I think we should be more mindful of how counter productive jail time tends to be. It is expensive as all hell and accomplishes nothing except -maybe- to get people off of meth and other destructive drugs. It wrecks lives rather than rehabilitating them. People think the prospect of prison is what's necessary to keep us all from killing each other, but someone please explain the logic of that. There is none.

Coming home from a walk this morning we were listening to a talk radio call in session about the guy who killed someone while driving drunk and then made a youtube video accepting responsibility. He did this in spite of his lawyer's assurance that he could totally walk owing to some technicalities in the way the case was handled. Most of the people who called in were insistent that he not be cut any slack. More than one expressed that being a spokesperson against DUI won't bring back the victim. Hello?! Like prison time will? Jail time is such an expensive indulgence. Let the guy work for 5 or 10 years while having his wages garnered to send to the victim's family. He could live in a half-way house or even in his own house. He could work to alleviate the guilt he obviously feels, we wouldn't have to chip in 80 grand a year to warehouse him, and after the time was up he wouldn't be one more ruined individual who can only work as a tow truck driver or a roofer because of his record .. leading to recidivism and increased criminal behavior.

Why are our values as a country so fucked up? Are we slow?

(September 7, 2013 at 2:37 pm)Moros Synackaon Wrote: I've always found it interesting how bizarrely people react when told "Three hots and a cot".

Like living in a cell is such a stimulating experience....

Or so easy.

And let's not forget being held in isolation for years at a time, prisoner gangs and rape.

Yeah, it seems like they're getting so well off. /s

I guess I mentioned the cot reference, but I'm with you. 23 hours in a tiny cell hardly seems inspiring...particularly if Bubba is waiting on you to occupy him for the 24th.

(September 7, 2013 at 2:56 pm)Captain Colostomy Wrote: I guess I mentioned the cot reference, but I'm with you. 23 hours in a tiny cell hardly seems inspiring...particularly if Bubba is waiting on you to occupy him for the 24th.

Yep. Of course with the rampant expansion of the gap between rich and poor with the erosion of the middle class - there might be more and more for whom 3 hots and a cot are hard to turn down, Bubba or no.

Quote:It is expensive as all hell and accomplishes nothing except -maybe- to get people off of meth and other destructive drugs.

Of course there you are making the assumption that they can't get them in prison.

http://www.abc2news.com/dpp/news/crime_c...to-prisons

Quote:13 Prison guards indicted for smuggling drugs, cellphones into prisons

The guards are as bad if not worse than the prisoners.

(September 7, 2013 at 4:58 pm)Minimalist Wrote: The guards are as bad if not worse than the prisoners.

Yeah, I suspect that profession would attract quite a few sick fucks.

The prisons oftentimes seem like a revolving door kind of system. People who go to prisons don't come out regretful of what they did, they come out of prisons hardened by the experience and made into sociopaths...if they weren't already. I mean, yeah, sure, you go to prison for being a murderer or rapist...let them rot. Honestly I think rape should be a capital offense anyway with a life sentence given the amount of damage done to the victim emotionally, psychologically, and physically. But people who steal or beat someone up in assault/battery or run drugs, all this other shit that does NOT warrant a life sentence? Why do they have to be subjected to a prison system where the guards are all but devoid of oversight and the prisoners themselves are crafted into an even more hardened mindset by the kill-or-be-killed, us-or-them, be-feared-or-be-raped bullshit that goes on in our prisons to such a huge extent that pretty much every single person knows it. We got people who steal millions in complicated embezzlement scheme who go to comfy resort prisons for six months IF THAT, and men who steal $300 from someone after smacking them over the head who go to prison for five years in high or maximum security with felony charges that ensure if they were stealing because they couldn't get a job, they now REALLY won't be able to get a job since now they have a felony record and oh look at this the job market is in the fucking toilet so instead of employers competing for employees, potential employees have to compete with each other for bottom of the barrel minimum wage jobs!

Our prison system, like our education and infrastructure systems, are fucking outdated and in desperate need of retooling. Meanwhile, the fucking Pentagon can afford to blow $50 billion dollars on a single model of aircraft program alone, and endless modernization and upgrade programs for every fucking vehicle, artillery system, jet, helicopter, and missile system without even breaking a fucking sweat! Never-mind that our soldiers are equipped with bottom-of-the-barrel lowest-bidder-produced garbage weaponry that still can't even hold up against shit the Russians made 60 years ago and sub-par body armor and their pay and benefits keep getting trimmed away.

NASA's entire space program costs $17.8 billion yearly. Need I remind that ONE SINGLE JET FIGHTER PROGRAM (a jet fighter program that is rife with security breach issues, performance that is increasingly becoming more obvious in how meager and laughable it is, and an ever-increasingly-mounting lifetime maintenance cost) has cost us $50 billion dollars?! The program launching the most high-tech devices and vehicles into orbit and sending other equipment across the reaches of the solar system and to other planets COSTS LESS OVERALL than ONE FUCKING FIGHTER PROGRAM that is clearly going to be a grim disappointment in the event of a war on the scale that it's meant to be used for.

And...again...infrastructure. Outdated. Education system. Woefully underfunded, outdated. Prison system. Outdated. Justice system. Rife with loopholes and overzealous prosecutors and with unbelievably, retardedly slanted laws.

America. Fuck no.

Creed, I'm sure you're aware that our prison system is now being substantially privatized as well, which makes the occupants a new sort of asset not previously seen in this country. Bad form to house the investors there for very long. Capitalism at its finest.

Every time I hear about how much a program costs to run such as NASA, I involuntarily measure it against what it cost to run the war in Iraq. By most accounts of which I was aware, the figure was 17 billion dollars per MONTH.

Per MONTH.

So revealing where our priorities are.

I wanted to write in this topic, but no way, you people know way more than I do about this crap.

Wait...not knowing shit about a topic never stops the jesus freaks from joining in.

I've never had a moral disagreement with capital punishment, but I do think it should be used more selectively then it is now. It would have to be a completely slam dunk case with a severe crime for me to give it the ok. I'm talking multiple eyewitnesses (video would be good too), DNA, the whole shebang. Otherwise just give them life in prison. And don't get me wrong, it's not like I get a hard on from killing criminals. I would really rather see them spend the rest of their life in prison. But if you got all the evidence (and I mean ALL of the evidence) then fuck them, put a bullet in the head after the guilty verdict.