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

It is somewhat amusing though, in a demented way. I can see all these Harvard and Slone MBA's putting forward business cases; talking IRR, NPV, and many acronyms I don't care to mention, in a context which should not be considering financial cost at all.

Besides, the cost issue is somewhat missplaced. The cost does not benefit the criminal. All the money spent on a trial goes to the lawyers, judges, security guards etc. All law abiding citizens (except the lawyers of course). The prisoner gets squat.

The issue being whether the money should go to a better cause. Mind you, the same argument can be made for building a space station......

"The reason they're criminals is maybe because nobody cared about them: Most of the criminals have either an educational, either a psychic problem." (post 57)

That attitude makes me furious. For every criminal who has an educational or psychological problem, there are hundreds of others with similar problems who never commit a crime. People have to take responsibility for themselves and for their actions. At some point, a criminal makes a conscious decision to do what they know is wrong. They may think they won't get caught, they may not care if they get caught, but they DO know that what they are doing is not acceptable to the society in which they live.

Capital punishment may not be the answer (although I'm not necessarily convinced), but the "society is to blame" line that all the bleeding hearts constantly use, is one of the world's worst cop-outs!!

Take hear in your anger, because your ignorance will not offer any rewards.

You seem to think you know how a criminal thinks Jezery? Commited any crimes recently? Robbed anyone? Mamed, killed raped? So what was your motivation? Did you like the thrill, was it the money? Yes, it must have been the money, right? You needed it for drugs. And whilst you were holding that gun against the petrol station attendant head, and him looking at you the way he did; it reminded you the way your father looked at you with disgust and contempt. The way he looked down on you, made you feel small, just before he beat the living crap out of you. The same way the student and teachers looked down on you, made fun of you because you were always slow, always go the lowest grades, never got the jokes, right Jezery?

So did you put up with that petrol attendant looking at you the way he did Jezery? Hell no. You have the gun. You have the power. How dare he look at you like that? So what did you do? You let him have it off course. You showed him how tough you are. You showed them all, your father, the teachers, the school kids. And when he reached for the panic alarm, crawling on the ground bleeding, you shot him!

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Of course not everyone who is beat up by their fathers kill gas-station attendants. That's missing the point. Ask instead "How many of those shooting gas-station attendants have been beat up by their fathers?" Pose that question and a host of others, and you might begin to see a pattern: How a man becomes a killer? (Much research done, I'm not sure if any results have come of it yet.) Once you learn _that_, you can go on to the next question: "How do society stop a man from becoming a killer?" I don't know any of the answers, but I can tell you that killing killers don't stop them from being killers. It makes sure they don't do it again, but still people have died. Go for the root of the problem, don't just pick the thorns and belive the bush will go away of itself.

That's not my point either. I believe in finding what makes a killer a killer, a rapist a rapist and so on, and I also believe that it's far too complex for us to find that out in the near future. In addition, I think that there are some random "freaks" or "outliers" if you will, that doesn't seem to have any "reasons" for doing what they're doing. It's in these cases that I see CP as an option, the point not being to stop killers from being killers, but to prevent further killing and what other heinous crimes they've commited. I don't care if the offender sees as a punishment, I'm only interested in protecting the rest of society. For instance, take a man like Thomas Quick (Swedish serial killer and child-abuser, killed about 15 young girls and boys). This is man who has said openly that he doesn't regret a thing, and that he will do it again, if given a chance. Whether or not he sees death as a punishment is besides the point, so is whether or not people like him are deterred (coz they're not), the point is to make sure he isn't given that one chance to kill and maim again.

It's not the beating you get from your father that turns you into a killer. Not even the tormenting from your piers for being slow and stupid. It cannot, can it? Otherwise half the world population would be out there killing and maming. So what is it? Perhaps it's the cilmination of the persistant beatings, not just one? The culmination of the persistant torments? The culmination that has made you feel like nothing. Completely inadequate. Like you don't fit in anywhere. Like society does not want you. Cannot stand the sight of you.

So how do you interact with anyone else in society when no one wants you? How does that feel One-eye? I have a vivid imagination and I cannot imagine this feeling. Perhaps you can?

But hell, your saying, all this guy has to do is stop and think for a while. Right? It's not all like that. But when you have the mental capacity of a ten year old, have trouble adding two numbers together, hell, you even get the spelling of your own name wrong. What capacity do you have for changing your perceptions?

Have you ever come accross a dog who has been abused in it's life? Even after it's been treated well, it's first reaction is to turn tail and run when it gets startled.

A common error: to mistake a causative factor for a cause. The observed data are that those fomr dysfunctional families form a greater proportion of the criminal population than of the general population. In other words, unarguable fact, if you come fomr a dysfunctional family you are statistically more likely to commit a crime.

This doesn't excuse their committing crimes (if it did it would be a defence in law) but it does indicate one way in which society could begin to work to reduce levels of crime.

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Apology accepted
I think I should apologize for over-reacting a bit there...
Guess I do that sometimes, for reasons described earlier

You're perfectly right! None of us know what goes in eachothers heads or in the minds of a criminal. But a thorough psychiatric evaluation/analysis might reveal this to some extent.

Regardless of the reason people are criminals, the criminals are responsible for their actions. If a person is to be released from prison, I think we need to address the underlying problems so that we can reduce the risk of recidivism. However, for some crimes, people should never be released.

Incidently, I have never met a criminal who stole because they would starve if they didn't. That's just an excuse.

Incidently I also don't care all that much about these specifc examples unless they are germane to the argument. We had a girl kill her ex-boyfriend in a robbery. The DA is prosecuting it as a death penalty case. It was a horrible crime. She didn't need the money to eat or anything like that. Should we suffer this woman to live? See this example doesn't add anything to the argument.

>"Incidentally, the term penitentiary comes from penitent. The Quakers thought that
isolation would lead criminals reflecting on their crimes and reforming themselves."
- Could you explain that bit?<

The Quakers are the ones who brought the idea of the modern prison to America in the mid to late 1800's(I forget is England already had them.) They wanted an alternative to traditional punishments. THey were seeking a way to reform offenders. They thought that if people were isolated they would reflect on their crimes and become penitent. The result was sensory deprivation, and the rpisoners mostly went crazy.

This sort of points at one of the fundamental problems of criminal justice. People don't realize that criminals think differently than normal people. Religous people, like the Quakers, benefit from solitude because it helps them focus their faith. Criminals aren't doing it to focus their faith. They're just animals stuck in a cage.

>A man who has once driven a car drunk has no business on the street and surely not behind a steering wheel, but that seems less important. Why? He's also a potential killer. Fact is that being only men and women, we all make mistakes ('Errare humanum est'), but some mistakes are seen as being heinous, other aren't; some people get a second or third chance, some don't.
(Don't get me wrong, I don't call a murder a 'little mistake')<

There's a difference in scale. Serial criminals intend to do what they did. Thier crimes are particularlly horrible, and their punishments should be particularly harsh, whether that be execution or life without parole. A drunk can be reformed. If he were to harm someone, it would be an accident. It would be a very preventable accident, and he should be punished for his chjoice to drive drunk, but it's certainly on a whole differnet level than someone kills for pleasure, rapes for power, or robs for money.

Of course, I'm not saying that you think they are on the same level. What I'm saying is that the people who commit these awful crimes have checked their humanity at the door. They don't deserve to ever be free.

Sorry, but I think you chose a poor set of examples. A drunk can be reformed - as can a criminal - but often isn't (many reformed alcoholics lapse again) and in any case modern thinking is that however long a drunk stays sober, they are still addicted.

Also, a drunk driver knows when they get into the car exactly what they are doing, and what the potential consequences are - unless they've been living in a hole in the ground for the last two decades

Even though an alcoholic is always an alcoholic, he can choose not to drink any more.

A drunk driver does know what he's doing when he dtarts drinking (Sometimes I wonder if they know what they're doing when they start driving.) It's a crime that deserves to be punished, but in the scheme of crimes, it's not all that bad. It has the potential to do a lot of harm, but rarely does. I think the stats show, on average, that a person will dive under the influence over 100 times before they're caught.

Now this in no way supporst either argument, just an some useless facts:

In Japan, being drunk is a valid defence argument for driving offences.

In Italy, passion is a valid defence in assult cases, including murder. A so called "act of passion".

Drink-driving *is* serious. It has the potential, as you note, to cause great harm. Drink is a factor in a substantial proportion of fatal car crashes, and often it's not the driver who dies. In my view it is serious enough to send people to jail for. I think a six-month stretch behind bars would be a significant deterrent to those who currently appear to believe that the loss of their driving licence for a year is an unwarranted intrusion on their freedom for such a minor infraction.

And the fact that the alcoholic can choose not to drink any more was precisely my point: he can choose to do so, but he is still an alcoholic, still likely to relapse under stress.

"A drunk driver does know what he's doing when he dtarts drinking (Sometimes I wonder if they know what they're doing when they start driving.) It's a crime that deserves to be punished, but in the scheme of crimes, it's not all that bad. It has the potential to do a lot of harm, but rarely does. I think the stats show, on average, that a person will drive under the influence over 100 times before they're caught"

That's exactly how they (= drunk drivers) think, and you must admit it's a completely wrong point of view: you don't choose to drive clean because otherwise you're going to loose your drivers license, but you choose for it because you know it's dangerous not to! It's like crime: if I follow your line of thougts, I can say that crime isn't reprehensible, but that it's unwise to commit one because you can be caught. What's the point in punishing criminals, then?

It's not that bad.... Well, I don't know the stats, but I'm pretty sure there are more people who die in a car or under it than somewhere else, in Belgium anyway. Of course not every accident is caused by a drunk driver but most of them are.

I think we may be engaged in a circular argument here

Your right, I was thinking in terms of crime and punishment because of my profession and because of the nature of the conversation.

I think that about 40% of the fatal accidents are alcohol related. Most accidents are pretty minor and don't involve drinking. I've only arrested two or three drunks off of accidents. In my personal accidnets they're running about 2/7. There was also one lady with a suspended license who was suspended for DUI, but I don't really think you can count her.

Can you imagined what she thought when the unmarked car she just hit started showing blue lights and a bleeding detective came over and demanded her license. If it wasn't for the ongoing pain in my left hand, it was almost worth it for the humor. But I digress.

To bring us back on subject, should we execute her by hanging, lethal injection, electric chair or firing squad. Our state has just made lethal injection an option. The thinking is that "Old Sparky" will be declared unconstitutional soon. I'm not sure that it matters. I don't think there is such a thing as a painless death. Of all the bodies I've seen, they all looked like they were in pain.

Sorry i'm late, i simply must get all this off my mind....

One thing that is being forgotten (in the cost arena) is that people in prison for a life sentence have the same right to appeal as a person on death row. Cost of appeal + death = one cost. Cost of appeal + life in prison = two costs.

Have any of you actually known anyone who has been in any kind of lock-up before? Unfortunately i have, many years ago. Close friend of a close friend, but my point is this: at the end of a 6 month sentence (small posession charge i believe) the individual in question did not want to be released. He had spent the previous 6 months living for free. He did not have to go to work. He got three meals a day. There was a television and a VCR, a weight room, a cart that came around several times a day from which he could buy cigarettes, candy, chips, magazines, etc. He asked his legal representative for a longer sentence!!! i am not making this up!!!

I work between 50 & 60 hours a week, sometimes more, to earn the money that my family survives on. I have to worry about getting up on time every day to get to work on time and do my job so i can bring home a paycheck to feed my son and husband (he contributes too, don't get me wrong. it takes two incomes anymore). i have to worry about making my car payment so i have transportation to perpetuate my livlihood. i have to worry about paying for my house, my utilities, my personal (and my son's and husband's) needs. and for every dollar i earn the government takes some of it away to house and feed a criminal who will never again have another worry for the rest of his or her sorry life.

now, that said let's move on. i believe in rehabilitation. however, just like AA, in order to be helped, to be "rehabilitated" criminals need to acknowledge that they have a problem, analyze the causes behind the problem, and work to overcome the problem. this is not something that society or the government can do FOR criminals. they can provide the necessary resources but it is up to the criminals themselves to use them. it is not possible (or humane) to FORCE someone to rehabilitate (i think here of the ridiculus proposition of rehabilitating people for things like homosexuality, Christianity, being a republican, being left handed, etc. at what point do we draw the line regarding who declares what is unacceptable and in need of rehabilitating. all of the things mentioned at one time were considered "heinous" in some context). At what point is it decided that someone is beyond rehabilitation, and what is done with them then?

if prison were more of a punishment, then i might be "less-for" the death penalty. if ALL prisoners had to do hard labor for one meal a day of two slices of bread and questionable water. if fifty of them slept in the floor of one cell. if, short of executing for murder, we treated inhumanely for inhumane treatment, but no, that is "cruel and unusual" punishment. as if murdering someone is not cruel and unusual.

on the drinking and driving front, i am also for low tolerance. get caught once, suspend liscence (or jail time, doesn't matter to me). get caught twice, that's it. never drive again. get caught in a pub after that and go to jail. it is not okay to risk human life for the sake of one more budweiser.

moral of the story: murder me once shame on you. murder me twice shame on me (for not locking your sorry ass up and trying you for the death penalty the first time!!)

*steps down off soapbox*