1. Bail reform. Yes, bail is unfair. If a poor person commits a crime, they sit in jail. If Biden's or Trump's son commits a crime, they get bailed out of jail. So no more bail. The bail bondsmen will have to find another occupation. The accused sits in jail till their trial, no matter who they are. If they are later deemed not guilty, they get paid for each day they were in jail. How's that for bail reform? If we have to build more jails, so be it. 2. DAs no longer get to choose whether to prosecute crime. If there was enough evidence to arrest, they must prosecute. If we have to hire more attorneys and judges, so be it. 3. No more plea deals. Except taking death penalty off the table if a murderer pleads guilty. Otherwise everyone pleads their case in court. 4. Truth in sentencing. If someone is sentenced to 10 years, they serve every minute of it. No more parole. If we have to pay for more prison guards, so be it. 5. Limit appeals. Only one appeal ever, and only if more evidence has been gathered. So, how do we pay for all this? For one thing, there would be a lot less crime happening. Secondly, when we don't have to pay parole officers and few appeal attorneys, that would free up a lot of money. Thirdly, if the government stopped paying non-profits (ngos) that would just about make up the rest needed. The ngos can subsist on donations only. If they are doing work people believe in and doing a good job, they will be fine without our tax money.
That would be a real nuisance in self defense cases. All your suggestions are reactive, aka what happens after the crime has already been committed. Education is the only way to reduce future crimes. Uneducated people are far more likely to commit crimes than educated ones, because they live in poverty, and and we have a lot of poor folks in US. The average poverty rate in OECD nations is 10.7 (5.5 in North Europe) and in US its 17.8. How Does the U.S. Compare to Other Countries? https://confrontingpoverty.org/pove... between the poor's,line is nearly 40 percent. In Table 1 we can compare poverty rates across 26 OECD countries. In this table, poverty is being measured as the percent of the population falling below one half of a particular country’s median household income. This is what is known as a relative measure of poverty, and is used extensively in making cross-national comparisons. The first column shows the overall poverty rate for each country; the second column displays the poverty rate for children; and the third column indicates the percentage distance from the poverty line to the average income of those in poverty. What we find is that the U.S. rates of poverty are substantially higher and more extreme than those found in the other 25 nations. The overall U.S. rate using this measure stands at 17.8 percent, compared to the 25 country average of 10.7 percent. The Scandinavian and Benelux countries tend to have the lowest rates of poverty. For example, the overall rate of poverty in Denmark is only 5.5 percent.
Yes. If it was clearly self defense, they shouldn't be arrested in the first place. No, these would serve as deterrents. Before a crime is committed. I think this is BS. And that it reveals an elitist attitude that only poor people commit crimes. Besides we've already tried throwing money at people and it doesn't work. Midnight basketball anyone? Furthermore these would be deterrents for the educated, as well as the uneducated. These are also quite "equitable" as everyone would be treated the same (exactly), regardless of who they are, their skin color, or how much money they have.
Shouldn't that be determined somehow before making the call to not arrest? Criminals don't really give a rip about what happens if they get caught. We have death penalty and people are murdering each other left and right. Feel free to think anything you want. No one said its only poor people, but they commit a LOT of it. I said education, not throwing money at people. Educated people earn their own money, instead of taking it from others.
Also, to your point, even if crime really is exclusive to the poor/uneducated I suspect they would get "educated" about the penalties pretty quick.
No one said its exclusive, and they will learn, but once you have been to prison you are very likely to return. Not only do poor people commit more crime, they are also far more likely to be victims of crime.
They would when I got through with them. OK. But we have plenty of programs to try to get people educated. Public schools are free (although not certain how good they are anymore but that's a whole other thread). We have multiple grants, scholarships, affirmative action, etc. etc. ad nauseum to give everyone an opportunity to get educated if they want to. No more excuses. It's time to just solve the problem.
Also, people are entitled to a speedy trial. I would say no one needs to sit in jail for more than 30 days before their trial. And if that means we hire more investigators, so be it.
Thank you for proving my point. You would do something after the crime has already been committees. We have a MASSIVE prison population, so obviously the fear of prosecution is not working. Obviously not good enough How. Seems like you just want to wish it away.
Reduce the number of guns you have https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/ A reduction in gun crime would equal a reduction in workload on the police and the criminal justice system ergo more ability to address other crimes
The illegal guns will never be confiscated in any large numbers. Why? Because law enforcement does not know where they are; no paperwork on them; hence, the fact that they are illegal. So, gun control is only defined as taking legal guns from folks who just want to protect themselves. Gun control will never prevent a single crime.
Bail isn't meant to be fair. One purpose of bail is to guarantee the accused shows up to answer the crimes they're accused of committing. The other purpose is to ensure violent offenders do not continue to engage in violent behavior. Should a rapist be released on bail, you'll be among the first to scream bloody murder when the rapist rapes you. Also, I'm guessing you don't understand the system. There's an initial appearance to advise the accused of the charges and their rights, a bail hearing to assess bail, and an initial appearance where the prosecution must show probable cause for the arrest to the judge. For common sense reasons, those are often combined into one hearing. Your cookie cutter one-size-fits-all idea fails for any number of reasons. The discretion of prosecutors to prosecute reflects the standards of the community, the beliefs of the community and the focus of the community, not to mention the desires of the elected District Attorney who was elected because the promised the community he would do things-particular. Obviously you suffer from the CSI Effect. Sorry, but the tax-payers of any given county, parish, or borough don't have $Millions to spend gathering evidence and analyzing it to have evidence to guarantee a conviction. Jurors are allowed and expected to draw inferences from the evidence, but asking or demanding that jurors make a leap of faith with scanty or paltry evidence perverts the system. In such cases, plea bargaining is the only way to get a conviction. And, if a defendant is willing to plea bargain, then why not? It saves the tax-payers money to prosecute more serious crimes. There is no parole in the federal system and many States have done away with parole. Appeals are a constitutional right and thanks for proving you've never investigated a crime at any time ever and have never been part of the legal system. On the other hand, I was a cop, a detective sergeant and a private investigator and also worked as a paralegal, and often on appeals. If my cousin's husband was alive, I could introduce you to him. He got convicted of a murder he never committed. He was not a good person. A juvenile delinquent until he was no longer a juvenile and a judge said it's Vietnam or jail. He went to Vietnam in 1971. Came back worse, and it eventually killed him thanks to Diet Agent Orange (which is why you can't talk to him.) He was at a biker gang rally in Daytona Beach at the time of the murder. My great aunt and uncle mortgaged their home because they knew he was innocent, because he and my cousin called them collect from Daytona Beach and again a few hours later when they were at a family diner near Arcadia which is nowhere near Tampa. The prosecutor and police threatened, intimidated and coerced his biker buddy friends and their wives and girlfriends into not testifying and then coerced, threatened and intimidated the family that owned the diner into not testifying and then the prosecutor used spousal privilege to suppress the testimony of my cousin. He got convicted, because he refused to accept a plea for a murder he didn't commit. My cousin worked 2-3 jobs to pay for four more appeals that got shot down. That was after 9 years in jail for a crime he didn't commit. So, he taught himself how to read, got his GED, and then studied law books and wrote his own appeal. The appellate court reversed and remanded, and the new DA refused to prosecute, so that was then end of that. He became a paralegal because of it. Law firms laughed at him because he'd never been to college, so he adopted a new strategy that worked the first time. He said he did something 5 attorneys couldn't do and that was get him out of jail plus he wrote appeals for other prisoners and got them out of jail. The law firm hired him. A few years later he went free lance and worked from home and made more money than most attorneys do.
Crime occurs because police suck. In the 1950s, most urban police abandoned the precincts in favor centralized districts because, you know, academics who never wore the uniform said that's how it should be done. That's was a mistake. If I ran the show in Cincinnati, I could fire 200 police officers and cut crime 50% or more just by putting the police back into the communities where they belong with the people. And changing the patrol tactics and techniques. When I was getting my PhD I lived on a street near the university. There was rampant vandalism, petty theft, burglaries, B&Es. car thefts, robberies and both physical and sexual assaults. Why? Because the police never patrolled our street. Residents would complain bitterly at community meetings with the police to no avail. The police claimed they were patrolling our street. So, I got time-lapse video and set it up. 16 freaking days. Yeah, in 16 days only one police vehicle came down our street. At the beginning of the video you can see me across the street with a tape measure. The one police vehicle that came down the street was doing 52 in a 25 MPH zone. Were they patrolling? Nope. They were taking a short-cut. That went over like a led zeppelin at the next community meeting. The police came alright. They harassed resident by writing parking tickets for being too close to the curb, too far away from the curb, not having the wheels turned etc etc etc. That's because police suck. You should see a police vehicle on your street randomly 2-3 times every 8 hours. If you got sidewalks, you should see them walking at least once. Police are a deterrent to crime only if they're visible, and to be visible they have to patrol. That's what builds police-community relations, not the Liberal fluffly nonsense feel-good stuff. Do you even know the names of the police who patrol your street? I doubt you do, but you should. Police walking around having casual conversations with the residents in their patrol sector that their protecting is what builds trust and rapport and then people start flagging police down saying they saw this or that or heard this or that. That's how you reduce crime being proactive instead of reactive. There really is something to the Broken Window Theory, but it isn't the be all, end all. You have to combine it with proper patrol tactics to be effective. Good, then you won't mind standing watch 24/7 on remote beaches around the US to stop gun-runners. I sure hope you're armed.
