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Waaagh_Gonads wrote:Drugs seem to be a big problem for why people are going to prison (somewhere above 80% in Oz)

How about if you get busted with a certain amount you have your non dominant hand chopped off, and can no longer access welfare for the rest of your life.
That should sharpen the mind somewhat.

I really just don't understand why people like talking about the State hurting and maiming other people. I really just don't get it.

JEB_Stuart wrote:Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Where does Australia send its prisoners? Convicts from a penal colony...they have to make Charlie Manson look like a saint! Do they go to Liechtenstein? Is that why Fraz is being all Johnny Raincloud?

Just for the sake of a little historic interest, around 160,000 convicts were sent to Australia. Around 60,000 were sent to the Americas.

Waaagh_Gonads wrote:

Shaman wrote:

Waaagh_Gonads wrote:Britain is looking to copy Australia's voting method. So America copying the UK would be odd.

Drugs seem to be a big problem for why people are going to prison (somewhere above 80% in Oz)

How about if you get busted with a certain amount you have your non dominant hand chopped off, and can no longer access welfare for the rest of your life.
That should sharpen the mind somewhat.

That should increase the crime rate somewhat.

It is somewhat harder to commit crimes with 1 hand.


Unless you are trying to kill a famous surgeons wife and then frame him.

Or you are a pirate.

How nice. I wonder if you would advocate the same treatment for white-collar criminals?

garret wrote:. Like set campaign funds from the govt. Also not television ads.

We don't have set campaign funds. There's been a lot of talk about it, but it hasn't happened. The Con. party spent about £18 Million on the last election, Labour about £9=10 million IIRC.

We also do have TV adverts for the parties. The BBC, under a kind of fairness doctrine, shows lie...err...adverts from all the (main) parties.

Anything else you ahve to offer ?

We have this thing called "weather" which we'd be quite happy to swap for your "climate" if you're up for it. ... no ?

Slarg232 wrote:

ip vin snarller dehizvin wrote:
ORRR we could send them to mars to start a new world.
That would take care of housing
As well as long term care.
Plus a major influx of jobs to set everything in place to send them there.

Too true, It wouldn't even be that hard to do it.

Give them some plants and soil, boom, you have oxygen and food.

If you really wanted to, get some Martian soil, figure out what its rich in, and genetically alter some vegetables to run on the stuff. Throw some domes up there with plants in them, wait a few months, open them, start all over, rinse repeat. It is a semi-plausible way of putting air on the planet, at least.

Well it's a step up from Australia this time right.

JEB_Stuart wrote:Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Where does Australia send its prisoners?

Well, we're working with this new Defence budget y'see?





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Or, if they've really managed to piss off the coppers, we might even take thier glasses off 'em.

garret wrote:with 70% recidivism rate i think we are kinda failling in the cataagory. also studie show the longer they are in there the higher chance they will comeback.

But if prisoners were used to plug the BP Horizon leak then there would be a 0% recidivism rate.


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[quote=Orlanth
The UK gets it right by:

Having a separate titular and administrative head of state.
***No. Too many of my relatives fled from such enlightened places. Vive le Republic!
Not having a politicised top level judiciary.
***Sure.
Having no unflexible Constitution but a custom in Common Law.
***I’ll take my Constitution with its Bill of Rights thank you very much

Having a non privatised National Bank.
***Its technically private but not really, at all.

Having the NHS.
***HAHAHAH. I’ll take the CD system but NHS HAHAHAHA

Getting the speed limit right.
*** What is the British speed limit?

The US gets it right by:
Not pissing on citizens who fail to adhere to political correctness.
***We don’t?

Supporting initiative development and industry.
***We do?

Respecting civic rights issues doggedly.
***Some rights yes, others no.

Not canceling or playing cheap with technological projects.
***Er, what?

This thread needs more prison humor.

I agree that there are criminals who need training and rehabilitation more than punishment, such as people cooking meth or stealing stereos. I also think that there are criminals who need to be permanently removed from society by one means of another. I think it stands to reason that someone is less likely to steal goods to fence if he has job skills and isn't blowing his money on drugs.

I think sebster cut right through the nationalistic distractions and correctly points out that many if not most prisons in the US are privatized. I too question whether there isn't a profit motive in incarceration. I don't think public services should be privatized in general. Those would include things like sanitation, transport, utilities, etc. I've only heard of that working well in Hong Kong.

I really think it is silly to start comparing countries. The US is simply different than the UK and can't be compared. You're assuming some absolute standard that you need to reach by either your own policies or emulating someone else. We don't have the same land mass, we have different transportation systems, we have different population, we have a broader representation of ethnicities, the list could go on and on.

I applaud Waaagh_Gonads wonderful perspective on this. I approve of draconian measures for serious offenses not because I believe that they'll reduce the crime rate, but because I believe that they will stop the punished individual from doing it again.

As for our common carjackers, drug addicts, larcenist, and other nonviolent criminals we still have something on the books which I think would elegantly solve this issue- letters of marque. We can authorize ships to prey on enemy shipping, and stock the crew with convicts. It will cut down military costs and allow our criminals to pillage and plunder in a way that benefits us. We could target North Korean shipping and anyone else that we normally sanction. After a set tour of duty, they could either sign on as professional privateers or return to their normal lives with a set of marketable skills- boat operation and maintenance.

Waaagh_Gonads wrote:Britain is looking to copy Australia's voting method. So America copying the UK would be odd.

Drugs seem to be a big problem for why people are going to prison (somewhere above 80% in Oz)

How about if you get busted with a certain amount you have your non dominant hand chopped off, and can no longer access welfare for the rest of your life.
That should sharpen the mind somewhat.

I don't think drugs are that big of a problem. I think it is the circumstances that lead people into addiction and the focus on prohibition rather than harm reduction.

And some people are just no count.

Theres a 50 cent solution to deal with all the rapist, murderers, and child molesters. Ill let you guess what it is...

ShivanAngel wrote:Theres a 50 cent solution to deal with all the rapist, murderers, and child molesters. Ill let you guess what it is...

Significantly cheaper if you use .22 LR. I don't think that is a good solution for a nation of virtue and compassion, which is what we should strive for. Not everything is black and white and cut and dry.

ShivanAngel wrote:Theres a 50 cent solution to deal with all the rapist, murderers, and child molesters. Ill let you guess what it is...

I love Glenn Beck too! He is awesome!

mattyrm wrote:

ShivanAngel wrote:Theres a 50 cent solution to deal with all the rapist, murderers, and child molesters. Ill let you guess what it is...

I love Glenn Beck too! He is awesome!

CCOMMBBOOO BREAKER!

ITT privileged white kids talk about beating up prisoners to make themselves feel better.

ShumaGorath wrote:ITT privileged white kids talk about beating up prisoners to make themselves feel better.

What

Are

You

Talking

About?

Not brush?

ShumaGorath wrote:ITT privileged white kids talk about beating up prisoners to make themselves feel better.

Yeah im doing it to make myself feel better...

It has nothing to do with the fact we spend millions on corrections a year housing criminals with multiple life sentences that will never see freedom. If their crime is so heinous that they have to be locked up for eternity why not just end it.

ShivanAngel wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:ITT privileged white kids talk about beating up prisoners to make themselves feel better.

Yeah im doing it to make myself feel better...

It has nothing to do with the fact we spend millions on corrections a year housing criminals with multiple life sentences that will never see freedom. If their crime is so heinous that they have to be locked up for eternity why not just end it.

Multiple appeals court cases due to the high salaries of judges and lawyers and the cost of facilities cost more than interred life sentences by inmates. It's statistically cheaper to keep them locked up for life than it is to run the gamut of high cost court procedures to kill them. Neither option realistically puts a particularly large dent in the total cost of corrections in America, though if you wanted to start killing people for any and all life sentence crimes you will see a dramatic uptick in the total cost immediately. An upwards trend that would not abate for decades. You believe this because you want to have a hard stance on criminal activity and you think that the public is somehow mistaken about it's soft treatment of people you've never met who did things you've never had experience with.

Cutting people's hands off for committing minor crimes is one of the stupidest ideas ever.
Woohoo, a crippled unemployable immediately recognisable criminal underclass! WHAT A WONDERFUL SOCIETY THAT WOULD BE!

I believe that prisons should be for rehabilitation. However, I think (from what I know, which isn't enough) that current policies in various places aren't very effective in that regard.
And most people in prisons aren't murderers or rapists.

Da Boss wrote:Cutting people's hands off for committing minor crimes is one of the stupidest ideas ever.
Woohoo, a crippled unemployable immediately recognisable criminal underclass! WHAT A WONDERFUL SOCIETY THAT WOULD BE!

I believe that prisons should be for rehabilitation. However, I think (from what I know, which isn't enough) that current policies in various places aren't very effective in that regard.
And most people in prisons aren't murderers or rapists.

One thing I've asked my self. Maiming someone is now considered barbaric, but is it better that we hook someone up to an automated machine to kill them? Same thing with countries that still behead as capital punishment. I think that is better than creating a machine that kills people.

"Death penalty" immediately comes to mind.

Huge difference between someone who's committed a crime, then sentenced to death via lethal injection...and chopping off someone's hand for stealing.

Kanluwen wrote:"Death penalty" immediately comes to mind.

Huge difference between someone who's committed a crime, then sentenced to death via lethal injection...and chopping off someone's hand for stealing.

I'm not sure I agree, or rather, I don't know if maiming is "less civilized" than lethal injection. I find the idea of an automated machine that kills people a little creepy. Does anyone else or am I the odd man out here?

Grignard wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:"Death penalty" immediately comes to mind.

Huge difference between someone who's committed a crime, then sentenced to death via lethal injection...and chopping off someone's hand for stealing.

I'm not sure I agree, or rather, I don't know if maiming is "less civilized" than lethal injection. I find the idea of an automated machine that kills people a little creepy. Does anyone else or am I the odd man out here?

Civility is a social construct measured in it's entirety by social beliefs and taboos. If it is more commonly believed that punishing major crimes with death is far less barbaric than chopping off the hands of minor offenders than it is by virtue of the fact that the concept of what is civilized is governed under the same beliefs that determine the common belief of what is acceptable or barbaric. Logic doesn't really enter the equation.

Grignard wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:"Death penalty" immediately comes to mind.

Huge difference between someone who's committed a crime, then sentenced to death via lethal injection...and chopping off someone's hand for stealing.

I'm not sure I agree, or rather, I don't know if maiming is "less civilized" than lethal injection. I find the idea of an automated machine that kills people a little creepy. Does anyone else or am I the odd man out here?

Maybe so but there is a reason.

Using the machine is actually more humane then having a person do it. The machine is fully automated, the drugs they use in the lethal injections arent pretty.

The first knocks the convict out, the second renders him paralyzed, the third is a huge dose of potassium that stops his heart.

These have to be administered at certain speeds in order for the desired effect to take place without unwanted (or inhumane) consequences. Ex. if you put the second in to quickly and they arent knocked out from the first one they suffocate cause they cant breathe. If you put the first one in to fast they get shocked and seize.

Automated death machines are definitely creepy. Honestly, I'd rather be decapitated than strapped to a table with an IV in my arm. It is a slow way to die. For me, a swift death is more humane than a painless but slow one.

I'm torn. Execution should be about removing individuals that are too dangerous to live as swiftly and efficiently as possible. I don't know if precision and lack of pain are more humane than a less efficient but faster and more direct death.

ShivanAngel wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:ITT privileged white kids talk about beating up prisoners to make themselves feel better.

Yeah im doing it to make myself feel better...

It has nothing to do with the fact we spend millions on corrections a year housing criminals with multiple life sentences that will never see freedom. If their crime is so heinous that they have to be locked up for eternity why not just end it.

Most of US states have the death penalty, don't they?

It seems to me that argument has been made and won on some level.

Gitzbitah wrote:Automated death machines are definitely creepy. Honestly, I'd rather be decapitated than strapped to a table with an IV in my arm. It is a slow way to die. For me, a swift death is more humane than a painless but slow one.

I'm torn. Execution should be about removing individuals that are too dangerous to live as swiftly and efficiently as possible. I don't know if precision and lack of pain are more humane than a less efficient but faster and more direct death.

Humane doesn't mean fast. Your car doesn't get more humane when you put a big muffler on it. This thread is making me wish for a really humane death, the kind of humane you need a good turbocharger for. It's awful.


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Kilkrazy wrote:

ShivanAngel wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:ITT privileged white kids talk about beating up prisoners to make themselves feel better.

Yeah im doing it to make myself feel better...

It has nothing to do with the fact we spend millions on corrections a year housing criminals with multiple life sentences that will never see freedom. If their crime is so heinous that they have to be locked up for eternity why not just end it.

Most of US states have the death penalty, don't they?

It seems to me that argument has been made and won on some level.

About two thirds of states still have the death penalty. Most are steadily reducing it's use.

Your saying the USA should be more like Britain? Well, I knew you'd come crawling back, but it's too late. You had your chance to be part of the greatest nation on earth, but you threw it away, seduced by Paine, tea parties, Jefferson and Franklin. The shutters are down!

We can quit sending people to jail over BS. I went to pay a ticket the other day, in the court, the judge was giving out 1000$ tickets for things like not having blinkers on long enough before you turn. This young white fellow had a tail light go out on the way to work, he was in the work release program, so the judge gave him a 1400$ fine and another year in jail. People were crying, nobody could pay their super high fines. hardly anybody there even had jobs and the place was packed. In every other state I lived in these fines are like 200$ at most. Oh everybody got 12 months probation too. people who couldn't pay their fines, got to spend a week or two in the stockade working off the debt. Painting the Government building and whatnot.