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When punishment is the real crime

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  • When punishment is the real crime

    In his magisterial book "The Gulag Archipelago," Alexander Solzhenitsyn recited in gruesome detail the mistreatment of inmates in prison camps in the Soviet Union. "As many as 54 prisoners may share a single toilet," he wrote. "Up to 50 sick inmates may be held together in a 12- by 20-foot cage for up to five hours awaiting treatment."

    Mentally ill convicts go untreated until they "suffer from severe hallucinations" and fall "into catatonic states." Suicidal inmates are "held for prolonged periods in telephone-booth sized cages without toilets." Some prisoners die for lack of medical care, and others kill themselves.

    Actually, those quotes are not from Solzhenitsyn. They're from the U.S. Supreme Court decision last week on California's grossly overcrowded penal system.
    A majority of the justices decided that when a state approaches Stalinist standards of barbarity, something has to be done.

    The state admitted years ago that its treatment of inmates violated the Constitution's ban on "cruel and unusual punishments." After years in which the problem went unrepaired, the court ran out of patience. It ordered California to reduce its prison population, which now stands at around 145,000, by anywhere from 33,000 to 46,000 inmates.

    You may assume mobs of cutthroats will soon be let out to rape and pillage. Dissenting Justice Samuel Alito predicted "a grim roster of victims." Kent Scheidegger of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento urged Californians: "Buy a gun. Get a dog."

    But before locals go mad with panic, they might consider some reassuring facts. One is that California doesn't have to liberate any inmates. It can keep them all confined, as long as it's willing to provide the space and services to meet minimum requirements of humane treatment.

    As the Supreme Court helpfully noted, the state can open more prisons, place convicts in county jails or ship them to states with vacant cells. Those options cost money, but there's nothing to stop nervous voters from demanding higher taxes to pay for them.

    As it happens, many of those serving time in California never had "victims." Nearly 25,000 of them are in prison for nonviolent drug offenses — mostly simple possession or possession for sale.

    If these people were out, they wouldn't be particularly scary. Though you may not like the occasional whiff of burning cannabis, guns and dogs won't do much to improve the aroma.

    Many of the other prisoners may imperil your property but not your person. They are in for things like shoplifting, forgery and receiving stolen property. Those are crimes that ought to be punished and prevented, but not crimes that cause most of us night terrors.

    It has escaped the notice of Alito that the state can protect the public from such felons without holding them in prison — using electronic monitoring, drug testing and strict supervision to keep them on the straight and narrow.

    "I don't think there's any doubt that we can let out more than 30,000 prisoners and have crime go down, if we spend some of the money we save by not housing them on watching them better in the community," UCLA criminologist Mark Kleiman said in a radio interview.

    GPS surveillance of a felon costs about $4 a day, he points out — a massive bargain next to the $100 a day needed to house and feed him in prison. If the function of penitentiaries is to keep bad people from preying on good people, it often can be achieved just as well with new-fangled technology as with steel bars and razor wire.

    Many legislators have already stumbled on a way to spend less and be more secure: lock up fewer people. States from New York to Texas have decided that mass imprisonment is a luxury they have to curtail. Marc Mauer, head of The Sentencing Project, reports that in the states that have cut back on incarceration, "no adverse impacts on public safety were observed."

    In the long run, locking up so many criminals is a false comfort. It may be no coincidence that California has an unusually high rate of recidivism. The former warden of San Quentin State Prison testified that existing prison conditions "make people worse." Most of those people wind up back among us, more dangerous than before.

    Cramming ever-growing numbers of offenders into horribly overburdened facilities is an inexcusable way to treat the guilty. And guess what: It's no favor to the innocent.
    http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2...mates-convicts

    Gotta love California.

  • #2
    How much for GPS exploding collars per day?

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    • #3
      That would depend on how many days before the condition for the collar to explode is triggered.
      (\__/)
      (='.'=)
      (")_(") This is Bunny. Copy and paste bunny into your signature to help him gain world domination.

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      • #4
        Make them work in the fields and countryside
        building roads and planting cotton
        let them live in tents, watched over by military men
        surrounded by a barbed wire fence

        I would rather be there than in prison
        I need a foot massage

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        • #5
          Originally posted by Barnabas View Post
          Make them work in the fields and countryside
          building roads and planting cotton
          let them live in tents, watched over by military men
          surrounded by a barbed wire fence

          I would rather be there than in prison
          For some reason, chain gangs were phased out decades ago. Georgia was the last state to phase out the practice in 1955.

          Today, though, I suspect there would be thought that chain gangs constitute cruel and unusual punishment and that it's tantamount to slavery, especially if the prisoners are used in a productive purpose. Also, you have them working as fruit pickers or something and where does that leave the illegal Mexicans? Without work? Priced out by prison labor?
          "Flutie was better than Kelly, Elway, Esiason and Cunningham." - Ben Kenobi
          "I have nothing against Wilson, but he's nowhere near the same calibre of QB as Flutie. Flutie threw for 5k+ yards in the CFL." -Ben Kenobi

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          • #6
            Originally posted by DaisRadoslov
            thnx for sharing great article but why have not another languages support to here if it will bi put button here i think about will be perfected ..

            ottok homage post.
            The genesis of the "evil Finn" concept- Evil, evil Finland

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            • #7
              California is the Failure State. Thank god for federalism or their retardation would be infecting us even more.

              I think the ridiculous three strikes you're out policy and the failure to adequately fund public defenders as well as absurd penalties for drugs are the three main culprits here. California needs to get its act together.
              If there is no sound in space, how come you can hear the lasers?
              ){ :|:& };:

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              • #8
                Originally posted by Bugs ****ing Bunny View Post
                ottok homage post.
                Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.
                "Hating America is something best left to Mobius. He is an expert Yank hater.
                He also hates Texans and Australians, he does diversify." ~ Braindead

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                • #9
                  Virginia benefits a lot from the federal government.

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by gribbler View Post
                    Virginia benefits a lot from the federal government.
                    Sorry, I dans'd it out, yes, Virginia does benefit a lot, but that isn't the reason Virginia prisons are unfilled. Prisons are actually built when needed and costs are much lower thanks to the lack of a public sector union.
                    If there is no sound in space, how come you can hear the lasers?
                    ){ :|:& };:

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