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Old 03-19-2011, 11:47 PM
 
460 posts, read 3,542,872 times
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Stealing someone's car.

Breaking into someone's home.


Why is it that if someone robs a 7-Eleven
they are going to get serious jail time but steal someone's car or break into someone's home and it's usually not serious jail time.

Shouldn't there be a huge penalty for these crimes? What can someone do to push lawmakers to come up with stiffer penalties to deter these crimes
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Old 03-20-2011, 12:14 AM
 
25,024 posts, read 27,870,912 times
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Well, we could always execute all those that commit even misdemeanors and summary offenses (lesser than misdemeanor). I'm sure that'll solve the crime problem
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Old 03-20-2011, 12:36 AM
 
3,083 posts, read 4,003,924 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tripod View Post
Stealing someone's car.

Breaking into someone's home.


Why is it that if someone robs a 7-Eleven
they are going to get serious jail time but steal someone's car or break into someone's home and it's usually not serious jail time.

Shouldn't there be a huge penalty for these crimes? What can someone do to push lawmakers to come up with stiffer penalties to deter these crimes
What would you suggest we do to increase punishment to a level that would somehow deter people from committing what are essentially non-violent property crimes?

Prisons are already filled to the point of overflowing. Even violent criminals are getting early releases as a result of the crowding. Lengthening sentences for non-violent offenders will make things worse.

State budgets are already strained to the breaking point. Building more prisons to house non-violent offenders will accomplish little other than further straining those budgets.

Given that many of the non-violent criminals are repeat offenders with multiple prison sentences on their records (which obviously failed to prevent them from repeating the same criminal behaviors) I can't see how stiffer penalties would provide much in the way of deterrence.
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Old 03-20-2011, 12:53 AM
 
25,024 posts, read 27,870,912 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by outbacknv View Post
What would you suggest we do to increase punishment to a level that would somehow deter people from committing what are essentially non-violent property crimes?
I'm gonna play the part of a typical southern or mid-western conservative, and vote for executing all of them. No one will commit crimes, and we won't have full prisons, because they'd all be dead. By the way, this is tongue in cheek but based on many responses on crime threads from "conservatives", no doubt this is what many feel the route we should take.

My proposal would be, increase the time in prison, but not make any criminal justice records open for inspection by any private entity. Only law enforcement gets to see the contents of anyone's criminal file. That way, the newly released criminals would have a shot at a normal life, instead of being shown the door the same way the Irish were in the 1800s
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Old 03-20-2011, 01:01 AM
 
570 posts, read 881,217 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by outbacknv View Post
Lengthening sentences for non-violent offenders will make things worse.

Breaking into someone's home is not "non-violent" , whether anyone is home or not.


Stealing a car where you can see no one is in it, is a non-violent crime.


But breaking into a home should be at least 8 years. I'm not for mandatory sentencing, there will be times when say some drunk idiot wanders into the wrong house or something, etc .. But anyone who purposely broke into someones house to commit another crime like stealing/assault/etc, should be locked up for close to a decade at least.
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Old 03-20-2011, 01:07 AM
 
1,337 posts, read 1,518,380 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tripod View Post
Why is it that if someone robs a 7-Eleven
they are going to get serious jail time but steal someone's car or break into someone's home and it's usually not serious jail time.
Robbing a 7-11.... the operative word there is robbing. Generally there is a clerk in there, and he's the one being robbed. In contrast, stealing somebodies car (which isn't exactly trivial anyway, not to say it couldn't be more serious... but it's a felony, nonetheless) often does not involve the act of robbing, and so is categorized as a theft, which necessarily puts it as qualitatively less than a robbery.

If ones car were "carjacked," then the act would be qualitatively similar to robbing a store, and you would very likely see relative parity in the way that the law treats the two crimes, because they both involve threatening somebody in the process of the theft.


Breaking into somebodies house, the crime and the punishment vary depending upon what the person was doing in there. The act of breaking in and doing no other crime in the process is sometimes treated leniently. This happens on rare occasion where some nutbar is drunk or 'high,' and then due to their disoriented state, they just somehow end up in somebody elses house... with no particular intent to commit any other crime. The law cuts such people a little slack. Whether they should be treated more harshly, being perhaps the subject of your criticism. However, if the break-in involves intent to commit some other crime, be it an additional property crime, or intent to harm occupants, then it's generally dealt with fairly seriously. It is a low to mid level felony (for burglary), bordering on a higher class felony if any harm or threats of harm were done to occupants in the process.

I don't know what the average jail time is for these crimes, you can probably find the stats for that over at the Department of Justice web site, but at least in terms of the way they are classified, "by the book," they are viewed as pretty serious. That may not translate into a harsh punishment in practice, but the problem in that case is more on the judicial end, and not necessarily on the legislative end.
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Old 03-20-2011, 01:08 AM
 
Location: Dublin, CA
3,807 posts, read 4,265,527 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tripod View Post
Stealing someone's car.

Breaking into someone's home.


Why is it that if someone robs a 7-Eleven
they are going to get serious jail time but steal someone's car or break into someone's home and it's usually not serious jail time.

Shouldn't there be a huge penalty for these crimes? What can someone do to push lawmakers to come up with stiffer penalties to deter these crimes
In general, read again what I wrote: IN GENERAL, yes, there are always exceptions, however, auto theft and burglary are "non violent" crimes. The vast majority of auto thefts, are persons who "just ducked back inside their homes, to get their lunch," and left the car running. Or left it running at the 7-11 and ran inside. There is no violence involved and a car can be replaced. Besides, the majority of stolen cars are recovered within a few days.

Same holds true for burglary. The MAJORITY occur when someone isn't home. They break in, steal your jewelery, DVD Player, and split out the door (Crime Prevention Tip: Lock up your gold jewelery someplace. Its the flavor of the month, with increases in gold prices, and its so easy to dispose of. Every jewelery store in the world will take gold, no questions asked. You can even send off via the mail). Again, overall a non violent.

Robbing the 7-11 is a VIOLENT crime. The criminal is KNOWINGLY confronting someone, when violence can occur. Usually the suspect is armed and thus, again, the potential for violence increases. Not just for the general public, but for law enforcement.

Deterrent? What deterrent does a stiffer jail sentence have? I'll tell you: ZIP, ZERO, ZILCH, NOTTA. Increasing the penalty does nothing for criminals. THEY DON'T CARE. You are thinking like a "normal" person. Criminals aren't normal and don't think like you and me. You would think the death penalty is a deterrent, however, it is not. Many persons put on death row, who have gotten out, end up right back on death row.

Finally, as others have pointed out. Where are you going to house all these people? The prisons are full to capacity as it is; mostly with VIOLENT offenders.
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Old 03-20-2011, 01:18 AM
 
25,024 posts, read 27,870,912 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil306 View Post
In general, read again what I wrote: IN GENERAL, yes, there are always exceptions, however, auto theft and burglary are "non violent" crimes. The vast majority of auto thefts, are persons who "just ducked back inside their homes, to get their lunch," and left the car running. Or left it running at the 7-11 and ran inside. There is no violence involved and a car can be replaced. Besides, the majority of stolen cars are recovered within a few days.

Same holds true for burglary. The MAJORITY occur when someone isn't home. They break in, steal your jewelery, DVD Player, and split out the door (Crime Prevention Tip: Lock up your gold jewelery someplace. Its the flavor of the month, with increases in gold prices, and its so easy to dispose of. Every jewelery store in the world will take gold, no questions asked. You can even send off via the mail). Again, overall a non violent.

Robbing the 7-11 is a VIOLENT crime. The criminal is KNOWINGLY confronting someone, when violence can occur. Usually the suspect is armed and thus, again, the potential for violence increases. Not just for the general public, but for law enforcement.

Deterrent? What deterrent does a stiffer jail sentence have? I'll tell you: ZIP, ZERO, ZILCH, NOTTA. Increasing the penalty does nothing for criminals. THEY DON'T CARE. You are thinking like a "normal" person. Criminals aren't normal and don't think like you and me. You would think the death penalty is a deterrent, however, it is not. Many persons put on death row, who have gotten out, end up right back on death row.

Finally, as others have pointed out. Where are you going to house all these people? The prisons are full to capacity as it is; mostly with VIOLENT offenders.
I talked about this with someone before. And we came to the conclusion that, overall, those that have nothing to lose, will ignore the law and any penalty that comes with it. Those that risk losing their reputation, good profession, etc, will be detered but the vast majority of criminals, especially repeat offenders, are those that never had a lot in life to begin with, and don't see anything getting worse than they already have so they think "I ain't got nothing to lose so what does it matter". You see it on those TV programs with the hooded gangsters saying to the camera "Prison ain't ****"
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Old 03-20-2011, 08:52 AM
 
26,969 posts, read 15,187,034 times
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Consider we need to leave some room in the prisons for the deserving politicians too. Well, we could use tents I suppose.
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Old 03-20-2011, 09:10 AM
 
Location: in a pond with the other human scum
2,361 posts, read 2,529,031 times
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A simple break-in, while a disgusting crime, isn't as serious as a robbery committed with the threat (and sometimes, the reality) of violence against the victim. It's something most of us agree on, that violence against the person is a worse crime than crimes against property. A look at the criminal codes of every state show that the punishment level steps up when violence or the threat of it against an individual is committed-- so when the burglar confronts the inconvenient homeowner he didn't expect to find and shows a weapon, every criminal code in this country, and every prosecutor I know, will charge him with a more serious (meaning greater punishment) crime.

Property's just not as important as people. It hasn't been for, oh, 100 or so years.
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