly harsh and expensive over-punishment for a stupid but usually non-malicious crime.
  - omni 13y ago
    Grabbing a stat off of Wikipedia, almost 18,000 people died in drinking-related vehicular accidents in the US in 2006. Maybe attempted murder is a little extreme, but I think negligent homicide would be right on the mark. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunk_driving_in_the_United_States#Statistics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunk_driving_in_the_United_Sta...
    - enko 13y ago
      Yeah, not trying to downplay its seriousness. I honestly did not know how much alcohol impairs one's driving ability - I would have thought maybe 2 or 3 times, turns out it's more like 20x. Well, I learned my lesson. I was just saying that attempted murder is when you actually attempt to murder someone. It's not the same, not at all. As a whimsical thought experiment, care to explain why the other 60% of fatal accidents should not be classed as criminal negligence by one party or another? : P edit: since this got a few upvotes, I'd like to expand. I'm in my late thirties; I got my drivers' license in the early nineties. I was never really educated on drink driving the way people are today. I didn't take it seriously enough. I thought it would be OK; I didn't know the risks properly, and I certainly didn't know the penalties. I had no idea that being a couple of times over the limit led to a 20x+ increased risk of accident. Maybe I was stupid to not know that, nonetheless I had never properly internalised that fact. Maybe everyone here is smarter than me - it certainly seems like that most of the time - but I am not completely stupid, and my internal risk profile was totally wrong about this. If you're of a similar age as me - earned your license decades ago, in a more permissive time - I beg you not to make the same mistakes I made. Drink driving is never an option. It is not even on the table. You are endangering yourself, the community, your reputation, and everyone you love. Catch a god damn taxi, like I wish I had done that night. Drink driving - not even once. From one hacker to another. Please.
      - mapt 13y ago
        No, it's not "you've been drinking" -> 20x more dangerous. Much idiocy has been put forth by people who are unable to understand basic layman's toxicology/pharmacology. Drugs have effects. More of the substance has more of an effect. Step functions where a little of a substance has zero effect, shifting to a major effect with a little more, are extremely rare. It is never the case, for example, that a dose of ionizing radiation goes from "not dangerous" to "dangerous" suddenly - we may measure a low dose at 5 cancers per 100,000 and a high dose at 5,000 cancers per 100,000, but there is always presumed to be some effect. And yet we have media organizations saying things like: " Washington (CNN) -- A common benchmark in the United States for determining when a driver is legally drunk is not doing enough to prevent alcohol-related crashes that kill about 10,000 people each year and should be made more restrictive, transportation safety investigators say. The National Transportation Safety Board recommended on Tuesday that all 50 states adopt a blood-alcohol content (BAC) cutoff of 0.05 compared to the 0.08 standard on the books today and used by law enforcement and the courts to prosecute drunk driving. The NTSB cited research that showed most drivers experience a decline in both cognitive and visual functions with a BAC of 0.05. " Of course we have a decline in cognitive and visual functions - that's what a depressant does. At any dose. So long as we have drinking as a major societal institution, and we have bodies that slowly process alcohol, and we have an automotive-mobile culture, there is some nonzero number of deaths we will prefer to tolerate every year due to drunk driving, whether it's 1,000,000 or 10,000 or 100. --- While there may be some distribution of how well people deal with a certain degree of drunkenness, the basic objective fact that we possess to measure impairment is BAC. Limits vary geographically and through history - in the US we have had experience with thresholds at 0.05%, 0.08%, 0.1%, and 0.15% in various eras and places. A BAC of 0.01% doesn't significantly harm anyone - it is barely detectable. A BAC of 0.05% poses some minor statistical increase in danger, and is generally the minimum people seek out to 'get a buzz'. A BAC of 0.1% indicates moderate impairment - about what you thought, several times more dangerous. It's only when you get to a BAC of around 0.2% that it becomes 20x more dangerous. At a BAC of around 0.3% and up, on the other hand, one generally loses consciousness. Death from alcohol intoxication (assuming no complications) occurs at an average of about 0.45% BAC (that is the approximate LD50).
- tehabe 13y ago
  Yes, like revoking the driver's license for good. Not a life prison sentence!
  - greedo 13y ago
    Take a good look at your city's crime logs. At least in the US, it's not unusual for most DUIs to be repeat offenders; and again, not unusual for people to drive with revoked licenses. Revoking a license does nothing to protect society from those willing to flout the law.
    - AnthonyMouse 13y ago
      If anything it makes it a lot worse, because now whatever car they're driving doesn't require them to breathe into it in order to start it, and now when they drive into your parked car (or worse) they have a huge incentive to commit a hit and run to avoid being caught driving with a suspended license.
- downandout 13y ago
  Murder, or attempted murder, is an intent crime in most states in the US. Generally speaking, that means that in order to be convicted, it must be proven in court that the defendant had the specific intent to cause the death of another person when they undertook the act that caused the death. That's why most traffic-related deaths are charged as manslaughter, or under traffic-specific statutes such as vehicular homicide or DUI resulting in death (depending on the specific state and circumstances).

reginaldjcooper 13y ago

Multiple DUIs do deserve a severe punishment IMO, because that is attempted murder basically and they are a danger to the public. The rest I agree are ridiculous. Huffing drugs three times does not deserve permanent incarceration.

enko 13y ago
> that is attempted murder basically Oh come on. I've lost my license for what you'd call DUI - made a stupid decision to drive the 1.5km back home from a pub, got a 1 year ban and a hefty fine. Yes, it was a stupid thing to do and I deserve what I got, but attempted murder? Don't be ridiculous. At most repeated DUI is criminal negligence, and negligence on the part of whomever supplied the offender with the vehicle. It should be met with driving bans and escalating punishments if those are ignored. Life imprisonment is an amazingly harsh and expensive over-punishment for a stupid but usually non-malicious crime.
- omni 13y ago
  Grabbing a stat off of Wikipedia, almost 18,000 people died in drinking-related vehicular accidents in the US in 2006. Maybe attempted murder is a little extreme, but I think negligent homicide would be right on the mark. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunk_driving_in_the_United_States#Statistics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunk_driving_in_the_United_Sta...
  - enko 13y ago
    Yeah, not trying to downplay its seriousness. I honestly did not know how much alcohol impairs one's driving ability - I would have thought maybe 2 or 3 times, turns out it's more like 20x. Well, I learned my lesson. I was just saying that attempted murder is when you actually attempt to murder someone. It's not the same, not at all. As a whimsical thought experiment, care to explain why the other 60% of fatal accidents should not be classed as criminal negligence by one party or another? : P edit: since this got a few upvotes, I'd like to expand. I'm in my late thirties; I got my drivers' license in the early nineties. I was never really educated on drink driving the way people are today. I didn't take it seriously enough. I thought it would be OK; I didn't know the risks properly, and I certainly didn't know the penalties. I had no idea that being a couple of times over the limit led to a 20x+ increased risk of accident. Maybe I was stupid to not know that, nonetheless I had never properly internalised that fact. Maybe everyone here is smarter than me - it certainly seems like that most of the time - but I am not completely stupid, and my internal risk profile was totally wrong about this. If you're of a similar age as me - earned your license decades ago, in a more permissive time - I beg you not to make the same mistakes I made. Drink driving is never an option. It is not even on the table. You are endangering yourself, the community, your reputation, and everyone you love. Catch a god damn taxi, like I wish I had done that night. Drink driving - not even once. From one hacker to another. Please.
    - mapt 13y ago
      No, it's not "you've been drinking" -> 20x more dangerous. Much idiocy has been put forth by people who are unable to understand basic layman's toxicology/pharmacology. Drugs have effects. More of the substance has more of an effect. Step functions where a little of a substance has zero effect, shifting to a major effect with a little more, are extremely rare. It is never the case, for example, that a dose of ionizing radiation goes from "not dangerous" to "dangerous" suddenly - we may measure a low dose at 5 cancers per 100,000 and a high dose at 5,000 cancers per 100,000, but there is always presumed to be some effect. And yet we have media organizations saying things like: " Washington (CNN) -- A common benchmark in the United States for determining when a driver is legally drunk is not doing enough to prevent alcohol-related crashes that kill about 10,000 people each year and should be made more restrictive, transportation safety investigators say. The National Transportation Safety Board recommended on Tuesday that all 50 states adopt a blood-alcohol content (BAC) cutoff of 0.05 compared to the 0.08 standard on the books today and used by law enforcement and the courts to prosecute drunk driving. The NTSB cited research that showed most drivers experience a decline in both cognitive and visual functions with a BAC of 0.05. " Of course we have a decline in cognitive and visual functions - that's what a depressant does. At any dose. So long as we have drinking as a major societal institution, and we have bodies that slowly process alcohol, and we have an automotive-mobile culture, there is some nonzero number of deaths we will prefer to tolerate every year due to drunk driving, whether it's 1,000,000 or 10,000 or 100. --- While there may be some distribution of how well people deal with a certain degree of drunkenness, the basic objective fact that we possess to measure impairment is BAC. Limits vary geographically and through history - in the US we have had experience with thresholds at 0.05%, 0.08%, 0.1%, and 0.15% in various eras and places. A BAC of 0.01% doesn't significantly harm anyone - it is barely detectable. A BAC of 0.05% poses some minor statistical increase in danger, and is generally the minimum people seek out to 'get a buzz'. A BAC of 0.1% indicates moderate impairment - about what you thought, several times more dangerous. It's only when you get to a BAC of around 0.2% that it becomes 20x more dangerous. At a BAC of around 0.3% and up, on the other hand, one generally loses consciousness. Death from alcohol intoxication (assuming no complications) occurs at an average of about 0.45% BAC (that is the approximate LD50).
tehabe 13y ago
Yes, like revoking the driver's license for good. Not a life prison sentence!
- greedo 13y ago
  Take a good look at your city's crime logs. At least in the US, it's not unusual for most DUIs to be repeat offenders; and again, not unusual for people to drive with revoked licenses. Revoking a license does nothing to protect society from those willing to flout the law.
  - AnthonyMouse 13y ago
    If anything it makes it a lot worse, because now whatever car they're driving doesn't require them to breathe into it in order to start it, and now when they drive into your parked car (or worse) they have a huge incentive to commit a hit and run to avoid being caught driving with a suspended license.
downandout 13y ago
Murder, or attempted murder, is an intent crime in most states in the US. Generally speaking, that means that in order to be convicted, it must be proven in court that the defendant had the specific intent to cause the death of another person when they undertook the act that caused the death. That's why most traffic-related deaths are charged as manslaughter, or under traffic-specific statutes such as vehicular homicide or DUI resulting in death (depending on the specific state and circumstances).