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biccat wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:There would also be 12 innocent people dead.

And 48 fewer unrelated victims.

Of which only one was a murder victim. So we've got 1 personal murder against 12 state murders.

htj wrote:

biccat wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:There would also be 12 innocent people dead.

And 48 fewer unrelated victims.

Of which only one was a murder victim. So we've got 1 personal murder against 12 state murders.

What's the value of a non-murder victim? Are 4 violent offenses worth 1 murder?

biccat wrote:

htj wrote:

biccat wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:There would also be 12 innocent people dead.

And 48 fewer unrelated victims.

Of which only one was a murder victim. So we've got 1 personal murder against 12 state murders.

What's the value of a non-murder victim? Are 4 violent offenses worth 1 murder?

You can recover from a violent offence, but no-one's recovered from a murder yet. Fewer murders is preferable, even though there were further violent offenses which, importantly, put them back in prison, no doubt for a long time.

I hope you guys realise that if "life meant life" there would never have been a Dirty Den on Eastenders.

htj wrote:You can recover from a violent offence, but no-one's recovered from a murder yet. Fewer murders is preferable, even though there were further violent offenses which, importantly, put them back in prison, no doubt for a long time.

I'm sure some religious scholars would disagree with that first point

So if, hypothetically, there was a 100% recidivism rate, it would be better to have 700+ violent offenses rather than 12 murders?

If hypothetically, the wrongful conviction rate was higher, would it be better that 100 innocent men should be imprisoned than one guilty go free?

Kilkrazy wrote:If hypothetically, the wrongful conviction rate was higher, would it be better that 100 innocent men should be imprisoned than one guilty go free?

\

Not necessarily. Although I'd hate to have to explain to a subsequent victim of a crime that her suffering could have been prevented. So 100:1 is unacceptable. How about 10 guilty and 1 innocent (1:10)?

The general opinion of civilised society is that it's unacceptable that any innocent people should be wrongfully imprisoned.

That is why the justice system offers free representation, an appeals process, and compensation in cases where miscarriages of justice are found to have occurred.

Kilkrazy wrote:The general opinion of civilised society is that it's unacceptable that any innocent people should be wrongfully imprisoned.

Which is completely at odds with the facts.

There will always be cases where the evidence against an innocent person is greater than the evidence against a guilty person. The only question is: where do you draw the line? In the US, we say that if the evidence against you is sufficient "beyond a reasonable doubt," then you are guilty of the crime. This could encompass an innocent person, and plenty of guilty people have successfully avoided imprisonment because of this heightened standard of proof.

Considering the maxim "Better to let n guilty men go free than to convict one innocent person" is a cornerstone of western legal systems I find it odd the number of people that want to just toss that bit out.

biccat wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:The general opinion of civilised society is that it's unacceptable that any innocent people should be wrongfully imprisoned.

Which is completely at odds with the facts.

There will always be cases where the evidence against an innocent person is greater than the evidence against a guilty person. The only question is: where do you draw the line? In the US, we say that if the evidence against you is sufficient "beyond a reasonable doubt," then you are guilty of the crime. This could encompass an innocent person, and plenty of guilty people have successfully avoided imprisonment because of this heightened standard of proof.

I'm not quite clear as to the meaning you are trying to express here.

If you are saying that justice isn't perfect, so there will always be some wrongful convictions, I completely agree.

That's why there is an appeals system and so on as I outlined earlier.

Except the current appeals system is abused.

Considering the maxim "Better to let n guilty men go free than to convict one innocent person" is a cornerstone of western legal systems I find it odd the number of people that want to just toss that bit out.

Its no wonder the world is the way it is then.

Evidence?

Even if true, it does not refute the principle.

Not worth the trouble.

In the UK we had a guy called Timothy Evans who's wife and child were murdered. Evans got hanged for it whilst the real killer was free to murder again.

We also had the Birmingham six who suffered one of the biggest miscarrages of justice in UK legal history.

This is why we don't have the death penalty now, and IMO, why we don't need it in the future. Let them rot in jail for a hundred years.

Kilkrazy wrote:I'm not quite clear as to the meaning you are trying to express here.

If you are saying that justice isn't perfect, so there will always be some wrongful convictions, I completely agree.

That's why there is an appeals system and so on as I outlined earlier.

No, the problem is that even a perfect justice system will result in wrongful convictions. In order to have an objective system, there must be some evidentiary standard for determining guilt or innocence. There is no way to know whether someone is guilty or innocent, but we can set up a burden of proof to make that determination.

Whatever standard we establish, there will be some guilty outliers on the "innocent" side of the line and there will be some innocent outliers on the "guilty" side of the line. If you adjust the standard, you will reduce the chance of an innocent person being convicted, but also increase the number of guilty who will go free. Or vice versa.

Consider Andy Dufresne as the stereotypical innocent outlier and whichever mob boss you prefer as the guilty. Is it worse to imprison Andy or to let the mob boss go free?

Let them rot in jail for a hundred years.

If only this happened.

A perfect system would not result in wrongful convictions, or it would not be perfect.

Considering the proposition, however, I don't see the point in thinking about fictional situations when there are real life ones that can be looked at.

Smacks wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:The murder rate is currently about 850 a year for the UK as a whole. It's higher in Northern Ireland and Scotland than in England and Wales.

I would point out that people living in Scotland and Northern Ireland also have the lowest life expectancy in the UK. Which is probably a good indicator of generally reduced health and well being in those parts of the country. Social well being down... Murder rates up... I wonder if there is a connection?

Oh god, I think im going to vomit.

Social well being down?! Its not due to a lack of social money though is it? No no, liberals want the tax payer to give their hard earned cash to everyone they decree deserves it.. those poor deprived Scots, why not give them a few grand more a year, ill just live off bread and water.

Liberals are so short sighted on this one. Throwing money at things doesn't fix problems. The Labour party threw more and more and more money at the NHS and more and more was wasted on nonsense.

Scotland now recieve's more money than they ever have done. The average Scot has £1500 more tax payers money spent on them than the average English citizen.



Now, if you give some fething dole walling council estate dwelling white trash mother fether £1500 do they do "Oh, splendid, why, now I shall put this money into a high interest ISA with a fixed term interest rate and use the proceeds to send my first born to University"

or do they do

"nice one, more money for Stella and fags and microwave pizzas"

They get money for child support, so they breed like rats and their children do the same. Scum begets scum begets scum. Thats the way of things.

Throwing money at the Scots has just made them fatter, drunker and unhealthier.

Oh, in related news..

Stop the rioters dole!


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-14474429

I'm not sure you can compare Northern Ireland and Scotland in this instance. One is a grim, desolate conflict zone, riven by sectarian violence and alcoholism...





...and the other is Northern Ireland.

lulz

Touche Alby.

In other news they are charging an 11 year old girl in Nottingham (no she wasn't trying to burn GW down!).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-14488298

Interesting snipet from that article

Nottingham City Council wrote:....The city council also warned any tenants whose children were involved in violence could also face eviction.

Sounds like a new under-underclass is about to be made.

notprop wrote:

Nottingham City Council wrote:....The city council also warned any tenants whose children were involved in violence could also face eviction.

Sounds like a new under-underclass is about to be made.

Quality. feth em, I hope they have to live in wheelie bins and eat the scraps off bird tables.

See, the more this gak happens, the more people start seeing things Mattys way!

All we need now is a few more riots and a few more large scale terrorist attroctities commited by Muslim extremists and I'm having a good year!

mattyrm wrote:Social well being down?! Its not due to a lack of social money though is it? No no, liberals want the tax payer to give their hard earned cash to everyone they decree deserves it.. those poor deprived Scots, why not give them a few grand more a year, ill just live off bread and water.

Liberals are so short sighted on this one. Throwing money at things doesn't fix problems. The Labour party threw more and more and more money at the NHS and more and more was wasted on nonsense.

Scotland now recieve's more money than they ever have done. The average Scot has £1500 more tax payers money spent on them than the average English citizen.

Stop the rioters dole!


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-14474429

Firstly I'm not a liberal. Secondly "wasting/misspending tax payers money" and "improving social well being" are clearly not the same thing, in fact they are not even related. You can't just throw money at a problem which is cycling downwards and expect it to go away, of course that money will be wasted. What is important is to break the cycle.

I think it is you who is sort sighted, if you think you can just ignore these problems, and then 'get tough' on the symptoms. Even in the wake of rioting all across the country. You still can't make the connections can you?

I don't agree with what rioters did. In fact I wouldn't even call them rioters, they are just repulsive thieves and looters. But these people didn't just suddenly appear out of nowhere fully formed, we created them. Every time we dumped a teenage girl on a counsel estate with a baby and pay check, we sewed a seed for future problems.

I remember in 1980s people used to talk about 'single mothers' being given houses, and how disgusting it was that all a girl had to do to get a free house was get pregnant. They were probably right, but it was really just the tip of the iceberg. When I was 12 years old I ended up living on a counsel estate after my mother died, and my dad became sick. My dad was in the air force for 12 years but wasn't really entitled to much. I was pretty lucky that the government houses single parents, otherwise we would have both been homeless. We didn't exactly have it easy though, we didn't have carpet, we didn't have a fridge... I would have loved to have microwave pizza, but obviously the government don't consider a microwave an essential for living. For about 8 months I actually didn't have shoes, and had to wear a pair of trainers to school which had holes in bottoms, and which my toes stuck out of... Obviously this made going to school an endless joy, I'm sure you can imagine how understanding all the other kids were. :/

But at least I had things that a lot of kids on my estate didn't have. For one I could speak properly... Not that I did, 3 people were stabbed to death within 100 feet of my house, advertising a middle class accent isn't how you survive on a dodgy counsel estate. I also had at least one decent parent. The kid who lived next door to me, his mum was a crackhead and seemed to run some kind of crack den, I think his dad was in jail. Living next door to a crack den was a consent source of amusement, particularly at 4 in the morning... But they were actually (believe it or not) quite decent people compared to others who lived around there. Some kids where literally feral, and just roamed around doing whatever they want. Not that there was much to do. They would mainly just break windows, take drugs, mug people, and steal cars and go joy riding. I saw burning cars on a weekly basis.

I left when I was 19 and I never want to live somewhere like that again. A lot of the guys who I knew there where already in jail or heading that way. And a lot of the girls already had brats and where living off the system. I imagine by now those 'brats' might even be in jail, or have kids of their own.

Afterwards I heard the government talking about ASBOs and ASBO kids. I was happy that at last someone was at least acknowledging the problem, but really ASBOs where fairly meaningless. Now we see widespread looting, criminality and vandalism... Seriously how long can we ignore this? It's not going to go away, it's going to get worse and worse.

Believe me when I say that no one hates them more than me... They are literally human vermin and it makes me feel physically sick that decent people have to share an environment with them.

But in the end what can you do? What can we as a society do about these people? Are we supposed to shoot them all? Believe me I've often wished we could... But that's not right, and honestly I don't want to live in society that just labels people as 'undesirables' to be exterminated. Who gets to decide? Would I also have been shot because I lived there too?

The only solution I can see is to prevent kids from being brought up so badly in the first place. Kids are far less likely to get pregnant at 15 and go out mugging people and stealing cars if they come from good homes. They are less likely to turn to drugs if there is actually somewhere where they can go have fun. Cinemas, parks, arcades, skating rinks, discos, swimming pools, all over the country where closed down and the land sold to property developers. Then people wonder why there are so many binge drinkers... It's because there is fuckall else to do. Raising tax on drink won't make it go away.

If the social care system wasn't so underfunded, and riddled with child abuse, then I might suggest that children be taken away from unfit parents more frequently, and the definition of 'unfit' be expanded. You can't even adopt a dog without someone coming round to check out where you live, and assess if you are able to look after it... Yet any scum bag can have a kid. How is that right?

Now YOU are talking about taking dole away from rioters... Well maybe that would serve them right, but it shows how short sighted and out of touch you are. Do you really think taking their dole away will suddenly coerce these people into getting jobs and becoming valuable law abiding citizens? It won't. All it will do is make them turn more to crime to get what they want, more drug dealing, more robbery, more burglary, more rioting, more looting.

Any money the tax payer saves on dole, will just be lost next year twice over on more police, higher insurance etc... Then what? I suppose with our 'more police' we arrest all these people and throw them in jail. Then the jails inevitably start becoming overcrowded. The next thing we are assessing and releasing mandatory life sentence prisoners early because the prison system is unable to cope. Can't you see the knock on effect actions have? Seriously where is your sense at?

Smacks wrote:

Believe me when I say that no one hates them more than me... They are literally human vermin and it makes me feel physically sick that decent people have to share an environment with them.

Well, we have some stuff in common then mate.

Smacks wrote: The only solution I can see is to prevent kids from being brought up so badly in the first place. Kids are far less likely to get pregnant at 15 and go out mugging people and stealing cars if they come from good homes. They are less likely to turn to drugs if there is actually somewhere where they can go have fun. Cinemas, parks, arcades, skating rinks, discos, swimming pools, all over the country where closed down and the land sold to property developers. Then people wonder why there are so many binge drinkers... It's because there is fuckall else to do. Raising tax on drink won't make it go away.

I agree.

Smacks wrote: Now YOU are talking about taking dole away from rioters... Well maybe that would serve them right, but it shows how short sighted and out of touch you are. Do you really think taking their dole away will suddenly coerce these people into getting jobs and becoming valuable law abiding citizens? It won't. All it will do is make them turn more to crime to get what they want, more drug dealing, more robbery, more burglary, more rioting, more looting

I agree!

How then am I being short sighted? Of course they wont be nice if we evict them, they will start stealing, and then happy days, we can lock them up and throw the key away!

We agree on almost everything, the only bit we disagree on is the very last few sentences of your post.

In a nutshell, you think that we can fix the problem, and I dont. I dont think thieving career dole scum can ever be decent members of society, other than by us bribing them. Thats what were effectively doing, were saying "here have free money for booze and fags, then you dont need to steal"

Screw that.

Im well aware taking their money and houses wont stop them thieving. It will cause more of it.

But then we can lock them away, and I can laugh.

Im not happy with bribing them, im happier with making prisons bigger, more crowded and miserable though.

Reforming the welfare system so that you just get stamps for food, clothes and transport but no actual money for luxury goods would be a start.
Then you could have work programs where people can earn money for luxuries by working- example, the town I live in is the most trash and dogshit infested craphole I've ever graced with my presence. Considering unemployment is double the national average here, a work program to get people cleaning the streets (and dare I say it, dealing with people who litter and allow their dogs to foul the streets in the first place) would possibly help them get a sense of the value of money, provide a useful service and also get them to value the state of their community.

Da Boss wrote:Reforming the welfare system so that you just get stamps for food, clothes and transport but no actual money for luxury goods would be a start.
Then you could have work programs where people can earn money for luxuries by working- example, the town I live in is the most trash and dogshit infested craphole I've ever graced with my presence. Considering unemployment is double the national average here, a work program to get people cleaning the streets (and dare I say it, dealing with people who litter and allow their dogs to foul the streets in the first place) would possibly help them get a sense of the value of money, provide a useful service and also get them to value the state of their community.

Mate, ive argued this for ages!

If we stop their ability to get booze and fags, they would go to work.

We could give them vouchers for the supermarket but they can only buy food with it, issue them clothes like we do the army (buy 10,000 tracksuits from Sports Direct or something) pay their bills directly, basically stop all actual cash from changing hands.

That way, we satifsy the liberals by keeping all our citizens warm, fed and clothed, but stop them having niceties that all dole walling human trash enjoy. You know, their favourite things like fags, booze, scratch cards, goodfellas pizza, mobile phones, pit bulls, gak jewellery, expensive trainers, baseball caps and garish unpleasant bomber jackets.

mattyrm wrote:

Smacks wrote:

Believe me when I say that no one hates them more than me... They are literally human vermin and it makes me feel physically sick that decent people have to share an environment with them.

Well, we have some stuff in common then mate.

I imagine since we're both able to have civilised discussion about it, we probably have quite a lot in common. I apologise if I come across rude (Getting worked up etc...).

In a nutshell, you think that we can fix the problem, and I dont. I dont think thieving career dole scum can ever be decent members of society, other than by us bribing them. Thats what were effectively doing, were saying "here have free money for booze and fags, then you dont need to steal"

Actually that is another point where we agree. I don't think we can fix the problem either, or at least I don't really know how to fix it. A lot of these people are just wrong, all you will get from trying to help them is that help spat back in your face, and probably your wallet stolen too. That is why the only fix I can suggest is to prevent people becoming this way in the first place, by trying to create a society that nurtures children better (Not a simple or easy solution either).

With regards to taking dole away, I agree that chavs sponging of the tax payer is wrong. But at the same time I also don't care. The reason I don't care is because the total amount of money that is lost through benefit fraud etc... is actually quite tiny when compared to other areas where tax money is wasted. Clamping down on benefit spongers is one of those things that is popular with politicians and voters, but it doesn't really do anything, aside from make life more difficult for people who actually do need help and are entitled to it. Even if we got rid of all the spongers and frauds, our taxes would likely be the same... The biggest drain on the system is actually old age pensioners, but no one would openly suggest that we get rid of them after all those wars they fought for us...

Howard Flight was recently criticized for his comment on poor people breeding. Unfortunately every other politician in the country immediately distanced themselves from the media gak storm that inevitably forced him to make a pointless public apology. The sad thing was he had a very good point, he just phrased it really badly.

It is wrong that hard working people, educated people, professionals etc... find it so difficult and expensive to have children. Many having to choose between family and career. While useless chavs can have a whole bunch of kids in their teens and we all have to pay for them... Eventually if the cycle continues there will be more useless spongers than there are valuable working people.

I don't know what we will do then. Since chavs seem to breed faster than real people I imagine that the future for human evolution is we will all go back to living in caves and chucking s**t at each other.

Although I support reforms such as food stamps, there is a problem of ensuring that they are not just sold on for money.

Some kind of cash card system that can only be used in certain shops for certain items might get around that.

We also need to find some way of breaking the chav cycle.

Smacks wrote:

I don't know what we will do then. Since chavs seem to breed faster than real people I imagine that the future for human evolution is we will all go back to living in caves and chucking s**t at each other.

Me either. What you say is true though, most of my friends are working class or middle class, and im 31, so most are at the age when they would have kids. I think out of about 10 couples, were at about 6 kids. Some have none, some have one, occasionally they have two.

Go to a council estate, they all have kids. Mark Duggan had 4, poor people breed like rats because they get more cash! Remember that human toilet Lizzie Bardsley off wife swap a few years ago?

Wikipedia says...

Mark and Lizzy Bardsley appeared in an episode of the first series of the Channel 4 programme Wife Swap, which was aired on 7 October 2003. They caused controversy by claiming £37,500 a year in benefits, while not working, and by using frequent obscenities.[1][2]

People like that chain smoke, drink heavily, and knock out kids at a staggering rate, who then grow up to do the same.

Charles Darwin must be spinning in his grave when doctors and teachers and scientists are dying childless or only having the one kid, but lager lout, foul mouthed career doleys who chain smoke and have an IQ of 65 have ten kids.

The whole "argh we need to stop them breeding" debate is incredibly complex. I agree that it's a massive problem, but almost every solution to it I can think of involves far too much intrusion of the government into individual's lives, or the creation of horrific conditions and tragedies for the innocent children in question (if their parents are cut off from benefit).