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

It's a sort of moral entropy, with descending spirals of poverty, violence, antisocial behaviour and so on. The first thing that has to happen is that people have to aspire to a better future. Even in simple things.

An example: Insurance premiums go up, so people feel that they are being ripped off. The video wears out, so thay pour water on it and claim it was a domestic accident and claim from the insurance. Harmless. A victimless crime. But next year, the premiums go up again because of all the fraudulent claims....

So, you buy a gun to protect yourself, fine, but you have to realise that you have just made it 0.01% more likely that you will actually be shot, and 0.05% more likely that someone else without a gun will be shot, and 0.73% more likely that somebody else will go out and buy a gun to protect themselves, hence increasing these probabilities again. You who live by the sword shall die by the sword, as that carpenter bloke used to say.

I made the numbers up, but you get the idea.

Ok related to the death penalty - should the banged up live comfortable lives? Have access to education/ social life/ fun/ decent food etc? Some prisoners have a better *quality* of life (with the obviuos exception of freedom but hey! They had freedom to kill/ rape/etc that I never had) than a lot of people.
(C'mon, cat amongst the pigeons folks)

The question is, how big a part? Once the police are routinely armed, the criminals will routinely go armed. Once the populace are routinely armed, the criminals will shoot anyone who moves too quickly.

I think that part of the "comfortable in prison" myth comes from TV portrayals of prison life. Did aqnyone ever go on holiday with the scouts/guides/woodcraft folk and have to go without privacy for a week. It was great fun but there was a feeling that it was nice to get back to normality when the week was over.

Imagine being locked in a room for 23 hours out of 24 with people you wouldn't normally even get in an underground carriage with.

Some of the long serving prisoners do have perks - that is partly to do with prisoner management. If you behave yourself you can have a little benefit - if you are naughty you will lose benefits.

If you had a prison service which relied on people to run it who were sadistic and enjoyed damaging and hurting people I would be worried about what they were doing outside of work hours! Wouldn't you?

Prison is supposed to serve a two fold function:
1. It punishes through the denial of freedom of movement, personal control etc. i.e. you do as you're told when you're told, and you don't shit unless it's on your daily timetable. People pooh-pooh loss of freedom of movement and say "That's no punishment", but then look how people react in the outside world when their movements are restricted even a little. It's not nice.

2. It is there to attempt to restore the individual to a useful position in society, through re-education, the teaching of skills which will mean that, once free, the person will have the skills to break the cycle of crime, find useful employ, get a bit of self-respect and all those other marvellous things.

Of course a lot of tea leafs are a bunch of complete scrotes who will just use any education opportunities to hone up their e-fraud skills, but then you can't change everyone.

The problem with the Victorian model of prison comforts (or in US, the chain gang) is that you dehumanise the individual. Once you have reduced them to living like an animal, being treated like an animal, with fewer rights like an animal, then they will behave like animals, and once released (Yes, you supporters of the death penalty, not all prisoners are psychotic lifers), they will continue to do so.

If a criminal is more hardened, more violent and more outcast (from society) when he/she leaves prison, then prison has failed. what's the point of putting people away if they're worse when they come out. You may as well just tag them and leave them on the streets to continue lives of petty crime, rather tahn send them to jail to lean to rob banks!!

In Denmark, for some 'white collar' crimes they even have weekend prison. So you go to work all week, and then check into jail on Friday evening, and go back to work Monday am. Allows the individual to continue making a contribution to society, continue paying taxes (i.e. paying for their incarceration), while still restricting their freedom.

This is all missing the point anyway. If today's penal system is unfair or inadequate for any reason then we should reform it, not embark on some knuckle dragging "convenience cull".

I loved paragraph one! Shit followed by Pooh-Pooh followed by descriptions of movements is classic!

(I'm mocking you but I agree with all of your sentiments.)

The UK now has the highest percentage of young people locked up anywhere in Europe. Our attempt to get harder leads to less social contentment and to a reductoin on forgiveness. When somebody shoots somebody else because they have parked in their space or put plant clippings on their allotment (ref. news this week) they are doing it because they are told we must not tolerate anything.

Zero tolerance with maximum penalty.

"When somebody shoots
somebody else because they have parked in their space or put plant
clippings on their allotment (ref. news this week)"

I heard about that in a news summary and couldn't believe it. I must find the full report to see what actually went on. Here's what I heard: Man throws garden clippings into neighbour's garden. Neighbour flips his lid, goes in to retrieve *an illegally held* firearm, throws clippings back over fence and lies in wait. Guy #1 comes outside and is shot through the neck by neighbour, a fine upstanding man (Homo erectus).

Here's where I need some more help with gun control, where's zat Volvo guy? Is it true that the majority of shootings in this country (UK) are carried out with illegally held guns? So, extra gun control would not effect *existing* shooting statistics, but lower gun control would make them worse? Mmm, I think that's what I mean.

-When somebody shoots
-somebody else because they have parked in their space or put plant
-clippings on their allotment (ref. news this week)

I heard about that in a news summary and couldn't believe it. I must find the full report to see what actually went on. Here's what I heard: Man throws garden clippings into neighbour's garden. Neighbour flips his lid, goes in to retrieve *an illegally held* firearm, throws clippings back over fence and lies in wait. Guy #1 comes outside and is shot through the neck by neighbour, a fine upstanding man (Homo erectus).

Here's where I need some more help with gun control, where's zat Volvo guy? Is it true that the majority of shootings in this country (UK) are carried out with illegally held guns? So, extra gun control would not effect *existing* shooting statistics, but lower gun control would make them worse? Mmm, I think that's what I mean.

Anyone noticed an echo in here?

What echo?

What echo?

I had completely foiled to notice that, and have almost had a number of movements trying to stopp giggling for the last couple of minutes.

Still, glad you agree. Social intolerance in getting very alarming.

We now have so many different types of rage taht really it is just becoming one amalgam - City Rage, or maybe even Western Society Rage (but then I hate anything that doesn't scan, and that doesn't scan). 21st Century Rage, that's much better. Fortunately in the UK we don't have the gun level that would allow more neighbours to blow each others heads off, which is lucky.

To confirm Si's point, almost all gun deaths in urban UK are caused by illegally held guns, however in the countryside, most are either accidental or diliberate acts with legally owned shot guns or rifles (however these are usually inter-familial so that''s OK )

It is still massive news in the UK when someone gets shot - even in Northern Ireland a few years back. I see int he paper today that the bloke who was arming the Yardies has been caught.
Of COURSE the shootings are with illegally held weapons. Weapons (generally speaking) are illegal! That doesn't mean you go and legalise the damned things.

BBC Announcer: "We are pleased to report that shootings with illegal weapons has dropped by 97%. On the other hand more than twice as many people this year were shot dead. All but one with a legally held weapon."

We'd end up like the US with everyone thinking you can't trust anyone and many filling the house with weapons and have the kids shooting each other when they play cowboys and indians.

Somone must have known that the allotment holder (see plant clippings above) had a gun. We have to get people to tell the police to get them confiscated.

As I said before, guns were much more an integral part of American society historically than they are now.

I think the ways they are being used now, and the criminal class they are being used by, are a direct result of drug prohibition. As during alcohol prohibition in the 20's-30's, it creates a violent sub-culture to cater to the mass demands for the prohibited substance. In a black market economy, the only way to protect one's investments is through taking the law into one's own hands- and since the luxury of jails, juries, etc. are beyond even the most well-meaning black marketeer, the only recourse is violent action.

An aura of violence, in turn, leads to attracting the most ruthless of people to the trade- which causes more problems as they get involved in practices like staking out "turf" and bullying the competetion for their buisness.

Gangs, and gangsterisim, is the basic root of the problem of violence we see now.

It has escalated in scale and scope since non-approved drugs (as opposed to the state-sanctioned alcohol, which is a caustic sedative) have gained popularity among the masses, for the reasons listed briefly in the preceeding paragraphs. As people become deeper involved in the black-market, they change to cope with the reality they find there- the younger they started, the more apt they are to justify the slide.

I'm speaking not of just the Crips and Bloods and street-gangs per-se, but of the smaller groups who import and distribute quantities of various and sundry drugs. They're all around you, and even people who deal in smaller quantities are armed- for good reason.

Stop the drug war and a great deal of the incentive for violence will dissappear. People who get ripped-off can call the police, instead of gunning for someone in the hopes that they won't be killed by the guy they're in to.

When the distribution is regulated, the people selling the stuff will have a reson (their buisness license) NOT to sell to minors.

Just as alcohol prohibition was the central force driving violence in the depression-era, it's drug-prohibition which is driving the violence in our own era. There's big-bucks on the line- and even governments (Dear old trustworthy Big-Brother, who should have ALL the guns!) seem to be willing to resort to armed force over enough money- isn't that what "vested interestes" means?

Correct.

I think they should work hard, but live in humane surroundings. Just because they choose to live outside the boundaries of a civilised society doesn't mean we should as well.

I think the majority of (criminal) fatal shootings in the UK have always been with illegally held guns, even ignoring the IRA, which is why there was so much wailing and gnashing of teeth when the few licensed handguns were banned after Dunblane.

Which reminds me: after Dunblane, Lord Cullen was commissioned to write a report on gun control for the Government to ignore. His recommendation was that the control model in the UK (must belong to a licensed club, store weapons in a proper armoury, keep ammunition separately, applicants vetted by the police force) was fundamentally sound, but that handguns alone should be separated into two non-working parts, one left on the range or with a club armourer and the other held by the owner. This was to address particular concerns over ease of concealment of handguns.

Naturally the Government then did what it intended to in the first place and banned handguns - despite the fact that there were less than a dozen incidents of homicide using legally held handguns within the previous decade.

Absolutely. The most important lessons we can teach are humanity and respect. If an individual can learn these, they are more than half way to rehabilitation. Proividing useful work focuses the mind and should provide them with skills which will be useful on release.

Ahhh, something we agree on - the drug isnt the problem the crime is.


;^)#