When I lived in South Dakota, the crime rate would go up slightly in the late fall for people trying to get a warm place to stay for the winter. Nothing serious, just enough to get sent to the pen for a few months.
Didn’t mean to send this off in another direction. First off, if we’d quit sending non-violent folks and small time drug offenders to jail, we’d have a lot more room. Second, its a cultural thing among the hard core. Its just the way a living is made and off spring learn from relatives. Jail is just the price they pay once in a while to stay in business. Its also an age thing where the rate drops down substantially after 40 and they settle down. Terrible waste of talent but to turn them around is almost like having to have them re-learn their lives in a different environment.
There is no bipartisan plan, it is now my way or the highway. Hours before President Obama delivers what is expected to be an emotional speech about gun violence in Connecticut, Democrats in Washington are targeting a small but vocal group of Republican senators who are pledging to block a vote on legislation mandating universal background checks for gun buyers-- or any other bill that would impose new gun restrictions.
I have to say the democrats did a barrel roll with Obama Care
Those high % for folks going back into prison say something else to me - ONLY send someone to prison if the crime is worth creating a lifetime criminal. Prisons are basically crime universities, probably more successful than most ‘regular’ ones. Our drive to convict people is creating a huge population that will return, time and again.
Sorry to post so much blather but really?
Below are a list of your elected representatives (mostly federal, but I don’t mind including state politicians either when they interact with the feds) who have or had criminal records on their Congressional rap sheet. NREP. MARIO BIAGGI (D-NY): In 1988 he was convicted of obstructing justice, tax evasion, conspiracy, extortion, and accepting bribes.
CORRINNE BROWN (D-FL): Failed to pay unemployment taxes to the state of Florida; sued by several airlines for unpaid bills and falsified travel reports; failed to report sale of her Tallahassee travel agency; improperly reported the sale of her Gainesville travel agency; sued by Whirlpool Corp. for unpaid bills; pursued by the IRS for $14,228 in unpaid taxes; investigations by the House Ethics Committee for possible acceptance of bribes; refused to file reports in the House about potential conflicts of interest while overseeing airlines she dealt with through her travel agencies; charged with money laundering.
REP. ALBERT BUSTAMANTE (D-TX): Convicted in 1993 of racketeering and accepting an illegal gratuity.
TONY COELHO (D-CA): Currently under investigation for fraud while serving as U.S. Commissioner General of Expo '98 in Lisbon, Portugal.* He was Al Gore’s primary presidential campaign manager until he resigned citing health reasons.
REP. WES COOLEY (R-OR): Convicted of falsifying VA loan applications. Paid $7,000 in fines plus court costs, and placed on probation. Subsequently tried to gather support to get re-elected to Congress.*
REP. JERRY COSTELLO (D-IL):
REP. BOB DORNAN (R-CA): In 1983 attempted to leave Grenada with a stolen AK-47. It was confiscated by the Army and destroyed.
REP. WALTER FAUNTROY (D-DC): Financial disclosure misdemeanor (1995).
REP. BARNEY FRANK (D-MA): Accessory to a male prostitute who ran a whorehouse in their Washington townhouse.
Post exceeded length but the list continues.
One of the most telling things about corporate greed: Up until a few decades ago the highest paid person in a corporation made around 10 times what the lowest paid workers made. I don’t know the current figure, but they now make more than 150 times what the lowest paid workers make.
When somebody collects enough magazines and newspapers to fill a house, we have an intervention. When a little old lady has “too many” cats, we call her crazy. But if a man collects more money than he and his children could spend in a lifetime, we idolize him and put him on the cover of a magazine.
We need to come up with a system that puts violent predatory criminals away for life and punishes nonviolent, nonpredatory criminals appropriately without endless years of incarceration. I don’t know what that is, but hey way we’re going right now, letting violent predators back out on the streets, isn’t working.
We need to come up with a system of decreasing the number of poor people who use drugs and dealing them as their main form of income. "three strikes and your out " was supposed,take care of crime, it didn’t. Wouldn’t it be great if we had a one strike and you get some education and a chance to work at a decent paying job. It is the laws we have and the conditions poor people find themselves in that drive crime and criminal behavior. During prohibition , the illegal sale of alcohol exacerbated violence. It’s a business that many went into because there is little or no opportunity seem by these people to make a living any other way. So, it’s not about making drugs legal, it’s about giving the poor alternatives.
“the illegal sale of alcohol exacerbated violence. It’s a business that many went into because there is little or no opportunity seem by these people to make a living any other way.”
I think I’ll disagree with that one. I don’t think Joe Kennedy didn’t have other options, or Al Capone. There was just a lot of money in it. I just don’t think education does it or lack of other options. A guy at church volunteers at the local prison doing Bible study and other counciling. The guys have to get to the point that they want a different life and then re-learn their first 20 years of life.
So @bing like the drug lords today…you actually think that the distribution at the local level, the selling to back door establishments and all the underground structure was conducted by Al Capone or Joe Kennedy.
It’s the underling, poor and the destitute more then willing to take a job to engage in criminal activity at the street level…the same as drugs today. From somes point of view, any of the poor by the age of twenty who has had a traffic in drugs offense, should be sentenced to life, while those at the top, with money and lawyers evade prosecution.
If that’s the solution, it’s no solution.
The 1929 crash was a response at the bank level that the poor who were out of jobs had been going throught for a decade before…declining wages and poverty culminated by the crash of 29 were fertile grounds for criminal activity for underground pay during prohibition. That is the history. Crime on the streets drove the economy of the poor.
Typically, those with wealth made money before, after and during prohibition… Then after, they moved into hard drugs and the poor continued to work for them. Education and opportunity are the two biggest contributors to either socially acceptable or criminal behavior. You provide the education and opportunity to become a crinmial or do the same the other way. We must provide education and opportunity to overt criminal behavior.
Prohibition is NOT the same as drug dealing today. Many many many good hard working people ran those establishments…and in many cities the speakeasies were visited by well over 70% of the adults at the time. My father and uncle owned a speakeasy until is was raided. Neither my dad or uncle spent one day in jail. They just closed it down. While there was the criminal element around…MOST were NOT criminals.
If a seventeen year old boy looks around his neighborhood and sees poor, desperate men, and women living on entitlements all around and occasionally a limo on Rimz rolls through with a driver wearing the most stylish clothes and displaying a roll of $100s that he hands out to boys who move his dope is there any surprise if the seventeen year old considers taking advantage of the best opportunity that he can see?
" If a seventeen year old boy looks around his neighborhood and sees poor, desperate men, and women living on entitlements all around . . .
Is there any surprise the boy goes bad ? Consider that not only do these kids have parents living on the dole, but because of a lifestyle supported by entitlements, many girls decide to have children without having a decent, working husband who can be a positive role model for the youth.
The war on poverty has created generations of dependent people (dependent on taxpayers) who find nothing wrong with crime as a way for advancement. The cycle continues . . .
Oh boy. Everything just depends on your world view and experiences I suppose. I didn’t grow up in a good neighborhood, but every one of the men went to work each day. None of them wore ties except the guy who drove a beer truck but they all went to work and the mothers stayed home except for the one who was alone-she worked. At 17 I was off to college and it wouldn’t have mattered who came through the neighborhood with what kind of car or what bank roll. We probably would have thrown apples at his car and ran like heck. Most of my neighborhood friends have done OK in life except one who was always a little off.
As far as the folks from the 30’s running drugs, they’re all mostly dead now and either their prodigy has gone down the same path continuing the dysfunction or they made a U turn. Their choice in my view. TV and the Mickey Mouse Club let everyone view what the outside world was and the options out there.
Like I said before, its a cultural thing. Live and grow up in a culture of defeat and dysfunction, which I still believe money and the government is not resolving, and the result is another generation of the same. Coddling won’t help. Education won’t help in a culture of not valuing same and work opportunities won’t help in a culture of not valuing hard work. Oh, and we all had large gardens and canned fruits and vegetables for the winter. And I don’t remember one unwed mother in the neighborhood.
Mike…lP
Prohibition in it’s enactment is exactly the same. We as a society just have a different opinion whether alcohol and drugs should have the same stigma attached to it.
That your relatives never spent one day in jail had more to do with their standing in the community and the cooperation of the police then excusing the crimes they were committing. But, they were breaking the law in economic tough times for money, the best way they knew how…same as the poor today !
There are surprisingly few choices people make for good of bad in their life without one overriding cause. The single biggest contributor to criminal behavior or to socially acceptable behavior or pretty much to any behavior, is opportunity. Providing and denying opportunities is ultimately the best way of controlling human behavior.
Perhaps if we upt drug dealers away for loooooong stretches of their lives drug dealing owuld be reduced? Making them pay fines and putting them back out on the streets doesn’t seem to be much of a deterrant. And how much of the drug trade is done by repeat offenders? Taking these peolpe off the streets just might have a huge impact.
Selling alcohol IS dealing drugs. Doing so during prohibition WAS criminal. When youl talk about drug dealers as a group, you put heroin dealers and small-time pot growers in the same group, which is ridiculous. Speak-easy owners are in the same group.
It does ( long stretches in jail) keep those particular individuals off the street. But, just like the manager of a store who moves on, the position of dealer is soon filled by some one working his way up. Just eliminating people is not as effective as eliminating the opportunity for employment in rhe drug business and educating those who might fill those positions into other options. Of course, building more jails and filling them up is simple and an understandable alternative if you don’t actually study what works in other countries. It’s called," breaking the cycle " which takes compassion. But, there is money to be made throwing the poor of us in jail instead of looking for solutions that work.
@davidL
Society is pretty lenient with pot users. It s not with pop growers and sellers. I had to listen to a friend who complained because a relative got a heavy fine, some time in jail and a felony record all because he had a little pot around. It turns out he had a couple hundred pounds of it with intent to sell and distribute it. The law tends to look the other way when an adult has a few ounces with intent of doing a little self medication or relaxation. It does not nor should it look the other way when there is intend to engage in unregulated distribution and sales of this stuff which could easily end up in the hands of kids. My friend with kids of her own, somehow dismisses that possibility.
Dag, the jailed dealer’s immediate replacement is highly likely to be another dealer who’s just been released from jail…probably on probation. I maintain that getting them off the streets for long periods (years & years) would reduce the problem dramatically.
And we could go a long way toward providing jail space by executing those who’ve premeditatedly or in the commission of a crime killed someone. The recidivism rate amongst executed killers is zero.