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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi
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To: Rambi who wrote (10643)5/22/1998 5:10:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte  Read Replies (3) of 71178
 
There is imho one very simple way to take a bead on the violent crimes occurring in our society.

When a criminal is caught and convicted by due process, punish him.

It's that simple imho. No suspensions or commutations of sentence because the jail is crowded or whatever.

The necessary corollary of this argument is a sweeping reform of our prisons. Remove the danger that a prisoner will be treated savagely by his fellow inmates. Remove the opportunity for the new inmate to be inducted into the guilds of hatred that are the organizing principle in the jailyard. See to it that for each inmate there is a jail cell.

This will be expensive at first. More jails will need to be built and staffed. But in the long run I'll betcha that as the message comes home that a conviction leads to a long sentence in a place of complete stagnation - we'll see a lot less crimes of opportunity.
We'll always be left with sociopaths like those boys in Arkansas and Oregon. I don't care if we have a death penalty or not. The only important thing is - these boys should go to jail and have a single way to leave: feet first.
Heartless? Maybe. But as a society we've promoted a far greater cruelty by holding on to the fiction that there is a reachable core of good within every living person. Rehabilitation should be a conditional privilege, something a convict needs to earn and risks losing by displaying apathy or insolence.

I think that the above is beyond politics. You don't need to be a devotee of Goldwater, Humphrey or anyone in between to support the above idea. It is not the property of Christians or atheists. It's time we woke up and realized there is a place in society for good people to determine and administer punishment for bad deeds.
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