Lighter sentences for nonviolent crime: Barack Obama wants bipartisan action

You had to know this was coming. Now he can soften the blow when he pardons Rod Blagojevich and Kwame Kilpatrick while saying "While prisoners have made some mistakes, "they are also Americans".

And it's a bout time. I've never thought non-violent crime was worthy of jail time. Which is why I hate Harpers 'tough on crime' stance. He tends to do exactly the wrong thing.

And it's a bout time. I've never thought non-violent crime was worthy of jail time. Which is why I hate Harpers 'tough on crime' stance. He tends to do exactly the wrong thing.

I dunno, I'm starting to become a crotchety old man like FOG. We just had a case here where a burglar got into a fight with the homeowner and shot the homeowner dead. The burglar was then caught when he was breaking into another home that same night. Typical case of the bad guy having a rap sheet a mile long, was just out of prison for a brief stint for his last crimes. I don't know if he had any convictions for violent crimes, I think these were property crimes.

Even the VPD, which is a pretty mellow police department these days, has published rap sheets of people with a long string of convictions, suggesting maybe a 20 times and you're out policy. Ie people who just keep committing crimes, usually to feed a habit, should be spending a good long time locked up, because they are not getting the message. So it's not one particular non-violent crime that gets you a long sentence, but a string of them.

OTOH, this killing makes me think again, we should legalize all drugs. Just give a guy like the one above the drugs he's doing all that robbing for, and maybe it would keep him quiet and his victims alive.

Alternatively, if we could ensure that prisons really were drug free,so a guy like this would spend a good long time without access to drugs, maybe it would clean him up. But I wonder if prison authorities actually turn a blind eye to drugs because it keeps the prisoners quiet, and is a lot cheaper than building prisons (instead of overcrowding them) and providing actual rehabilitation for prisoners.

What's for sure is that our prison system isn't working very well, with many coming out worse than they went in. And unless we're going to lock everybody up for life, that's not a good thing, no matter our lust for revenge.

And it's a bout time. I've never thought non-violent crime was worthy of jail time. Which is why I hate Harpers 'tough on crime' stance. He tends to do exactly the wrong thing.
Besides, if he really was tough on crime even for non-violent crimes, then a good portion of his cabinet, the senate, and other Conservative dillweeds would be sitting in the can right now.

And it's a bout time. I've never thought non-violent crime was worthy of jail time. Which is why I hate Harpers 'tough on crime' stance. He tends to do exactly the wrong thing.

I dunno, I'm starting to become a crotchety old man like FOG. We just had a case here where a burglar got into a fight with the homeowner and shot the homeowner dead. The burglar was then caught when he was breaking into another home that same night. Typical case of the bad guy having a rap sheet a mile long, was just out of prison for a brief stint for his last crimes. I don't know if he had any convictions for violent crimes, I think these were property crimes.


Well, that sounds a lot like 'violent' crime now, doesn't it? If there were some way to predict whether a person would commit violent crimes then I'd say apply the new techniques; but I still say things like pot possession or mail fraud don't deserve time with some very bad people.

And it's a bout time. I've never thought non-violent crime was worthy of jail time. Which is why I hate Harpers 'tough on crime' stance. He tends to do exactly the wrong thing.
Besides, if he really was tough on crime even for non-violent crimes, then a good portion of his cabinet, the senate, and other dillweeds would be sitting in the can right now.

Fixed it for you to reflect non-bias.

Yes it does. But as we see, burglary, a non-violent crime, can lead to murder.

My point is about repeat offenders, the ones that rack up many convictions. Even mail fraud might need a jail sentence if the offender just won't stop. Pot, of course, shouldn't be criminal in the first place. I wonder how many people in Canada go to jail for mail fraud, or simple pot possession, for that matter.

OTOH, we're already too soft on white collar crime. We don't investigate it vigorously, and sentences are light. Some guy robbing a lot of people of their savings does a lot of damage. At the least, they should have to work to pay back every dime, even if it takes them their entire life, and the threat of jail as a backup if they don't follow the program.

I think that non-violent crimes should INITIALLY involve lighter sentencing, but when it becomes habitual the sentence should become harsher.

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Unfortunately our justice system works in reverse. while initially the sentences might stiffen up a bit, eventually the judges decide that jail does no good and just hand out ridiculously light sentences because the criminal is a drug addict and can't help himself. And they have a point, since we are woefully short of drug treatment facilities and allow the jails to be full of drugs. We need to have jails that are clean of drugs and hand down sentences the keeps the criminal clean and sober for a good long time to see if it will stick. And at some point, if nothing helps, sentences need to become indefinite.

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Unfortunately our justice system works in reverse. while initially the sentences might stiffen up a bit, eventually the judges decide that jail does no good and just hand out ridiculously light sentences because the criminal is a drug addict and can't help himself. And they have a point, since we are woefully short of drug treatment facilities and allow the jails to be full of drugs. We need to have jails that are clean of drugs and hand down sentences the keeps the criminal clean and sober for a good long time to see if it will stick. And at some point, if nothing helps, sentences need to become indefinite.

You're idea of having jails with drug treatment facilities is already in play in the federal penitentiary system. The problem is that you cannot force an inmate to comply with treatment who doesn't want to.

I was talking about not enough drug treatment on the outside. And since jails are such a drug market that some inmates come out with worse addictions than they went in with, having drug treatment in jail is also not that effective. We need to shut down the flow of drugs into jails. As I say, I suspect that the authorities actually don't mind drugs in jail, since it keeps the inmates quieter.

Again, the thing you don't seem to get is that you can't force an addict into treatment. I'd say a good majority of them DON'T want treatment and are quite content being addicts. It's like trying to force a smoker to quit, it never works, they have to want to quit themselves.

As a former smoker I tried numerous times to quit based on other peoples pleas for me to quit. It was only when I literally woke up one day and thought, "What the fuck am I smoking for?", that I was able to throw away that pack of smokes.

That's where I am on this but right now I think Obama is doing the best he can on the problem.

You can force somebody into treatment, the question is if it will do any good. Some addictions professionals think it can. Again, if you keep the addict away from drugs long enough and provide support for living a straight life. You may have to repeat for several tries. But as a start, we need to keep jails clean of drugs - very little hope somebody will get clean in jail if drugs are so easy to get.

It may be easier and cheaper to just forget all about treatment and provide hard core addicts with their drugs to keep them from doing crimes to get them. But some habitual criminals do their crimes more for oppositional reasons - those would be the hardest to crack.