how can we keep our criminals in jail? we've got the guy in

[catmother]

new york who allegedly commited a henenous crime against a young woman. he had 7 felony arrests and was out on parole. what happened to the 3 strikes your out law?

now we have this other guy who took the 2 teenage girls, raped them and kept them in a dungeon. he was paroled after 9 years of a 20 year sentence. it's quite obvious that sex offenders are repeaters.

:crazy:

[Mythsaje]

1. 7 felony arrests is a meaningless stat...

How many felony CONVICTIONS did he have?

[catmother]

4. i'm sorry. i believe they were convictions.

[Mythsaje]

7. I'm surprised then...

I believe NY has a 3 strikes law. I can't imagine why someone with 7 convictions would be out walking around.

[pitohui]

2. most criminals are repeat offenders

especially property crimes (thieves NEVER change, they can't really, would YOU give a thief a job, i sure as hell wouldn't) and drug crimes (addiction by definition people are hooked and really only about 5 percent or so of addicts ever recover)

maybe we should just shoot them all?

everybody is already in jail already, check out our rates of incarceration compared to countries w. much lower crime rates, ever notice locking everybody up is not doing anything to bring down the rates of horrific crime, er, no, in fact it just means the criminal might as well kill and eat the victim while he's at it, if you can't see why three strikes is bad, when it gives a shoplifter (yes, ask wynona there is felony shoplifting) the same penalty as a killer, then might as well think big and not leave any witnesses alive


you say a dude has 7 felonies, for all i know, those 7 felonies were selling a few rocks or possessing a bag of weed

[catmother]

5. some were drugs. i know one was a bank robbery. i'll have

to check it -- you know who i'm talking about, don't you?

drugs are another thing. we need more treatment programs for drug addicts. prison is not the place.

i'm talking about violent crime, rape, murder, etc.:shrug:

[pitohui]

10. i'm afraid i don't know who you mean

i can't hardly keep up w. all the louisiana crime, don't really have time or interest to keep up w. the new york crimes too

i don't think the courts can assume every druggie who sticks up a bank or a 7-11 to fund their addiction is going to become a sex offender

most if not all drug addicts do commit property crimes, you know, it is no use saying you believe in treatment when the practical effect of a three strikes law would be to make it silly for them to even dream of changing their lives

[catmother]

11. okay sorry. i'm talking about darryl littlejohn, the bouncer at

the falls bar in new york where the young woman was raped, killed and sexually mutilated. he has a long record, including bank robbery, guns, etc. his DNA was found on the threads that bound the young woman. he was on parole, and was not supposed to be working in a bar. it seems like no one was keeping track of him.

my point is. why was he ever paroled?

:shrug:

[High Plains]

14. To make room for drug offenders serving decades under the

state's draconian Rockefeller drug laws.

[catmother]

15. well that just doesn't make sense. if their insistent on keep

drug offenders in jail instead of in treatment centers, then they need to build more prisons. you can't compare a drug offender with an armed bank robber. :dilemma:

on edit: i lived in new york most of my life and i have had personal experience with drug addicts. a good friend had a drug addiction, went into detox, then rehab and after that narcotics anonymous meetings every night. i sometimes attended meetings with this friend and found so many really nice people who had been on drugs and gotten clean. some were very creative, artistic. one guy was even writing poetry. one of the very sad things that happened to many of these people was they got clean from drugs and found out that they had AIDS. :cry: i mean how sad is that -- it's not easy to get clean and stay clean and then you've find out you've got a death sentence.

of course now, AIDS is not necessarily fatal, with drugs and cocktails, but i'm going back 20 years and it was death. well enough of my rant.:rant:

[High Plains]

16. No, not more prisons. Prisons cost a lot of money. Not to mention

their dehumanizing aspects. We are the most prison-happy country on earth. We have the highest number of people in prison and the highest per capita number of people in prison. About half of the people in prison are non-violent offenders, and about half of those are drug offenders.

I say we reserve prison for the people we're scared of, not the one's we're just mad at.

[catmother]

19. i agree with you. see my last post (the edited version),.

[bloom]

3. The three strikes thing

is a state by state thing.

Getting out in half the time is typical. "Good behavior" and all that.


I would like to see laws that were tougher on crimes against people and let out most of the drug offenders.


Sometimes the sentence is criminal - like the Vermont judge who sentenced that guy to 6 months when he raped a five year old. I guess that got upped - but I don't know how something like that could sentence could happen to begin with.

[gizmo1979]

6. We need to get the non-violent

offenders out of prison so we can house the career violent criminals.We have too many people in prison for selling and using pot.

[catmother]

13. i agree. if i had my way, pot would be legal. not that i'm a pot

user, although i did use it occasionally in my younger years.

here in phoenix, maricopa country -- no one gets out for lack of space. we have sheriff joe arpaio who built tents to house prisoners. he says "no one will get out for lack of space -- i don't care if i have to build tents all the way to the mexican border".

he's a tough guy. he took some prisoners from their air conditioned cells and put them in tent city to make room for animals that were displaced during katrina.

[High Plains]

17. Sheriff Joe is a fascist asshole.

[catmother]

22. you're entitled to your opinion. i happen to agree with sheriff joe

not on everything, but many things. prison is not a place you want to be and that's one of the points he's trying to make.

[LostinVA]

8. I'll say it again: rapists and pedophiles should have life w/out parole

Period. Rapists don't just start raping -- they've been "peeping toms" (a word I hate -- it's cutsie for a sex crime), molested people, etc. By the time they are caught, they've done all kinds of stuff. Same for a pedophile. How often do we here that these people have been paroled? Almost ALWAYS.

[catmother]

12. i totally agree with you.

[rwenos]

9. "Good Time/Work Time" and "Quick Kicks"

I'm not a criminal lawyer by any means, but one hears these slang words all the time. "Good time" means time in prison without fights or other offenses; "work time" means work shifts performed in prison", and both result in reduced sentences, depending on state law in that particular state.

And a "quick kick" is something your local county sheriff will NOT want to discuss. In Los Angeles County, a "quick kick" means the jail is too crowded, so the Sheriff releases people who have served less (sometimes MUCH less) than their sentence. I personally knew a female who took her third misdemeanor drunk driving conviction, who served three days of a six-month sentence in LA County.

[sorrybushisfromtexas]

18. criminals in jail

I live in a very much fundie state, Texas. There is not much that goes on here, politically, or judically that I agree with. Anyone getting convicted of a sex crime against a child has been given very long sentences the past couple of years. I have no problem with that, in fact, I agree with it. However, in today's paper, it tell about a man who at the age of 24 was given 10 yr. probated sentence for sexual relations with a 16 year old girl. He has been a model probationer, attended all counseling sessions, and never broke any rules of his probation until his wife had a baby boy. The crime happened when he was 24, and now is 31. He got married several years after his crime. He was given the choice of going to jail or moving out and never seeing his child until his probation is over. He is trying to get supervised visitation rights and plans to live away from his wife. I just sighed and realized that that is what you get when you live in Texas.
Everything is seen as black or white, there are no gray areas.

[catmother]

20. i've heard other similar stories. that is ridiculous. back in my

day, it was the cool thing to have an older boyfriend. i'm assuming that the sex was consentual.

[mdmc]

21. we need to end the drug war

[catmother]

23. agreed. it's not doing much good.

:eyes: