6 ms·

Do we really need to punish people with prison for non violent crimes? We might as well call in the Criminal Punishment System, or the Government's Justice Sys

Do we really need to punish people with prison for non violent crimes? We might as well call in the Criminal Punishment System, or the Government's Justice System, as it doesn't engender my views of justice, and nor should it for you.

rayiner 13y ago
> Do we really need to punish people with prison for non violent crimes? No, and when it comes to white people in the suburbs we largely don't do that (except serious financial crimes). When it comes to the inner city and gang activity, that's not so clear cut. What are you going to do, issue monetary fines?
- norswap 13y ago
  The point of the author is that non violent crime can get people jailed (or their freedom very severely restricted) if they are a certain skin color. Tagging hardly qualifies you as a gang member. Living in a city isn't a crime and shouldn't make result in you being treated differently than anywhere else.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    > Tagging hardly qualifies you as a gang member. In a suburb, probably not. In a city, I'd bet it's statistically likely that a tagger has a gang affiliation. > Living in a city isn't a crime and shouldn't make result in you being treated differently than anywhere else. Policing strategies must take into account the realities of living in cities versus living in suburbs. At the end of the day, nobody wants to go back to the 1970's where New York or Chicago were dangerous places (which was a major cause of the suburban exodus to begin with). Just because you live in a city doesn't mean you should live in fear of getting mugged, raped, etc. When I lived in Chicago, there were flashmob attacks in my neighborhood: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/06/chicago-flash-mobs-appare_n_871924.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/06/chicago-flash-mobs-.... Shit like that just doesn't happen in the suburbs, and requires commensurate police response.
    - runako 13y ago
      >> In a city, I'd bet it's statistically likely that a tagger has a gang affiliation. There are laws on the books for tagging and laws on the books for gang affiliation. Specifically, laws indicate what can and can not be legally done by an individual or group. They specifically do not talk about the statistical likelihood that since an individual is alleged to have done X they likely also did Y and so we can prosecute for Y. One of the neat things about the law is that we are not supposed to apply laws based on the facts and not our superstitions of the types of associations we attribute to a person who looks a certain way or who lives in a certain place. Similarly, police don't get to do whatever they want to protect an arbitrary group of citizens from another arbitrary group of citizens. Legislatures don't get to decide that certain citizens have more rights, or more claim on the justice system, than other citizens, for any reason at all. One of the great things about America is that over time, we get closer to achieving a usable reference implementation of a usable system of justice.
    - norswap 13y ago
      Thanks god we do not use statistical correlation in justice. I would not like to live in that world. And I'm not arguing for laissez-faire, but simply for justice, which should be the same for everyone.
- akmiller 13y ago
  "except serious financial crimes" Unless it's a serious serious financial crime in which case they get to remain the CEO of large financial institutions with bailouts and increased bonuses!
- judk 13y ago
  Are you implying that it is OK to buy the privilege to commit crimes?
- jbooth 13y ago
  Teenage boys are idiots. I was one, most of us were, if you never raised any hell then good for you, I guess. What are you going to do, prosecute black/brown teenagers with extreme prejudice while giving white teenagers a ride home and a stern talking to? And then wonder why the statistics wind up how they are, why so many black kids don't have a father in the house? If more policy-makers had to deal with this situation in their neighborhoods, seeing their nephews get locked up with hardened criminals, the situation would change. They don't, so it doesn't, and young black men turn into statistics.
  - pstuart 13y ago
    > Teenage boys are idiots Especially those without guidance and mentoring. If we took a fraction of the funds used to deal with their crimes and spent it on proactive engagement we'd all be better off. For example, programs like Midnight Basketball[1] should flourish throughout the land [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_basketball http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_basketball
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  - rayiner 13y ago
    > Teenage boys are idiots. I was one, most of us were, if you never raised any hell then good for you, I guess. Yes. The difference is that in the inner city, they're idiots without fathers, without authority figures, living in an environment where that power vacuum is replaced by gangs. Teenage idiocy amounts to a qualitatively different threat under those conditions. It's unfortunate that black or Hispanic kids are far more likely to find themselves in that situation than white kids, but does that mean we should treat gang-related graffiti intended to intimidate the same way we treat some dumb suburban kids playing a prank? I'm not saying that our approach is the best one. I'm saying that there is more to the story than "zomg, the police are oppressing minorities!" Look, I live in one of the most inner-city inner cities (Wilmington, DE). It's a place where the murder rate is comparable to Bogota, Colombia, and where there was a shooting this year on Main Street (rumor is more than one, and in one case the target was a public bus) just blocks from the central business district.[1] It's a really complicated situation. On one hand I feel bad for the kids without fathers, etc. I lament the de-facto segregation and oppression that continues to exist as a direct consequence of de jure segregation and oppression. On the other hand, this shit isn't all theoretical and academic, and life isn't all about idealism. I have a wife and a kid and we live here and sometimes walk home from work late at night, and I'm not going to complain if the police crack some heads in the process of keeping the gang violence to a low simmer. I think this makes me less morally culpable than the other middle/upper class people, who have just abandoned the city altogether and live in homogenous enclaves in the suburbs, just driving in for work and quickly shuffling the distance from their office to the parking garage every day. [1] Once, my dad and I were driving around trying to return a rental truck late at night and he suggested we try again in the morning because the place made him uncomfortable. This is a guy who was in Yemen in the 1990's when the civil war broke out, was in Afghanistan in the shadow of Tora Bora while the U.S. was fighting the Taliban, was in Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake...
- blhack 13y ago
  >No, and when it comes to white people in the suburbs we largely don't do that (except serious financial crimes). Well, except that is exactly what happened here. A white, presumably affluent (it sounds like he's a lawyer) guy gets arrested for a misdemeanor (graffitti), and enters the hellhole known as our legal system.
  - corin_ 13y ago
    He wasn't punished with prison, he just spent a small amount of time in a police cell immediately after arrest.
    - blhack 13y ago
      Finish the article. No, he did not "just" spend a small amount of time in a police cell. He was sentenced to 3 years of probation, where he [mostly] lost the ability to travel outside of New York.
      - corin_ 13y ago
        This comment chain is about spending time in prison - I wasn't saying he didn't get any punishment, just that his punishment didn't include prison.
- cstavish 13y ago
  > When it comes to the inner city and gang activity, that's not so clear cut. What are you going to do, issue monetary fines? You can still issue monetary fines. Often the judge will ascertain the defendant's ability to pay, and then arrange for monthly payments to be made toward the total. Failure to pay those fines could result in a few days of jail time.
  - JesseObrien 13y ago
    Isn't the lack of money a major part of these problems in the first place? Imposing monetary fines on people who are riding the poverty line doesn't seem like a good solution.
    - cstavish 13y ago
      I agree. Stints in jail (even if short) hinder earning ability as well. If I knew of a good way to deal with petty crimes committed by people riding the poverty line, I'd tell somebody about it.
  - runako 13y ago
    >> Often the judge will ascertain the defendant's ability to pay, and then arrange for monthly payments to be made toward the total. Failure to pay those fines could result in a few days of jail time. I believe this practice has been deemed unconstitutional when tested. (Since it's essentially debtor's prison.)
patmcc 13y ago
A prison sentence isn't meant to be only punishment for the offender - it's also (theoretically) a deterrent to other potential criminals, a chance to rehabilitate the prisoner, and a method of preventing immediate re-offense. We probably shouldn't send people to prison for first-time trivial crimes (which this might have been) but "trivial" and "non-violent" aren't the same.
- tokenizer 13y ago
  > A prison sentence isn't meant to be only punishment for the offender Well it does punish them. It punishes them with what many would consider torture, and again, my point is that most of these sentences are for non-violent crimes. > it's also (theoretically) a deterrent to other potential criminals Yes. Because people will stop smoking pot, stop being dumb drunks, and stop making non-violent mistakes, because of mandatory minimums, 3 strike laws, and horrific legal processes that threaten defendants with maximum sentences for confessions and settlements. > a chance to rehabilitate the prisoner Yes, sticking non-violent prisoners in with entrenched gang societies helps rehabilitate people. Also, we rehabilitate them with punishment. Great job state. If you believe we should lock people up for non-violent crime, my statements stand. It's a criminal punishment system that punishes not only non-violent and trivial crimes, but also meaningful dissent/experimentation that doesn't hurt anyone, with cruel and unproductive punishment. If we want to continue to "punish" people, and yet talk about "rehabilitation", then I believe there's a little bit of cognitive dissonance happening if you agree these things can coexist.

rayiner 13y ago

> Do we really need to punish people with prison for non violent crimes? No, and when it comes to white people in the suburbs we largely don't do that (except serious financial crimes). When it comes to the inner city and gang activity, that's not so clear cut. What are you going to do, issue monetary fines?

norswap 13y ago
The point of the author is that non violent crime can get people jailed (or their freedom very severely restricted) if they are a certain skin color. Tagging hardly qualifies you as a gang member. Living in a city isn't a crime and shouldn't make result in you being treated differently than anywhere else.
- rayiner 13y ago
  > Tagging hardly qualifies you as a gang member. In a suburb, probably not. In a city, I'd bet it's statistically likely that a tagger has a gang affiliation. > Living in a city isn't a crime and shouldn't make result in you being treated differently than anywhere else. Policing strategies must take into account the realities of living in cities versus living in suburbs. At the end of the day, nobody wants to go back to the 1970's where New York or Chicago were dangerous places (which was a major cause of the suburban exodus to begin with). Just because you live in a city doesn't mean you should live in fear of getting mugged, raped, etc. When I lived in Chicago, there were flashmob attacks in my neighborhood: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/06/chicago-flash-mobs-appare_n_871924.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/06/chicago-flash-mobs-.... Shit like that just doesn't happen in the suburbs, and requires commensurate police response.
  - runako 13y ago
    >> In a city, I'd bet it's statistically likely that a tagger has a gang affiliation. There are laws on the books for tagging and laws on the books for gang affiliation. Specifically, laws indicate what can and can not be legally done by an individual or group. They specifically do not talk about the statistical likelihood that since an individual is alleged to have done X they likely also did Y and so we can prosecute for Y. One of the neat things about the law is that we are not supposed to apply laws based on the facts and not our superstitions of the types of associations we attribute to a person who looks a certain way or who lives in a certain place. Similarly, police don't get to do whatever they want to protect an arbitrary group of citizens from another arbitrary group of citizens. Legislatures don't get to decide that certain citizens have more rights, or more claim on the justice system, than other citizens, for any reason at all. One of the great things about America is that over time, we get closer to achieving a usable reference implementation of a usable system of justice.
  - norswap 13y ago
    Thanks god we do not use statistical correlation in justice. I would not like to live in that world. And I'm not arguing for laissez-faire, but simply for justice, which should be the same for everyone.
akmiller 13y ago
"except serious financial crimes" Unless it's a serious serious financial crime in which case they get to remain the CEO of large financial institutions with bailouts and increased bonuses!
judk 13y ago
Are you implying that it is OK to buy the privilege to commit crimes?
jbooth 13y ago
Teenage boys are idiots. I was one, most of us were, if you never raised any hell then good for you, I guess. What are you going to do, prosecute black/brown teenagers with extreme prejudice while giving white teenagers a ride home and a stern talking to? And then wonder why the statistics wind up how they are, why so many black kids don't have a father in the house? If more policy-makers had to deal with this situation in their neighborhoods, seeing their nephews get locked up with hardened criminals, the situation would change. They don't, so it doesn't, and young black men turn into statistics.
- pstuart 13y ago
  > Teenage boys are idiots Especially those without guidance and mentoring. If we took a fraction of the funds used to deal with their crimes and spent it on proactive engagement we'd all be better off. For example, programs like Midnight Basketball[1] should flourish throughout the land [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_basketball http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_basketball
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- rayiner 13y ago
  > Teenage boys are idiots. I was one, most of us were, if you never raised any hell then good for you, I guess. Yes. The difference is that in the inner city, they're idiots without fathers, without authority figures, living in an environment where that power vacuum is replaced by gangs. Teenage idiocy amounts to a qualitatively different threat under those conditions. It's unfortunate that black or Hispanic kids are far more likely to find themselves in that situation than white kids, but does that mean we should treat gang-related graffiti intended to intimidate the same way we treat some dumb suburban kids playing a prank? I'm not saying that our approach is the best one. I'm saying that there is more to the story than "zomg, the police are oppressing minorities!" Look, I live in one of the most inner-city inner cities (Wilmington, DE). It's a place where the murder rate is comparable to Bogota, Colombia, and where there was a shooting this year on Main Street (rumor is more than one, and in one case the target was a public bus) just blocks from the central business district.[1] It's a really complicated situation. On one hand I feel bad for the kids without fathers, etc. I lament the de-facto segregation and oppression that continues to exist as a direct consequence of de jure segregation and oppression. On the other hand, this shit isn't all theoretical and academic, and life isn't all about idealism. I have a wife and a kid and we live here and sometimes walk home from work late at night, and I'm not going to complain if the police crack some heads in the process of keeping the gang violence to a low simmer. I think this makes me less morally culpable than the other middle/upper class people, who have just abandoned the city altogether and live in homogenous enclaves in the suburbs, just driving in for work and quickly shuffling the distance from their office to the parking garage every day. [1] Once, my dad and I were driving around trying to return a rental truck late at night and he suggested we try again in the morning because the place made him uncomfortable. This is a guy who was in Yemen in the 1990's when the civil war broke out, was in Afghanistan in the shadow of Tora Bora while the U.S. was fighting the Taliban, was in Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake...
blhack 13y ago
>No, and when it comes to white people in the suburbs we largely don't do that (except serious financial crimes). Well, except that is exactly what happened here. A white, presumably affluent (it sounds like he's a lawyer) guy gets arrested for a misdemeanor (graffitti), and enters the hellhole known as our legal system.
- corin_ 13y ago
  He wasn't punished with prison, he just spent a small amount of time in a police cell immediately after arrest.
  - blhack 13y ago
    Finish the article. No, he did not "just" spend a small amount of time in a police cell. He was sentenced to 3 years of probation, where he [mostly] lost the ability to travel outside of New York.
    - corin_ 13y ago
      This comment chain is about spending time in prison - I wasn't saying he didn't get any punishment, just that his punishment didn't include prison.
cstavish 13y ago
> When it comes to the inner city and gang activity, that's not so clear cut. What are you going to do, issue monetary fines? You can still issue monetary fines. Often the judge will ascertain the defendant's ability to pay, and then arrange for monthly payments to be made toward the total. Failure to pay those fines could result in a few days of jail time.
- JesseObrien 13y ago
  Isn't the lack of money a major part of these problems in the first place? Imposing monetary fines on people who are riding the poverty line doesn't seem like a good solution.
  - cstavish 13y ago
    I agree. Stints in jail (even if short) hinder earning ability as well. If I knew of a good way to deal with petty crimes committed by people riding the poverty line, I'd tell somebody about it.
- runako 13y ago
  >> Often the judge will ascertain the defendant's ability to pay, and then arrange for monthly payments to be made toward the total. Failure to pay those fines could result in a few days of jail time. I believe this practice has been deemed unconstitutional when tested. (Since it's essentially debtor's prison.)

patmcc 13y ago

A prison sentence isn't meant to be only punishment for the offender - it's also (theoretically) a deterrent to other potential criminals, a chance to rehabilitate the prisoner, and a method of preventing immediate re-offense. We probably shouldn't send people to prison for first-time trivial crimes (which this might have been) but "trivial" and "non-violent" aren't the same.

tokenizer 13y ago
> A prison sentence isn't meant to be only punishment for the offender Well it does punish them. It punishes them with what many would consider torture, and again, my point is that most of these sentences are for non-violent crimes. > it's also (theoretically) a deterrent to other potential criminals Yes. Because people will stop smoking pot, stop being dumb drunks, and stop making non-violent mistakes, because of mandatory minimums, 3 strike laws, and horrific legal processes that threaten defendants with maximum sentences for confessions and settlements. > a chance to rehabilitate the prisoner Yes, sticking non-violent prisoners in with entrenched gang societies helps rehabilitate people. Also, we rehabilitate them with punishment. Great job state. If you believe we should lock people up for non-violent crime, my statements stand. It's a criminal punishment system that punishes not only non-violent and trivial crimes, but also meaningful dissent/experimentation that doesn't hurt anyone, with cruel and unproductive punishment. If we want to continue to "punish" people, and yet talk about "rehabilitation", then I believe there's a little bit of cognitive dissonance happening if you agree these things can coexist.