Why are LIBERALS soft on crime?

It's called statistics!

 

Crime also dropped during the Bush years.

BTW - I agree that the War on Drugs is stupid and should be ended by legalizing all drugs. That would solve much of the problem.

 

How about "personal responsibility"? Liberals provide criminals with excuses for their crimes. We hold the thug accountable for his actions.

 

I'm not a liberal. Humans are however heavily influenced by social environment and are predicatable to a certain extent. You punch someone in the face they will dislike you. You grow up with massive inequality and low social mobility you become embittered and angry. Is it a 100% science? By no means. But if you want to reduce crime you work on these bases, to do otherwise is stupid. As I explained most human action is determined by the principle of maximum social status (within limitations).

 

Nice liberal logic. Killing is not bad. Obviously. Killing in self defense is unfortunate but not bad. Killing to defend others is regretable but not bad. It's murder, slaughter, inhuman, evil killing that's bad. I realize that's a distinction that liberals can't make.

I asked a man who had executed a clerk in a $35 robbery why he killed the clerk. He looked confused, shrugged and said, "Why not?" Oh, yeh, we really need to keep this guy around. Can he bunk in with you?

Nice logic there, Barack.

 

You are not a liberal. What in the hell are you then? But you're right. No income inequality, no crime. The USSR is a wonderful example. They had no crime. Crime was a capitalist disease. The same goes for Cuba. No crime. It's amazing how that happens. Oh, wait a minute, who's generating those stats?

I can't remember his name now but there was a serial killer in the USSR and as the police tried to catch him they had to pretend there was no serial killer. Love thos liberals.

The problem isn't what you don't know but rather what you know that's wrong. I forget who said that but it's true.

I grew up poor. By todays standards, I grew up homeless. But I had a real advantage over people today. We didn't have someone showing up at our door saying, "We're from the government and we're here to help you." We didn't have liberals telling us we were poor and there was absolutely nothing we could do about it. No, we were told the obvious. Get an education, get a job, work. I realize that's so out of date now. It would still work if poor people could get an education but for liberals the priority isn't education. It's the teachers' unions. People in our family who were drunks or took drugs were wonderful bad examples. "Do you want to go through life like your Uncle Wayne?" Hell, no, I didn't.

And never did anyone say something wasn't our fault. I was born three months before the U.S. entered WWII and I was twelve when I found out the attack on Pearl Habor wasn't my fault. If a teacher hit me, my parents didn't call a lawyer or the ACLU. My mother would say, "And what did you do to drive that poor woman over the edge?" To be honest, I had usually done something pretty irritating. When I was two my grandfather took me to the gocery in the stoller. Small grocery. Crowded. No supermakets. Granddad didn't pay attention and I snagged a bag of hard candy. When we left the grocery he noticed the little tray on my stroller was full of hard candy and slobber. He went back, paid for the candy, and according to my mother, spent the rest of the day bemoaning the fact that his grandson was a career criminal.

You know, we don't have a guarantee, or anything really close to a guarantee, for doing well. We do know with a high degree of accuracy, what will make your life total crap. Number one on the list. Listen to the liberals. Oh, yes, single mothers are really the way to go.

So, hang in the Raz. People want to drop out of school at fifteen? Not their fault. Want to have five kids before they're twenty without getting married? That's cool. Don't want to get a job they're qualified for? No problem. And, who is responsible for all this. Anyone but them. Soft on crime, Raz. No way.

 

No, I am honestly claiming that I understand the human mind, and more importantly, the human criminal mind, much better than thee. What is more, I have a much superior understanding of the limits of the penal system, as well as the effects upon the law-abiding citizenry, and the rehabilitative efforts of the penal system when these limits are breached.

Therefore, you should take heed of what I tell you, and put your uninformed opinions to rest.

 

Do you really believe that a 35% recidivism rate is exemplary?

How staggeringly beguiled are you by comparitive statistics that you completely overlook the obvious?

35% is a thoroughly unacceptable percentage and proof that the Swedes are not really much better than the Americans at rehabilitation.

Don't be surprised if the Swedish stats catch up to the Americans in the not too distant future.

 

How so?

The beauty of executing incorrigibles (especially recidivists) is that it radically reduces the prison population:

First of all, it allows the salvageable inmates to rehabilitate in an environment that is free from the interference of incorrigibles. This way they do not come out of prison worse than they were when they went in.

Secondly, it provides a strong motivation for those inmates who are on the edge of being considered "incorrigible" to reform themselves.

Thirdly, it does away with the need for lengthy sentences.

Lastly, and most obviously, it permanently removes the incorrigibles from the prison system, as well as society.


You really need to work on your reading skills, Red.

 

I'm with you on this one.

We should never execute incorrigible criminals "in order to demonstrate how bad killing is." That would be hypocritical.

We should execute them in order to get rid of them.

 

Ah ok, I should just shut up and listen. Me thinks no.

I am a democratic market socialist not that I'd expect you to know what that entails exactly. (Hint: nothing to do with the USSR). Also neither do liberals neither in the American sense of the term liberal or indeed the correct sense of the term liberal (which you actually are). Please don't abuse political economy.

Prior to WWII there was less income inequality and more social mobility so the crime rate was.....lower! Even though poverty existed and was worse then today in objective terms the differences between the top and bottom were smaller.

The reality is that, yes people choose to commit crime but the question is what influences them to choose to commit a crime rather than not commit a crime? In order to answer this we turn to sociology and it tells us that in situations with large income inequality and low social mobility crime increases. So, to reduce the crime rate one should lower income inequality and increase social mobility!

We also must reconcile the conservatives concept of personal choice with incorrigible convicts. If all crime is a matter of choice (which I don't dispute I just argue about the nature of choices) then there can be no inherently bad people, because if they were inherently bad it wouldn't be their choice to commit a crime. So if there are no inherently bad people then there can't be any incorrigible criminals becuase they could simply change their minds, no? However what would make them change their minds? From the conservative perspective all choices are unaffected by external factors such as income inequality. There is a serious hole in the conservatives understanding of the mind. I want a conservative to tell me, what are the dynamics of choice for them if it is not influenced by external factors and is purely personal then why do some people choose to commit crime and others not? If it is not due to their personal experiences then must it not be some predisposition (genetics?) which determines whether or not they will commit crime? And if so then it isn't a choice is it? So tell me conservatives. If it isn't genetics then what is it? You have already denied experience, because if you hadn't you would accept that by changing the experiences of the young (such as in relation to income inequality) we can change the number of people choosing criminal careers. So tell me conservatives, what influences choice?

 

I have a book to recommend to you. Inside the Criminal Mind: Revised and Updated Edition by Stanton E. Samenow. He is a noted psychologist who deals with criminals. Criminals are criminals because they chose to be criminals. Their thought patterns are different from ours.

If poverty causes crime, then why to some rich people steal, rape, and murder?

 

I recommend reading 'The Human Mind' by Rovert Winston. It's a friendly introductory book to the human mind and isn't in any depth but it will give you an answer as to why their brain patterns are different.

It's simple really. Brain patterns evolve. If I do somthing and it is successful then that brain pattern is reinforced. If a criminal steals, or beats someone up and is successful then that pattern is reinforced and is more likely to be repeated. Likewise, if you stole something and it had a negative effect (e.g. your friends all spurned you) then that pattern wouldn't be reinforced.

You have still avoided the question. Why do people choose certain things over other things?

If you believe that these brain patterns aren't the result of evolutionary processes in the brain during your life (particularly youth) then you must believe that they are genetically determined and if they are genetically determined then it is not a choice is it?

I never said poverty caused crime. I said high levels of income inequality and low levels of social mobility are two things which drastically increase the crime rate. It is a game of statistics. There are other causes but this is a major factor.

 

Ok, there are criminals because they choose to be criminals. But you should ask why?

Where you have greater index of crime? Where exist poverty. It is a fact.

Later you have other reasons to be criminal, and one of them is the opportunity. If you have the opportunity to be that, and you don't have some values that restrain you to act like that you'll be criminal.

And also, the detention is a model that doesn't reduces the criminality, as back ups the stats that I put some posts ago.

If the leftist people is soft with the criminality is because they consider other possibilities to end with that. And one of them is the attack the causes of what create a criminal and 99% of them are social, and some phisical. And doing it correctly you can reduce almost all the crime, except the one coming from psicopats.

And remember that most part of the crime also is caused by the system, the capitalism. If the capitalism is abolished you reduce a great percentage of offenses, too.

 

Can I just stop you there?

If he was convicted of one offense, then we know full well of one offense and one offense only.

And then you go on to quote an anecdote. Anecdotal evidence is not data, you cannot infer the typical sentence handed to the typical molestor of a dozen or more children from one case history - statistics are available, on government websites.

So I won't make too much of the fact that the cherry-picked instance you quote to support your assertion (that a molestor of dozens of children would get a three year sentence) is the story of a man who molested one (1) child and got a twenty-seven (27) year sentence.

 

Yeah, I've heard we have more people in prison per capita than China, North Korea, or South Africa. We ARE the leaders. But we love our freedom, don't we?

 

It's (altogether now!) a slippery slope. If shoplifters and credit-card fraudsters are put on rehabilitation programs, given adult education, and released as early as possible, then Dr Hannibal Lector will also be given a few short courses in engine repair and turned onto the streets.

If anyone is ever given parole, then everyone will always be given parole. And, if you cannot see the simple logic in that statement, why you must be a liberal. Or worse.

 

She sounds very liberal, your mother.

You should keep those words in mind - "And what did you do to drive that poor woman over the edge?".

 

Proof? Can you count, I mean seriously can you count? 35 is not much above half of 67. "Not really much better" is actually "almost twice as effective". Would you accept a job for $35,000 on the grounds that an alternative possibility of $67,000 is not really much better?

You've noticed an upward trend in recidivism in the Swedish penal system, have you? Please share.

 

Can you count? I mean seriously?

If you lock up one hundred people, even if you can (miraculously) detect the sixty-seven who will become repeat offenders and shoot them like dogs during the first five years, how is that cheaper than being Sweden, and only locking up ten people to begin with?

 

I hear a lot of emotional response, but I'm not seeing any actually support for the assertions you're making. Please provide the studies on which you base this assumption.

 

They don't care for facts, as evidenced by the complete brushing aside of numerous graphs relating income inequality to crime that I have presented several times in this thread. The closest thing to a response is 'yeah but I was poor and such'. Also they have yet to give me their understanding of choice and decision making.

 

I'll have a stab at answering for them, since I reckon they're increasingly uncomfortable in coming right out with it.

The "external factor", as you so hifalutin' put it, is The Enemy, The Tempter, Old Nick. He seduces the weak, the idle and the foolish - and how much sleep should we lose over people who must have been weak and/or idle and/or foolish before they even turned to sin?

That's why your correlation of crime to income inequality is falling on deaf ears. Obviously, in a land where the Devil is abroad with all his imps and demons there will be a lot of idle undeserving sinners doing far worse for themselves than the few good people.

 

25% of all people in prison today are in the American prison system:

"As of 2006, it is estimated that at least 9.25 million people are currently imprisoned worldwide.[10] It is probable that this number is likely to be much higher, in view of general under-reporting and a lack of data from various countries, especially authoritarian regimes.

In absolute terms, the United States currently has the largest inmate population in the world, with more than 2½ million[11] or more than one in a hundred adults[12] in prison and jails. Although the United States represents less than 5% of the world's population, over 25% of the people incarcerated around the world are housed in the American prison system. Pulitzer Prize winning author Joseph T. Hallinan wrote in his book Going Up the River: Travels in a Prison Nation, "so common is the prison experience that the federal government predicts one in eleven men will be incarcerated in his lifetime, one in four if he is black." In 2002, both Russia and China also had prison populations in excess of 1 million.[13] By October 2006, the Russian prison population declined to 869,814 which translated into 611 prisoners per 100,000 population.

As a percentage of total population, the United States also has the largest imprisoned population, with 739 people per 100,000 serving time, awaiting trial or otherwise detained.[14]"

 

I'd imagine that's the extent of it, if they have even thought that far. I use thought in a limited sense.