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scarletsquig wrote:I'm in favour of turning ..... Scotland into a prison for any violent criminals.

Fixed

Palindrome wrote:

Grey Templar wrote:

And for alot of criminals, prison is better then being back home. Lots of criminals are homeless or live in impoverished areas. If prison was worse then their situation at home, we would see crime drop.

Just like how the death penality has reduced the murder rate; wait a second......

The only real way of reducing reoffending rates is to properly rehabilitate criminals when they are in prison and to provide them with a high level of support once they have left. As this is expensive governments (egged on by the press) fall back on the more traditional approach to imprisonment, despite the fact that it has never worked.

The US really doesn't have a Death penelty. We have a "life in prison waiting for appeal after appeal and eventually you get executed at the age of 95" penelty.

Until our DP is a "You have one year to proove your innocence before its lights out" it won't be an effective deterrent.

You all can start sending them to the Arctic....example be Australia

@grey templar- you haven't shown a single piece of evidence to support you arguments. There have been tons of studies showing what reduces recidivism and crime rates, and none of them support the belief that harsh prisons = lower crime rates.

Palindrome wrote:Just like how the death penality has reduced the murder rate; wait a second......

The murder rate is the lowest, in the US, that it has been in decades.

I am not making a statement about the efficacy of the death penalty, but you should be careful what you say when you haven't done research on the statistics

http://blogs.justice.gov/main/archives/1765

Orlanth wrote:

scarletsquig wrote:I'm in favour of turning ..... Scotland into a prison for any violent criminals.

Fixed

Turning it into? It already is; the people living there just aren't sober enough to realise it

Melissia wrote:

Palindrome wrote:Just like how the death penality has reduced the murder rate; wait a second......

The murder rate is the lowest, in the US, that it has been in decades.

I am not making a statement about the efficacy of the death penalty, but you should be careful what you say when you haven't done research on the statistics

http://blogs.justice.gov/main/archives/1765

That doesn't mean much. The UK murder rate has also been in steady decline for over a decade.

There is a trend for states with the death penalty to have a higher murder rate than the national average http://blog.amnestyusa.org/us/us-homicide-rates-and-the-death-penalty/.

A cute partial selection of states, but looking for a single reason why any particular state has a high murder rate is stupid.

Melissia wrote:A cute partial selection of states, but looking for a single reason why any particular state has a high murder rate is stupid.

So I'm not on your ignore list after all then.

The individual murder rates don't matter, what is interesting is that the death penalty doesn't seem to have a deterent effect. Its obviously hard to prove conclusively as there will be a host of factors which are difficult to control for..

Also notice the top executing states tend to have larger metropolitan areas than those that don't. Also note that Michigan is home to Detroit, a large metropolitan area and has a similar murder rate compared to the executing states.

And of course Alaska just makes people crazy Too much ice

mattyrm wrote:
I'm not saying kill everyone, but when I was based at 40 commando, we lived in 6 man flats when we were in the UK, it was fine. 6 beds, 3 showers and a kitchen. Why do prisoners share a cell with one guy? Why not 8 guys? Or Ten guys?

And in Afghanistan.. fething hell! It was like the Ritz compared to Iraq, we had cold running water for one shower between 100 of us, fold up camping beds and one hot meal a day.. It was glorious. In Iraq it was shower by standing on a pallet and pouring half a bottle of water over your head, soap up, rinse it off with the other half. Live in a fething hole under a poncho, and eat boil in the bag rations.. for 11 weeks this went on!

If I can happily do all of the above, these mother fethers can live more spartanly.

gak, the big softie that I am, I will even let them have heated showers and two hot meals a day.

But why not, say.. 12 man dorm rooms, no TV, no internet, porridge for breakfast, cold mid-day meal, decent dinner.. something like that?

I dont want to over think it, im just making a point. The fethers should be clothed and fed and watered, but not fething bragging about how nice jail is cos they get to watch fething Coronation Street!

Hippie pinko liberals (Labour) always seem to decide you are arguing for the death penalty when you even mention that jail seems to be too bloody easy, and I'm not!

I'm simply saying, is it against your "human rights" to merely have a "decent" standard of living in prison? Why the feth do they get to watch television for example!?

Guh, funny story about my first trip into Iraq - I was with a node center (commo) , so they kept us in Kuwait for the whole "war" part of things, since every time they brought a reserve/nasty girl unit in to RIP us they couldn't get their gak to work. Once it all died down my battalion commander wanted all 'his units' in iraq (for whatever the feth reason), so we went and spent about two months in Baghdad for no reason what so ever. We had no mission, no reason to be there. They collected everyones bottled water and MREs that they had brought up with them into a communal pool. I, being the unrecognized genius that I am said "F that." and kept all of mine for myself. After about eight days the girls had used all of our bottled water to shower with, and everyone was drinking the overly chemicalized buffalo (if you weren't in the military this won't make sense to you, let it go or google it) water that dumb asses kept leaving open so it was all full of probably malarial and west niley mosquitoes.

But yeah, since we were on an old VIP compound full of lakes, the pipes to which we blew the F up, we were in 115+ temps with 98%+ humidity as we were surrounded by evaporating lakes. With poisonous water.

That should be prison, because it was pure hell. We played a game where we would leave our big wrenches out in the sun for a few hours, then see who could hold them the longest. That is the kind of gak prisoners ought to be doing, just to deal with the ridiculous boredom, not working out and watching TV.

Oh yeah, sorry, for the uninitiated - in the context I used it RIP stands for Relieve In Place - IE take over our job.

and Nasty Girl stands for National Guard, in case you couldn't pick that up from context - at the start of the whole argument with Iraq/Afghanistan, most Reserve and National Guard units were full of incompetent bunglers, and our active duty units were shrunk down to where we needed them to prosecute a campaign (thanks Clinton) - it got better after a few years though as they got experience.

Triple Edit - this is a Water Buffalo, according to the military

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

scarletsquig wrote:I'm in favour of turning a remote island off the western coast of Scotland into a prison for any violent criminals.

No TV or games consoles. Cold, damp, and miserable. Manual labour available if they want to get some fresh air.

I'm not in favour of the gulag approach or squishing them all in like battery hens, but there's no reason it should be as comfortable as it currently is for murderers.

If I can't afford to have my heating on in winter, then prisoners shouldn't be getting that luxury either.

Also, there is currently an island prison in Norway which takes this exact approach and has very low re-offending rates.

If you're referring to Bastøy they allow iPods for the prisoners and certainly have heating during winter. In fact, Bastøy is arguably more comfortable than a normal prison.

It also has the lowest re-offending rate of any prison in the world. There seems to be some luxuries, but also combined with a lot of getting them outdoors and working, which does work well for low-risk prisoners.

Seems to have both carrots and sticks there and gets good results. A windswept island off the coast of Norway can only be so comfortable.

Palindrome wrote:

Hordini wrote:So something I'm curious about regarding the death penalty: Lots of people have been found innocent or at least their guilt called into question enough to reverse the death penalty due to DNA evidence. A lot of them seem to be people who were convicted before using DNA evidence was available. But since DNA evidence has become available, has anyone been convicted and sentenced with the help of DNA evidence and then been found innocent? A lot of critics talk about how the death penalty is wrong because so many people have been wrongly convicted. Obviously, the system is still not perfect, but it seems like, if anything, being able to accurately determine guilt or innocence has become a lot more reliable since the advent of DNA evidence.

While DNA evidence can be very useful it is far from infallible, while the theory is sound there will always be an element of human error. In addition there are technical limitations, certain markers are more common in certain ethinic groups which can seriously alter the statistics of a sample being deemed to come from the defendant for example. DNA evidence by itself can't lead to a conviction, well it couldn't in the UK 5 years or so ago but I doubt that things have changed since.

There are then also lots of other factors involved in the use of DNA evidence at a trial.

When/Where/How the DNA was collected, Chemical contamination at the scene, Legitimate reason for there being DNA in the location it was found...and similar occurences.

DNA is great for identifying people, without there being contamination or something similar, but that identification doesnt necessarily mean a whole lot.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/21/america-death-penalty-murders-innocents

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-05-20/wrongful-convictions-exonerations/55098856/1

Since 1989, DNA testing has been responsible for the exonerations of 289 people in the United States, including 17 who served time on death row, according to The Innocence Project.
Among the registry's major findings:
•Of the 416 homicide exonerations, 64% were attributed, at least in part, to perjury or false accusation. Official misconduct by either prosecutors or police, including the withholding of evidence favorable to the suspect, was a contributor in 56% of the cases.
•In the registry's 203 sexual assault cases, 80% involved mistaken eyewitness identification.
•Faulty witness identification was a factor in 81% of 47 robbery cases.
Gross said much of the misconduct involved the failure to disclose information or evidence that might have been helpful to the defendants.
Wrongful convictions represent "our worst nightmare," Burns said. "One is one too many. But I would argue the system is working quite well."

reds8n wrote:•Of the 416 homicide exonerations, 64% were attributed, at least in part, to perjury or false accusation. Official misconduct by either prosecutors or police, including the withholding of evidence favorable to the suspect, was a contributor in 56% of the cases.

This doesn't help my dislike of cops one tiny bit.

reds8n wrote:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/21/america-death-penalty-murders-innocents

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-05-20/wrongful-convictions-exonerations/55098856/1

Since 1989, DNA testing has been responsible for the exonerations of 289 people in the United States, including 17 who served time on death row, according to The Innocence Project.
Among the registry's major findings:
•Of the 416 homicide exonerations, 64% were attributed, at least in part, to perjury or false accusation. Official misconduct by either prosecutors or police, including the withholding of evidence favorable to the suspect, was a contributor in 56% of the cases.
•In the registry's 203 sexual assault cases, 80% involved mistaken eyewitness identification.
•Faulty witness identification was a factor in 81% of 47 robbery cases.
Gross said much of the misconduct involved the failure to disclose information or evidence that might have been helpful to the defendants.
Wrongful convictions represent "our worst nightmare," Burns said. "One is one too many. But I would argue the system is working quite well."

Wasnt saying it wasnt useful...

Kovnik Obama wrote:

reds8n wrote:•Of the 416 homicide exonerations, 64% were attributed, at least in part, to perjury or false accusation. Official misconduct by either prosecutors or police, including the withholding of evidence favorable to the suspect, was a contributor in 56% of the cases.

This doesn't help my dislike of cops one tiny bit.

Agreed

reds8n wrote:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/21/america-death-penalty-murders-innocents

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-05-20/wrongful-convictions-exonerations/55098856/1

Since 1989, DNA testing has been responsible for the exonerations of 289 people in the United States, including 17 who served time on death row, according to The Innocence Project.
Among the registry's major findings:
•Of the 416 homicide exonerations, 64% were attributed, at least in part, to perjury or false accusation. Official misconduct by either prosecutors or police, including the withholding of evidence favorable to the suspect, was a contributor in 56% of the cases.
•In the registry's 203 sexual assault cases, 80% involved mistaken eyewitness identification.
•Faulty witness identification was a factor in 81% of 47 robbery cases.
Gross said much of the misconduct involved the failure to disclose information or evidence that might have been helpful to the defendants.
Wrongful convictions represent "our worst nightmare," Burns said. "One is one too many. But I would argue the system is working quite well."

Just backs up my theory on US cops. Entierly baised on US crime drama compaired to UK crime drama and the Police camera shows, that police in the US havd an attitude of "we arrested the guy so he must be guilty, now lets make the evidence fit that".

Back on topic, its clear from the all the stuff the guy was saying that he was talking BS and just showing off. Its a gangland attitude of saying "ye, they can't don nothing to me. Prison, it don't scare me". The US has a massive problem with prison violence and gang problems. Too often people go in with convictions for things like shop lifting and minor drug offenses and come out violent and distrusful of a system that put them in that situation.

Harsh prisons have been shown time and again not to work. Moreso when you talk about people from troubled backgrounds. People who have only ever known violence and neglect. To many kids involved in crime prison dose seem like a step up, as its clean, they get propper food and some form of structure and protection from violence. When you look at an 18 year old that has known nothing but violence and poverty at home, you can't expect them to be less violent if you lock them away and treat them like an animal. They will just lash out more.

scarletsquig wrote:

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

scarletsquig wrote:I'm in favour of turning a remote island off the western coast of Scotland into a prison for any violent criminals.

No TV or games consoles. Cold, damp, and miserable. Manual labour available if they want to get some fresh air.

I'm not in favour of the gulag approach or squishing them all in like battery hens, but there's no reason it should be as comfortable as it currently is for murderers.

If I can't afford to have my heating on in winter, then prisoners shouldn't be getting that luxury either.

Also, there is currently an island prison in Norway which takes this exact approach and has very low re-offending rates.

If you're referring to Bastøy they allow iPods for the prisoners and certainly have heating during winter. In fact, Bastøy is arguably more comfortable than a normal prison.

It also has the lowest re-offending rate of any prison in the world. There seems to be some luxuries, but also combined with a lot of getting them outdoors and working, which does work well for low-risk prisoners.

Seems to have both carrots and sticks there and gets good results. A windswept island off the coast of Norway can only be so comfortable.

Oh, I'm not disagreeing about how effective it is, just that it's not an island out in the middle of nowhere with no comfort at all. Hell, if it's a cold enough winter the inmates could literally walk off the island without being stopped.

I saw we make them fight to the death for their freedom, and only 1 can be free. Then we can make the matches either payer view or just on TV, with commercials and merchandise and the whole 9. Make a crap load of money off of it, AND get rid of the massive prison population.

Bromsy wrote:
Guh, funny story about my first trip into Iraq - I was with a node center (commo) , so they kept us in Kuwait for the whole "war" part of things, since every time they brought a reserve/nasty girl unit in to RIP us they couldn't get their gak to work. Once it all died down my battalion commander wanted all 'his units' in iraq (for whatever the feth reason), so we went and spent about two months in Baghdad for no reason what so ever. We had no mission, no reason to be there. They collected everyones bottled water and MREs that they had brought up with them into a communal pool. I, being the unrecognized genius that I am said "F that." and kept all of mine for myself. After about eight days the girls had used all of our bottled water to shower with, and everyone was drinking the overly chemicalized buffalo (if you weren't in the military this won't make sense to you, let it go or google it) water that dumb asses kept leaving open so it was all full of probably malarial and west niley mosquitoes.

But yeah, since we were on an old VIP compound full of lakes, the pipes to which we blew the F up, we were in 115+ temps with 98%+ humidity as we were surrounded by evaporating lakes. With poisonous water.

That should be prison, because it was pure hell. We played a game where we would leave our big wrenches out in the sun for a few hours, then see who could hold them the longest. That is the kind of gak prisoners ought to be doing, just to deal with the ridiculous boredom, not working out and watching TV.

Oh yeah, sorry, for the uninitiated - in the context I used it RIP stands for Relieve In Place - IE take over our job.

and Nasty Girl stands for National Guard, in case you couldn't pick that up from context - at the start of the whole argument with Iraq/Afghanistan, most Reserve and National Guard units were full of incompetent bunglers, and our active duty units were shrunk down to where we needed them to prosecute a campaign (thanks Clinton) - it got better after a few years though as they got experience.

Funny as feth.

Haha! You made me feel better though, we were proper roughing it, behind enemy lines in a company level formation, living under ponchos and eating and drinking what we could carry, but it was pretty easy because you only had to look after yourself, and fill your water bottles/rations up when they got dropped off by chopper every 3 or 4 days. Communal water!? You can tell you guys had chicks with you.. feth that!

In the commando's there are no women, It's one reason I aimed for the top! I only ever worked with them when I was with Americans or occasionally on Navy ships, and chicks cant soldier. Dealing with rough conditions... don't listen to what the feminists say, they are about as much use Anne Frank's drumkit!

I'm just glad there weren't any with us begging for food/water or I might have let my balls rule my brain and ended up starving to death.

mattyrm wrote:

Bromsy wrote:
Guh, funny story about my first trip into Iraq - I was with a node center (commo) , so they kept us in Kuwait for the whole "war" part of things, since every time they brought a reserve/nasty girl unit in to RIP us they couldn't get their gak to work. Once it all died down my battalion commander wanted all 'his units' in iraq (for whatever the feth reason), so we went and spent about two months in Baghdad for no reason what so ever. We had no mission, no reason to be there. They collected everyones bottled water and MREs that they had brought up with them into a communal pool. I, being the unrecognized genius that I am said "F that." and kept all of mine for myself. After about eight days the girls had used all of our bottled water to shower with, and everyone was drinking the overly chemicalized buffalo (if you weren't in the military this won't make sense to you, let it go or google it) water that dumb asses kept leaving open so it was all full of probably malarial and west niley mosquitoes.

But yeah, since we were on an old VIP compound full of lakes, the pipes to which we blew the F up, we were in 115+ temps with 98%+ humidity as we were surrounded by evaporating lakes. With poisonous water.

That should be prison, because it was pure hell. We played a game where we would leave our big wrenches out in the sun for a few hours, then see who could hold them the longest. That is the kind of gak prisoners ought to be doing, just to deal with the ridiculous boredom, not working out and watching TV.

Oh yeah, sorry, for the uninitiated - in the context I used it RIP stands for Relieve In Place - IE take over our job.

and Nasty Girl stands for National Guard, in case you couldn't pick that up from context - at the start of the whole argument with Iraq/Afghanistan, most Reserve and National Guard units were full of incompetent bunglers, and our active duty units were shrunk down to where we needed them to prosecute a campaign (thanks Clinton) - it got better after a few years though as they got experience.

Funny as feth.

Haha! You made me feel better though, we were proper roughing it, behind enemy lines in a company level formation, living under ponchos and eating and drinking what we could carry, but it was pretty easy because you only had to look after yourself, and fill your water bottles/rations up when they got dropped off by chopper every 3 or 4 days. Communal water!? You can tell you guys had chicks with you.. feth that!

In the commando's there are no women, It's one reason I aimed for the top! I only ever worked with them when I was with Americans or occasionally on Navy ships, and chicks cant soldier. Dealing with rough conditions... don't listen to what the feminists say, they are about as much use Anne Frank's drumkit!

I'm just glad there weren't any with us begging for food/water or I might have let my balls rule my brain and ended up starving to death.

Yeah, it was super fun. We'd have a stack of 135 lbs cable reels that we'd have to move somewhere, and all the girls just kind of stood around looking sheepish. I would have done better as combat arms, but since I have Osgood Schlatters I had to get a waiver to join. Since y'know, knee pads didn't exist. Fethers.

Eventually though we all got use to roughing it...it became the daily life style...after getting use to the heat and body armor my main concern was cigs....coffee...food occasionally...and once and a great while a combat rub somewhere private. Oh Every 60-70 days access to a phone to make my vehicle payment...Only time I used a water buffulo was filling up a 55 gal drum trashcan and having mass platoon laundry day right by the water buffulo. Water buffulo was to be avoided as much as possible....Haji thinks its a fuel container

I think the best response from the judge and the one I would have given. In a stoic and of course the formall british accent, should have banged the gavel and simply said "Hang him."

Send him to Davao an leave him to the tender mercies of the roving Davao Death Squads....

Seriously, they dont feth around in Philippine prisons. Or in Davao for that matter! The mayor of Davao is known as 'The Punisher' and he shot his own son in the hand when he caught him doing drugs. His Own Son!? Imagine what he does to regular prisoners!

Yup, ship them all out there...... Feth them....

Shadowseer_Kim wrote:I think the best response from the judge and the one I would have given. In a stoic and of course the formall british accent, should have banged the gavel and simply said "Hang him."

No, no,no, head on a pike outside the tower

While a fight to the death would be fun, it does kind of put the whole right to live in peril. Also it would be a matter of letting a mass murderer free.

Real live pay per view DEATH RACE

Jihadin wrote:Real live pay per view DEATH RACE

I know a guy that did time for armed robbery (of a little chocolate shop with a butter knife, but apparently that still counts).

He loved it. Playstations and everything else he could want just for good behaviour. Everything he couldn't have or get legally on the outside.

And we wonder why people repeat offend.

Its der Human Rightz innit bruv.

Just keep them in tents and chuck in a few sacks of that High protein - Vitamin enriched corn meal (the stuff the red cross give to the starving africans.) every couple weeks.

Yeah to be honest i dont get how hot food and tv is a basic human right. Food, Shelter, running and hot water, a library, some protection from the other inmates, one visit every couple months and stationary is all i would give them if i ruled the world. Well tbh if i ruled the world there wouldnt be prisons.