h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You know, I'm pretty extremist in my personal views on how to solve the problem of career criminals and repeat offenders. My 'pragmatic' ideas on the subject don't fit well *at all* with my belief system regarding how human beings should be treated, and that violence ultimate begets nothing more than continued violence. I'm not easy with my lack of integrity in this area, and the chipping idea was an attempt at finding a middle way, in my mind. "Off with their heads" is something I'd consider a solution and deterrent. I think it would work. I don't think it's necessarily *right*.

Anyway, I just googled a bit to see if I could find some statistics about repeat offenders, because I've heard lots of stuff over the years and formed an impresion about them, but I haven't been thinking with 'facts', exactly. This was interesting.


Bureau of Justice Criminal Offenders Statistics
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/crimoff.htm
Criminal History
• Fifty-three percent of jail inmates were on probation, parole or pretrial release at the time of arrest.
• Four in 10 jail inmates had a current or past sentence for a violent offense.
• Thirty-nine percent of jail inmates in 2002 had served 3 or more prior sentences to incarceration or probation, down from 44% in 1996.

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/rpr94.htm
prisoners released in 1994
Highlights include the following:
• Released prisoners with the highest rearrest rates were robbers (70.2%), burglars (74.0%), larcenists (74.6%), motor vehicle thieves (78.8%), those in prison for possessing or selling stolen property (77.4%), and those in prison for possessing, using, or selling illegal weapons (70.2%).
• Within 3 years, 2.5% of released rapists were arrested for another rape, and 1.2% of those who had served time for homicide were arrested for homicide.
• The 272,111 offenders discharged in 1994 had accumulated 4.1 million arrest charges before their most recent imprisonment and another 744,000 charges within 3 years of release.

I knew that there was a high incidence of recidivism amongst people who commit property-type crimes, but I didn't know it was *that* high. I also didn't realize that there was such a low rate of repeat conviction amongst those who'd served time for violent crimes.

I wonder if there would be an upsurge in appeal trials though. People who'd done their time but wanted the chip out.

Potentially useful for tracking escapees as well?

Or perhaps sentences in general could be increased, but people considered to no longer be a risk could get out earlier if they agreed to have the chip?

Can't see that you could ever prevent people from taking the thing out and disappearing though. Or they could wear tin-foil helmets .

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Those only sometimes work . . .

az

Tin-foil helmets are 100% effective when artfully adorned with sequins and feathers, az. But *I'll* never let that secret out of the bag.


That last statistic I posted is really blowing my mind.
>The 272,111 offenders discharged in 1994 had accumulated 4.1 million arrest charges before their most recent imprisonment and another 744,000 charges within 3 years of release.<
Averaged out, that's 17.8 ARRESTS for each of those 272,111 prisoners. I wonder how many victims these people *really* created, and got away with, along with the 4,844,000 criminal acts they were arreseted for.

If those statistics are accurate, and representative of a trend, I think I'm in favor of capital punishment--10 strikes (convictions) you're OUT--again.
*sigh*

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That's what *you* think.


az

MoG, I would agree with you entirely and defintely agree with tracking. To me, it all comes down to fairness. Ignoring human rights, which always tend to skew the matter, everyone should be treated fairly.

Problem 1 - Now, if we assume that a criminal has the same right to be treated fairly as the victim (which personally I don't agree with, but hey), if the legal system were functioning properly a fair punishment would be dealt out for every crime. Each criminal would have served their debt to society, if not to the victim. This clearly isn't the case, due to the huge number (majority?) of crimes that go unpunished. A single criminal is also likely to have multiple victims. So, simplistically speaking, the collective victims of crime are already suffering far more than the collective perpetrators. This, to me, is already grossly unfair.

Problem 2 - For things to be fair, the victim would always be fully compensated. Compensation may be monetary, or it may just be the satisfaction of seeing the perpetrator rot in jail. I would assert that either way the victim is rarely adequately compensated.

Problem 3. Once the perpetrator has served his debt to society, he is released and is free to carry on as normal. Now according to the statistics, he (or she) is likely to re-offend. Ipso facto, the legal system 'accepts' that there will be more victims - but the rights of the offender take priority. The same argument applies to 'soft' punishments. Jail terms may not work in the long term, but if we take away the deterrent and merely rehabilitate criminals, then we must accept that there will always be at least one first victim who is not compensated. Deterrents and punishments may not work, but at least by imposing them society is maintaining some measure of fairness.

Problem 4 - the consequences of crime are often quite horrible to the victim. In cases of abuse, rape, GHB, even assault, muggings and burglary, the victim will often have to live with it for the rest of their lives. The offender will not. In fact, given the high rate of re-offence, it seems that many of the criminals are not particularly fussed about the consequences they will have to endure. We also have a large number of victims living with the crimes of a small number of perpetrators.

Fro the sake of human rights, we are freely allowing criminals to go about their business but half-heartedly trying to rectify the situation after the fact. However you look at it, the current justice system is grossly unfair. Tracking seems to be at least another way of tackling problem 3, and anything that swings the balance in the right direction (towards the victim) has to be a good thing.