(October 2, 2022 at 9:47 pm)bennyboy Wrote:(October 2, 2022 at 8:33 pm)Irreligious Atheist Wrote: I'm sorry, but this does sound an awful lot like the abortion argument from conservatives. "I want to give them abstinence training, and if that fails they better not be stupid enough not to use protection, and if everyone learns to just stop being stupid, then no one will need the right to abort." That's just not how life works. Shit happens. People get pregnant.
In this case, that's a poor analogy. I'm talking about day care for single moms, prison release with financial incentives, low-interest loans for entrepreneurship, financial support for couples who get married and stay together, and so on. We spend an ungodly amount of money on criminals. Better to spend at least some of it on circumstances that minimize criminality than to spend it on prisons, no?
Once someone's (metaphorical) soul has been demeaned by an unpleasant upbringing, things are unlikely to take a turn for the better. There are just enough people who DO drag themselves up by their own bootstraps to let moralists point fingers-- "That guy did it, why couldn't you?"
I think you and I are much more on the same page than you think we are right now.
Yes, perhaps it was a poor analogy as abstinence training is dumb, and you are suggesting good things that will benefit society that I agree with, and credit to you for having these stances, but the point still stands that those things, yes, are going to lessen the problem and we'll have less people in prison, but it doesn't eliminate the problem. There will always be innocent people in prison. There will be people brought up correctly by their parents, that can still fall into hanging around the wrong people, and then they can fall into crime. Like I said, shit just happens in life. Drugs are addictive. Even kids who were raised right experiment with drugs, and some of them just end up getting hooked and then their life is screwed. I actually don't mind so much that you don't want to give voting rights to people currently in prison, and I wouldn't consider someone a bad person for holding that position. The thing I'd be more interested in convincing you is my view that it's not ok to have innocent people in jail, even if doing so may prevent some violent crimes. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and many leaders in history thought they were doing the right thing by being tough on crime at the expense of human rights. You say you worry about crime and your family, and I can completely respect that, but you know what would make me feel even less safe? If I knew I didn't have the right to the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. If I knew that my family didn't have these rights.
