no no no. WE pay the price for preventing people from being reintegrated into society. It's OUR tax dollars, not theirs, that get confiscated and completely wasted. Or maybe you like paying taxes to fatcat correctional labor unions instead of buying your kids a nicer birthday present? The most powerful union in California isn't the SAG, the MLBPA, or the AFL-CIO; it's the California Correctional Peace Officers Association.
Not to mention the fact that it's essentially double-jeopardy. When a judge sentences someone to five years in prison, on day 1 of year six they are supposedly free citizens again. Yet, there is a strong desire in our country to abandon temporary punishment as deterrence and rehabilitation in favor of permanent second class status.
Also, I would take issue with your feeling that "they choose differently". There are a lot more criminals that aren't punished than are. If you would support treating Rush Limbaugh and Noelle Bush and the many other white Republicans who break the law yet don't see their careers ruined, families destroyed, and freedom deprived, then I would be willing to withdraw this particular claim of hypocrisy. Just keep in mind that, while we don't have exact figures, well over 100 million Americans deserve felony convictions for drug related offenses. At $30,000 a year for incarceration, on average, that's a cost of only $3 trillion dollars annually. And don't forget, that would cut the labor force roughly in half, so the tax burden would be even higher on the rest of us.
I wonder why you have so much contempt for some people. Is there a deeper issue here, perhaps a personal one? Or do you really just think that millions of Americans have done such "evil" things that they really don't deserve to be treated as people anymore? At any given time, there are about 6 million people in the system; about 1 in 4 black males will spend time in prison at some point of their lives.
As a sidenote, if you really want to understand liberals (as opposed to people like me), one way to think about their passion is to channel what you feel about ex-cons onto the Republicans responsible for things like bombing Cambodia, overthrowing Chile's government, human rights atrocities throughout Central America (and all over the world), the systematic disenfranchisement of black voters, obstruction on climate change and other environmental issues, oppression of womyn, corporate cronyism and bribery, and several other issues. George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Tom Delay, Karl Rove, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, John Negroponte, Oliver North...yada yada yada...are just as evil from a liberal perspective as you seem to think ex-cons are worthless. Your position on ex-cons seems about as reasonable as when liberals claim President Bush is the anti-Christ.
Nate--I can tell when someone has been somewhat insulated from the "criminal" underclass.
I deal with these people and their progeny on a daily basis. None of it's pretty. The individual stories I could tell about the "disenfranchised" of society and the choices they make and the things that they do to their children would fill your blog, my blog, and probably the rest of your buddy list.
I can see what you are saying. If I read enough pamphlets and think tank papers and left-wing blogs and first person stories from recently paroled drug offenders, I could probably work up a righteous head of steam that these people shouldn't be ostracized and the whole justice system is broken. But then, I would get up and go to work. And I would patiently clean up their wreckage every single day. I'm talking about mothers and fathers who have been given second, third, fourth, dozens of chances to get their shit together and simply--refuse. They have jobs waiting for them. They stop showing up. They have children. They don't care for them. We end up having to do it.
And I've been doing this for twenty years Nate and it doesn't get any better. I'm not bitter either. I believe every person is stand up until they prove otherwise. Then I have to deal with that reality, not what I wish it was, but what it is. I've had police officers take down a mother on the front walk after she assaulted a patrol officer because she was asked to move her car. We have cars broken into at least 3-4 times a month. I've had children come to school who don't know where their parents are and don't ever SEE them again.
I've had children who were raped by their parents and by their parents friends. Yeah, put them back in society Nate. I've taken crack pipes off of 3rd graders and a gun away from a middle schooler.
I'm okay with segregating them Nate from law abiding students. And their parents from law abiding parents. And yeah, I take it personally.
I think I know what you mean by isolated from a criminal underclass, and I actually would disagree quite strongly, but I don't want to get into personal experiences and anecdotes; I prefer speaking on a policy level (as you have no doubt gathered).
My point isn't that the disease is harmless. I'm a strong advocate against using drugs and abusing children and so on.
My point is that the cure (massive incarceration) is much much worse, both in its method of delivery (which is racist and hypocritical, among other things), and in its results (which are extremely costly, far more so than the disease itself).
Violent crime has been decreasing steadily for most of my life. Yet it is nonviolent "criminals" that make up the millions of new people who have suffered the massive expansion of the prison system over the same time frame. Not to mention you and me who suffer higher taxes.
You seem to think that most people who have been through the prison system have assaulted somebody or abused somebody or done some other dangerous thing to another person. That's simply not the case.
Nate--I can see your where you are making distinctions and I think we've covered this before--all the trifling drug stuff, in your opinion, shouldn't lead to serious time while I think I argued that trifling drug stuff was a gateway to more serious things.
I'm not sure I'm getting your racist angle. Are you saying that if two identical situations came before the court that one race would get different treatment than another? I hope I'm not reading into that comment that one race DOESN'T commit more crimes per capita than another, when in my experience one race certainly does commit more crime. Almost predictably so.
So the Nate Policy looks something like this: Because its expensive to the taxpayer, criminals should not go to prison at the rate they have been and for the offenses they have been. Some acts, in fact, should be decriminalized. Every attempt, and I mean every attempt (which would translate in taxpayer dollars) should be made to re-integrate ex-criminals or those who have served their time, so that they won't become recedivists--even though most CHOOSE not to reintegrate. (Side note: To reintegrate here an ex-con would have to stop doing drugs, stop drinking, stop hanging out, stop having bastard children, stay groomed, get up every morning and work a 10-12 hour job for exceedingly low pay, save money, and take care of a family AND make sure all of the rules, regulations, and laws of the workplace and community are being followed.) None of the above requirements to re-integrate are very attractive when you look at it in relation to doing whatever you want, whenever you want, to whomever you want. And if that doesn't work out, you get some time with the state to figure out where you went wrong.
So what does a regular guy who doesn't like all the hard work that it takes to be integrated back into his community but also doesn't like to be incarcerated because it takes away his freedom, supposed to do? What re-education camp do you want to send him to? What is government's role in re-educating him? What policy is this? Or is it his neighbor's moral obligation to teach him his role in society? (I do that in my role, but always with a big stick nearby).
As long as that guy continues to victimize society his correct place is in prison.
That's somewhat what my world would look like, except less government and more markets.
I'm not saying the state should force people to go to education or training programs, or force companies to hire ex-offenders. I'm saying it shouldn't hinder those activities, as well as providing (minimal) funds if there is a desire by the individual to better him or herself. If we can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars locking somebody up, can't we spend a couple thousand dollars to give them some financial assistance to buy professional clothes or take some classes that will let them be qualified to take a job? Qualified applicants who happen to be convicted of a drug crime can't even get financial aid for college. That's absolutely absurd; it's wrong to the individual, and it harms society because we all benefit from a better educated citizenry.
The tax revenue from legalizing victimless crimes would more than pay for basic educational and job training opportunities, not to mention the enormous savings from less incarceration.
And even for the minority of criminals who are violent offenders, I would argue it's still better to integrate them than condemn them to a life of destitution. Some people who have done bad things want to do things better. They want to get a job and support their family. We should encourage, not discourage, that. Sure, there are a lot of bums, but don't let individuals who won't improve themselves ruin it for those that will.
The primary problem I have with the lock-'em-up society is that the approach is applied inconsistently; the legislators enacting it are extremely hypocritical. You say more blacks where you are commit crimes than whites. I don't know where you are exactly, so that may or may not be true. But nationwide, the numbers are very clear. Blacks and Latinos do not commit more crimes than whites. They do not commit more crimes per capita than whites. In fact, if anything, the data support the conclusion that whites disproportionately use drugs (although that is more an economic correlation than a racial one).
The point is, you ask an important question about the racial differences, whether two identical situations get treated differently before the court. The larger variable in the criminal justice system is wealth, but race cannot be ignored. There are essentially four components that are tracked: arrests, trials, convictions, and sentences. At every step of the process, blacks and hispanics are disproportionately represented. It's not just that more blacks who go to trial get convicted and sent to prison, but also that more blacks get arrested and tried in the first place.
You can disagree with the numbers if it makes the world easier for you to understand, but there's no credibility behind that disagreement. The data is crystal clear. Whites who use drugs simply do not get arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced as often as blacks and hispanics. If Rush Limbaugh were a poor black, he'd be in prison right now. Ditto for Noelle Bush. And a whole bunch of other whites of all political stripes--tens of millions of them should serve prison time, assuming one advocates the perspective that victimless crimes are crimes and that those criminals should be incarcerated for lenghty periods of time.
That's the core of the problem with the policies designed around locking up the bad guys. There seriously are over 100 million bad guys. When you start trying to define a non-criminal American, it gets pretty hard.
Nate--Sorry. I just don't get into the handwringing about inconsistencies. Actually, I think the justice system is working with as much elasticity as it should. Why doesn't Rush go to jail or Joelle? Or any number of white collar coke snorting nimrods? I guess it's because of prospects. They have some education and can move through it. They have a support system if they choose to use it. They can return to society easier. Do you see that with blacks and latinos?
I guess we also differ in that most of the people busted here that make the papers are DISTRIBUTING, not just using. To me, that's a different intent. I'm sipping a screwdriver right now and its mighty good. But I'm not out in the front yard trying to sell my bottle of Stoly to anyone.
I also think you suffer from a Big Daddy, government will help you, paternalism that robs people of their own initiative. I've never, ever seen a story where a guy gets out of prison and bemoans the lack of programs to help him get back on the right track. I hear a lot of it from policy wonks like you, but never from the people who should avail themselves of it. This whole not availing themselves of what society has to offer started long before they ended up in the slammer. If they were interested in how society does things, most of them wouldn't be in the place they are in now. Why would they be interested in a job program when they get out? That involves WORK. And not DOING drugs. And having a BOSS. Stuff they have already sworn off already.
I do agree that the more laws you have, the more criminals you make. Lawyers will always have work, I'm sure. I'm also sure you understand the community you live in just like an animal on the savanna understands its environment--you don't do stupid shit to make yourself a target. You understand what works and how you fit into it. The criminal underclass or simply the criminal class aren't pining away to be where you are or where I am. They have, for the most part, rejected it. And so their societal needs are different. They don't want job policy and computer skills. They want what they want for their reasons, not yours or mine. I think you do yourself and your arguments an injustice when you downplay the pecking order on the savanna, the who eats who, for a ream of data that may not have any relevance to the environment you live in. I don't need a government study to tell me who is living and dying, committing crimes, and going to prison from my community. I can see it.
M. Simon--True dat on the law. Until it's administered by a machine, though, the law will never be entirely just. I would suppose if I started pursesnatching and burgling to support my cocaine habit and eventually got caught, that I would be treated differently because of my background.
Or maybe not. Depends on too many variables to say for sure.
I think choices are made by people which either help or harm their ability to build for themselves a positive place in our society. I'm not accepting all the stuff that because you are poor or black or whatever that you get a free pass for making bad decisions.
When the revolution comes, I'll defend my little piece of turf--I've made too many decisions and sacrificed too much not too. (And oh...the angst of it all...makes me want to self-medicate!)
9 comments:
Nate--What a load. All that stuff about job training and opportunities is bunch of crap.
I bet you want to make sure your company has a Hire an Ex-Con program so that they can get some entry level positions. (maybe your company does that?)
Those guys make choices, just like you and I do, every single day. They choose differently. And they pay the price for that.
Charles
no no no. WE pay the price for preventing people from being reintegrated into society. It's OUR tax dollars, not theirs, that get confiscated and completely wasted. Or maybe you like paying taxes to fatcat correctional labor unions instead of buying your kids a nicer birthday present? The most powerful union in California isn't the SAG, the MLBPA, or the AFL-CIO; it's the California Correctional Peace Officers Association.
Not to mention the fact that it's essentially double-jeopardy. When a judge sentences someone to five years in prison, on day 1 of year six they are supposedly free citizens again. Yet, there is a strong desire in our country to abandon temporary punishment as deterrence and rehabilitation in favor of permanent second class status.
Also, I would take issue with your feeling that "they choose differently". There are a lot more criminals that aren't punished than are. If you would support treating Rush Limbaugh and Noelle Bush and the many other white Republicans who break the law yet don't see their careers ruined, families destroyed, and freedom deprived, then I would be willing to withdraw this particular claim of hypocrisy. Just keep in mind that, while we don't have exact figures, well over 100 million Americans deserve felony convictions for drug related offenses. At $30,000 a year for incarceration, on average, that's a cost of only $3 trillion dollars annually. And don't forget, that would cut the labor force roughly in half, so the tax burden would be even higher on the rest of us.
I wonder why you have so much contempt for some people. Is there a deeper issue here, perhaps a personal one? Or do you really just think that millions of Americans have done such "evil" things that they really don't deserve to be treated as people anymore? At any given time, there are about 6 million people in the system; about 1 in 4 black males will spend time in prison at some point of their lives.
As a sidenote, if you really want to understand liberals (as opposed to people like me), one way to think about their passion is to channel what you feel about ex-cons onto the Republicans responsible for things like bombing Cambodia, overthrowing Chile's government, human rights atrocities throughout Central America (and all over the world), the systematic disenfranchisement of black voters, obstruction on climate change and other environmental issues, oppression of womyn, corporate cronyism and bribery, and several other issues. George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Tom Delay, Karl Rove, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, John Negroponte, Oliver North...yada yada yada...are just as evil from a liberal perspective as you seem to think ex-cons are worthless. Your position on ex-cons seems about as reasonable as when liberals claim President Bush is the anti-Christ.
Nate--I can tell when someone has been somewhat insulated from the "criminal" underclass.
I deal with these people and their progeny on a daily basis. None of it's pretty. The individual stories I could tell about the "disenfranchised" of society and the choices they make and the things that they do to their children would fill your blog, my blog, and probably the rest of your buddy list.
I can see what you are saying. If I read enough pamphlets and think tank papers and left-wing blogs and first person stories from recently paroled drug offenders, I could probably work up a righteous head of steam that these people shouldn't be ostracized and the whole justice system is broken. But then, I would get up and go to work. And I would patiently clean up their wreckage every single day. I'm talking about mothers and fathers who have been given second, third, fourth, dozens of chances to get their shit together and simply--refuse. They have jobs waiting for them. They stop showing up. They have children. They don't care for them. We end up having to do it.
And I've been doing this for twenty years Nate and it doesn't get any better. I'm not bitter either. I believe every person is stand up until they prove otherwise. Then I have to deal with that reality, not what I wish it was, but what it is. I've had police officers take down a mother on the front walk after she assaulted a patrol officer because she was asked to move her car. We have cars broken into at least 3-4 times a month. I've had children come to school who don't know where their parents are and don't ever SEE them again.
I've had children who were raped by their parents and by their parents friends. Yeah, put them back in society Nate. I've taken crack pipes off of 3rd graders and a gun away from a middle schooler.
I'm okay with segregating them Nate from law abiding students. And their parents from law abiding parents. And yeah, I take it personally.
Charles
I think I know what you mean by isolated from a criminal underclass, and I actually would disagree quite strongly, but I don't want to get into personal experiences and anecdotes; I prefer speaking on a policy level (as you have no doubt gathered).
My point isn't that the disease is harmless. I'm a strong advocate against using drugs and abusing children and so on.
My point is that the cure (massive incarceration) is much much worse, both in its method of delivery (which is racist and hypocritical, among other things), and in its results (which are extremely costly, far more so than the disease itself).
Violent crime has been decreasing steadily for most of my life. Yet it is nonviolent "criminals" that make up the millions of new people who have suffered the massive expansion of the prison system over the same time frame. Not to mention you and me who suffer higher taxes.
You seem to think that most people who have been through the prison system have assaulted somebody or abused somebody or done some other dangerous thing to another person. That's simply not the case.
Nate--I can see your where you are making distinctions and I think we've covered this before--all the trifling drug stuff, in your opinion, shouldn't lead to serious time while I think I argued that trifling drug stuff was a gateway to more serious things.
I'm not sure I'm getting your racist angle. Are you saying that if two identical situations came before the court that one race would get different treatment than another? I hope I'm not reading into that comment that one race DOESN'T commit more crimes per capita than another, when in my experience one race certainly does commit more crime. Almost predictably so.
So the Nate Policy looks something like this: Because its expensive to the taxpayer, criminals should not go to prison at the rate they have been and for the offenses they have been. Some acts, in fact, should be decriminalized. Every attempt, and I mean every attempt (which would translate in taxpayer dollars) should be made to re-integrate ex-criminals or those who have served their time, so that they won't become recedivists--even though most CHOOSE not to reintegrate. (Side note: To reintegrate here an ex-con would have to stop doing drugs, stop drinking, stop hanging out, stop having bastard children, stay groomed, get up every morning and work a 10-12 hour job for exceedingly low pay, save money, and take care of a family AND make sure all of the rules, regulations, and laws of the workplace and community are being followed.) None of the above requirements to re-integrate are very attractive when you look at it in relation to doing whatever you want, whenever you want, to whomever you want. And if that doesn't work out, you get some time with the state to figure out where you went wrong.
So what does a regular guy who doesn't like all the hard work that it takes to be integrated back into his community but also doesn't like to be incarcerated because it takes away his freedom, supposed to do? What re-education camp do you want to send him to? What is government's role in re-educating him? What policy is this? Or is it his neighbor's moral obligation to teach him his role in society? (I do that in my role, but always with a big stick nearby).
As long as that guy continues to victimize society his correct place is in prison.
Charles
That's somewhat what my world would look like, except less government and more markets.
I'm not saying the state should force people to go to education or training programs, or force companies to hire ex-offenders. I'm saying it shouldn't hinder those activities, as well as providing (minimal) funds if there is a desire by the individual to better him or herself. If we can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars locking somebody up, can't we spend a couple thousand dollars to give them some financial assistance to buy professional clothes or take some classes that will let them be qualified to take a job? Qualified applicants who happen to be convicted of a drug crime can't even get financial aid for college. That's absolutely absurd; it's wrong to the individual, and it harms society because we all benefit from a better educated citizenry.
The tax revenue from legalizing victimless crimes would more than pay for basic educational and job training opportunities, not to mention the enormous savings from less incarceration.
And even for the minority of criminals who are violent offenders, I would argue it's still better to integrate them than condemn them to a life of destitution. Some people who have done bad things want to do things better. They want to get a job and support their family. We should encourage, not discourage, that. Sure, there are a lot of bums, but don't let individuals who won't improve themselves ruin it for those that will.
The primary problem I have with the lock-'em-up society is that the approach is applied inconsistently; the legislators enacting it are extremely hypocritical. You say more blacks where you are commit crimes than whites. I don't know where you are exactly, so that may or may not be true. But nationwide, the numbers are very clear. Blacks and Latinos do not commit more crimes than whites. They do not commit more crimes per capita than whites. In fact, if anything, the data support the conclusion that whites disproportionately use drugs (although that is more an economic correlation than a racial one).
The point is, you ask an important question about the racial differences, whether two identical situations get treated differently before the court. The larger variable in the criminal justice system is wealth, but race cannot be ignored. There are essentially four components that are tracked: arrests, trials, convictions, and sentences. At every step of the process, blacks and hispanics are disproportionately represented. It's not just that more blacks who go to trial get convicted and sent to prison, but also that more blacks get arrested and tried in the first place.
You can disagree with the numbers if it makes the world easier for you to understand, but there's no credibility behind that disagreement. The data is crystal clear. Whites who use drugs simply do not get arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced as often as blacks and hispanics. If Rush Limbaugh were a poor black, he'd be in prison right now. Ditto for Noelle Bush. And a whole bunch of other whites of all political stripes--tens of millions of them should serve prison time, assuming one advocates the perspective that victimless crimes are crimes and that those criminals should be incarcerated for lenghty periods of time.
That's the core of the problem with the policies designed around locking up the bad guys. There seriously are over 100 million bad guys. When you start trying to define a non-criminal American, it gets pretty hard.
Nate--Sorry. I just don't get into the handwringing about inconsistencies. Actually, I think the justice system is working with as much elasticity as it should. Why doesn't Rush go to jail or Joelle? Or any number of white collar coke snorting nimrods? I guess it's because of prospects. They have some education and can move through it. They have a support system if they choose to use it. They can return to society easier. Do you see that with blacks and latinos?
I guess we also differ in that most of the people busted here that make the papers are DISTRIBUTING, not just using. To me, that's a different intent. I'm sipping a screwdriver right now and its mighty good. But I'm not out in the front yard trying to sell my bottle of Stoly to anyone.
I also think you suffer from a Big Daddy, government will help you, paternalism that robs people of their own initiative. I've never, ever seen a story where a guy gets out of prison and bemoans the lack of programs to help him get back on the right track. I hear a lot of it from policy wonks like you, but never from the people who should avail themselves of it. This whole not availing themselves of what society has to offer started long before they ended up in the slammer. If they were interested in how society does things, most of them wouldn't be in the place they are in now. Why would they be interested in a job program when they get out? That involves WORK. And not DOING drugs. And having a BOSS. Stuff they have already sworn off already.
I do agree that the more laws you have, the more criminals you make. Lawyers will always have work, I'm sure. I'm also sure you understand the community you live in just like an animal on the savanna understands its environment--you don't do stupid shit to make yourself a target. You understand what works and how you fit into it. The criminal underclass or simply the criminal class aren't pining away to be where you are or where I am. They have, for the most part, rejected it. And so their societal needs are different. They don't want job policy and computer skills. They want what they want for their reasons, not yours or mine. I think you do yourself and your arguments an injustice when you downplay the pecking order on the savanna, the who eats who, for a ream of data that may not have any relevance to the environment you live in. I don't need a government study to tell me who is living and dying, committing crimes, and going to prison from my community. I can see it.
Charles
Charles,
If your prospects are poor you go to prison.
Isn't that kind of a pre-emtive debtors prison?
Isn't it supposed to be one law for all? When it is not people lose confidence in the system. Then you get revolutions. Very bad for business.
M. Simon--True dat on the law. Until it's administered by a machine, though, the law will never be entirely just. I would suppose if I started pursesnatching and burgling to support my cocaine habit and eventually got caught, that I would be treated differently because of my background.
Or maybe not. Depends on too many variables to say for sure.
I think choices are made by people which either help or harm their ability to build for themselves a positive place in our society. I'm not accepting all the stuff that because you are poor or black or whatever that you get a free pass for making bad decisions.
When the revolution comes, I'll defend my little piece of turf--I've made too many decisions and sacrificed too much not too. (And oh...the angst of it all...makes me want to self-medicate!)
Charles
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