Twenty-five years still sounds ridiculous to me! When I do a gut check for my answer to the question, "how much time should someone get for a first offense dealing cocaine, if he has never committed a violent crime or conspired to commit one?", my first answer is none. That person should not go to jail.
At some point in the past year, I heard some interview with someone I have no details or context but in my head it was a super prestigious establishment guy who you'd expect to be a hard-ass who said "There is no reason for sentences to ever exceed five years."
Oh, it was some sort of judge who sentences a lot of people. That I remember. In the course of the interview - or maybe the point of the interview? - was a punk kid who he'd sentenced a decade ago, who had gotten his law degree while in prison and then had two big-deal cases that he'd written something and gotten it heard by the Supreme Court - twice - while still in prison. And now he was getting out and had landed a big-deal clerkship. Or something.
Oh right! And it was debatable whether or not the punk-kid-turned-lawyer was able to practice law in whatever state.
Anyway, they talked to the judge who had sentenced him to ten years, and asked him if he regretted that decision. He and Hopwood were wonderfully modest. The judge said something about how he can never know when he sentences someone if it's the right thing to do, and how no one should serve more than five years for anything, because five years is a really long portion of one's life, which is the part that stuck with me and kicked off this serial comment. (Hopwood said something about how he was a shithead punk who deserved every day of the sentence he got, and was generally very modest.)
I heard that story too. It was intense.
The life of an NPR listener is always intense.
Whereas you are hepped up on chill pills?
As i recently said in another thread, Halford is the best at projection.
and how no one should serve more than five years for anything
I take it we're talking property and drug type crimes, because that would strike me as a bit nuts for certain other categories.
Does no one watch movies anymore?
The pleasure I formerly got from watching movies I now get from downloading and then not watching them.
The pleasure I now get from watching movies is that I formerly get from tending to fires in fireplaces.
We saw the new Thor movie recently and saw the Hobbit today. I'm not happy with how they're dicking with the plot. Probably will buy Elysium this week off of Amazon and need to find a showing for Out of the Furnace around here.
A movie watcher spends their time getting into tense situations. An unfogged commenter spends his life avoiding tense situations.
Tense situations, kid. You avoid five or six of 'em a day, it don't mean shit anymore. I mean, I've avoided seeing movies where men get stabbed, didn't mean shit to me. I've avoided seing mobvies with guns, guns too, they don't mean shit. But that's when you gotta avoid watching.
Movies?
Well, in order to make the unbearable pleasures of Priness Tutu last as long as possible, I am limiting myself to three episodes a night.
So last night I simultaneously watched Iron Man 2, which made me feel dirty, and Take This Waltz which was excellent, if a little self-consciously indie and arty in places, but I like that in a movie.
I have been catching up on anime classics in December, but in November (I keep a record):Miklos Jancso-60s, Arthur Joffe, Bong jong-ho, Tavernier, Jia Zhang-ke, Svoboda 83 , Yukisada Isao, Jin Na-hon, Clair Denis, Raoul Ruiz
I want to see American Hustle because cleavage.
The life of an NPR listener is always intense.
Do go pound sand.
I want to see American Hustle because cleavage.
I heard Christian Bale gained weight for that film, but enough to get cleavage? That really *is* impressive.
15: Word. During the gratuitous hobbits-wandering-in-the-marsh scene in The Two Towers , Sam cries "We're not even supposed to be here at all!" and half the theatre erupted in cheers.
19 -- I was just making a pointless Repo Man reference, not trying to chide you for listening to NPR which ... is that what people are sensitive about?
is that what people are sensitive about?
More the flip reaction to what was, to emotionally normal humans, a really affecting interview.
Really!
Also I didn't finish the article about the guy in prison for life because same reason.
I got through Repo Man. It's pretty jokey, and the emotions are mostly buried.
is that what people are sensitive about?
A lot of people don't realize what's really going on. They view this thread as a bunch of unconnected incidents and things.
28: Society made them what they are.
I don't think I really got that movie.
I thought I saw it but now realize I was thinking of "Men at Work."
I favor the de-escalation of sanctions for non-violent crimes (even for financial criminals and corrupt politicians). We ought to redirect the energy and time that we expend arresting stupid drug dealers and hapless junkies to the more difficult and less displayable-at-election-time detection, interdiction and prosecution of violent crimes, including sexual assault and abuse of minors.
I saw Men at Work in the theaters. I haven't seen Repo Man but then there's a lot I haven't seen. I suppose it wouldn't add much to simply write, "man I'd like to read that play from the first link," but I have little else to add, except that the bank robber story looks suspicious to me because I am racist.
Also I find it so amusing when people write comments as though they were short answers to town hall meeting questions. Why do we care what you favor?
33: Sexual abuse of minors or just general abuse? That shit gets so complex and hard to pin down so fast. I am really grateful none of my current kids will have to testify.
I favor the de-escalation of sanctions for non-violent crimes (even for financial criminals and corrupt politicians).
Nah, fuck those guys. I'd love to see the drug war basically disbanded and those expenditures put towards things like human trafficking and the above mentioned finance and political criminals.
And, uh, auto theft units, who could stream bait car footage to youtube.
37: Yeah, I'm not sure what you could do to de-emphasize enforcement of financial or political crimes. I suppose you could write them all big checks on top of what they already make.
The only person I knew who was convicted of dealing a class "A" drug and had no previous got two years suspended, i.e. she walked free but she would have served two years on top of anything else if she'd been convicted again during that time.
Setting aside the idiotic "drug war" and yadda yadda, if that's going to be illegal at all, it seemed about proportionate to me.
For financiers and politicians, I prefer the Athenian solution: automatically investigate them for malfeasance at the end of their tenure, with scary penalties if found.
42 seems a good plan. Or, at a bare minimum, total financial transparency and open records/accounts for everyone when they leave office, for some suitable lengthy period. Blair should be in jail. Forever.
Various, but variously awesome: http://mydadwasinaband.com/
"My dad is Daevid Allen from Gong" is one hell of a statement.
The Dee Snider one is interesting.
I'd go for a max of seven years for most sentences except for murder or violent crimes with a high chance of recidivism (under which category I'd put child molesters and the like). Repeat offenders ought to have special consideration for longer sentences. There ought to be no additional penalties above and beyond the prison sentence, so no suspension of voting rights, no restrictions on ability to serve in the military, on juries, etc. Also prisons ought to be carefully structured so they do not suffer from high levels of violence or other conditions that encourage development of dysfunctional coping strategies that cause problems on release. Get rid of solitary and SuperMax prisons altogether except for the most extreme cases.
"My dad is Daevid Allen from Gong" is one hell of a statement.
Yeah seriously.
42 would certainly reduce the "revolving door". Instead it would be like the Italian situation where (I hear) you are immune from most prosecution as long as you hold public office.
Hey, someone's father was in Oingo Boingo! They put the video for "Little Girls" up for the post and I think it's the first time, or at least the first time in a very long time, I've heard the studio version (I'm sure it's the first time I've seen the video). Figures that early Oingo Boingo videos would be extremely stylized, but man, that's a really weird song.
except for the most extreme cases.
According to the powers that be, that's what's there as it is. I don't buy it, but that's what they'd claim.
51: True. You'd have to codify "extreme cases' somehow so that it only included people who had multiple violent infractions while in prison and so could not be trusted in the general population. Or something like that.
I'd love to see the drug war basically disbanded and those expenditures put towards things like human trafficking
I really think there's a lot of room to go wrong if you decide that "human trafficking" (which is everything from the modern slave trade to facilitating illegal immigration, and far more the latter than the former) is the root of all evil.
everything from the modern slave trade to facilitating illegal immigration
This is my concern too. Some of the numbers quoted in discussions of the former category are so large that they must include the latter. Untangling the two is admittedly difficult since a lot (probably a majority) of the people who end up in slavery situations started out just trying to illegally immigrate.