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The death penalty by itself is not a deterrent, the death penalty with a maximum of 3 appeals and death within a year, now THAT will deter....
The people with arrest records in pages, pedophiles, you know, the scum of society....
You either be a law abiding citizen of society living by it's rules or...........
Uh no it won't. Do you think there is less crime in states where criminals are put to death faster? Your whole argument assumes that criminals are rational actors to begin with.
I am sure that when they perpetrate their murders they aren't thinking "gee I might get the death penalty for this."
The death penalty is about retribution, plain and simple.
That must be why states with no death penalty have a lower homicide rate... Not even an itsy bisty correlation.
That is one thing I've noticed. Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and Vermont don't have the death penalty. These states have low crime rates, and especially low murder rates, even when you take Milwaukee into account.
Texas, Louisiana, and Georgia all have the death penalty. All three states are among the top states that have executed people since 1976. Texas had one of the highest murder rates in the USA for a long time. In fact, cities like Houston and Dallas were among the most violent in the USA during the early 1980s. Atlanta was once the murder capital of the USA. New Orleans is the current murder capital, and Louisiana has long been a violent state.
Florida is another example of having the death penalty, using it, and it still is not a deterrent. I watched an episode of Gangland regarding a Haitian gang called Zoe Pound. A North Miami police officer said that many gang members don't fear the death penalty. The attitude was "If I kill one person, the state can kill me. If I kill 14 people, the state can only kill me one time". Alot of gang members don't expect to live past 30, so many are willing to take other with them. Mentality is something to think about. What it took to get Miami's murder rate down was letting the gang know "Hey, we run the streets, not you". Police officers started getting on the streets more, and I think this was deterring some of the crime, or drove it to other places.
But yet there are many who decide they never want anything to do with prison again. You have done nothing to prove a correlation.
I'm telling you what the overwhelming body of reseach says. Of course there are people that do not fit into the research trends, but overwhelmingly, what I'm telling you is true. There are decades of research on the subject. I'm not going to rewrite the studies. Elliot, Huizinga & Ageton (if you want to check it) clearly compiled decades of research demonstrating that the number one predictor for offending is peer association. Dishion et al wrote a study called "When Interventions Harm" that details the problems of interventions grouping kids together. The Washington State Institute for Public Policy has a listing of the cost effectiveness for multiple programs and those like we're discussing have a negative cost effectiveness because they increase the probability for future offending. The Surgeon General's Report on Mental Health (Satcher) clearly defines the programs that are shown to be effective.
Our criminal justice system is a joke. We let off burglars and car thiefs all too often with NO jail time, and only a minimal amont for even violent crimes. We need to lock up criminals alot longer. Our revolving door criminal justice system puts good people at risk. How many murders are committed by people with a criminal record that have been let out of jail early or were never even incarcerated for previous crimes?
I'm telling you what the overwhelming body of reseach says. Of course there are people that do not fit into the research trends, but overwhelmingly, what I'm telling you is true. There are decades of research on the subject. I'm not going to rewrite the studies. Elliot, Huizinga & Ageton (if you want to check it) clearly compiled decades of research demonstrating that the number one predictor for offending is peer association.
Peer association. Once again, peer association. Are you trying to tell me that it isn't just as easy to hang around bad influences out of prison as it is in prison?
What is your solution here? Chain them to a tree in the woods?
Quote:
Dishion et al wrote a study called "When Interventions Harm" that details the problems of interventions grouping kids together. The Washington State Institute for Public Policy has a listing of the cost effectiveness for multiple programs and those like we're discussing have a negative cost effectiveness because they increase the probability for future offending. The Surgeon General's Report on Mental Health (Satcher) clearly defines the programs that are shown to be effective.
Because people re-offend does not prove that they re-offended because they went to prison. Are there some programs that are better than others? Indeed. I'm all for providing training while serving your time in prison.
Peer association. Once again, peer association. Are you trying to tell me that it isn't just as easy to hang around bad influences out of prison as it is in prison?
What is your solution here? Chain them to a tree in the woods? .
Yes it is easy to find criminals outside of prison, but there are other options where there are not in prison. The interventions that work (for juveniles) keep them in the community and integrate them into activities with kids that are not getting in trouble. They build up the parents, relatives etc. to have them support the integration into different peer groups while diminishing the time with the delinquent kids.
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Originally Posted by pknopp
Because people re-offend does not prove that they re-offended because they went to prison. Are there some programs that are better than others? Indeed. I'm all for providing training while serving your time in prison.
If they reoffend at a higher rate following an intervention than they do with other interventions or with no intervention, then the first intervention did not work. Studies allow you to determine whether the difference is by chance or by a significant difference between the two things examined, so you can tell.
Yes it is easy to find criminals outside of prison, but there are other options where there are not in prison. The interventions that work (for juveniles) keep them in the community and integrate them into activities with kids that are not getting in trouble. They build up the parents, relatives etc. to have them support the integration into different peer groups while diminishing the time with the delinquent kids.
I wouldn't dismiss this but I would say that it would only work in families where they care. If the kid has been on the streets for years, the parent isn't all of a sudden going to care or have any influence on the situation.
You aren't going to convince some kid with a poor family situation that they now have to listen to the parent who much of the time can't form a coherant sentence to start with when they insist they only hang out with the church youth group as opposed to his life long friends.
Quote:
If they reoffend at a higher rate following an intervention than they do with other interventions or with no intervention, then the first intervention did not work. Studies allow you to determine whether the difference is by chance or by a significant difference between the two things examined, so you can tell.
You are talking minor penalties here again as far as I can tell which have not been defined. Some kid that shot the neighborhood 7-11 employee to rob them isn't going to be offered the chance to simply go home and quit hanging with the bad influences.
If you want to argue that the kid selling some pot should get this option, sure, but then again, nobody wants to define what we are talking about.
I wouldn't dismiss this but I would say that it would only work in families where they care. If the kid has been on the streets for years, the parent isn't all of a sudden going to care or have any influence on the situation.
You aren't going to convince some kid with a poor family situation that they now have to listen to the parent who much of the time can't form a coherant sentence to start with when they insist they only hang out with the church youth group as opposed to his life long friends.
That's true, but I would submit that more families care than you would think. Much of what gets in the way is that parents simply have not known what to do or have been overwhelmed by their own problems or the lack of support. When you address these well enough for them to function, you are able to have an influence.
As far as the kids, you don't worry about convincing them. They learn, though at a later age than most kids, that life is easier when they comply than when they don't.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pknopp
You are talking minor penalties here again as far as I can tell which have not been defined. Some kid that shot the neighborhood 7-11 employee to rob them isn't going to be offered the chance to simply go home and quit hanging with the bad influences.
If you want to argue that the kid selling some pot should get this option, sure, but then again, nobody wants to define what we are talking about.
There are many kids that go to the evidence-based programs in place of incarceration - that's their purpose. You are correct, that it's less likely in the case of murder. However, there are programs with different intensities from Multidemsional Therapuetic Foster Care at the extreme end to Multisytemic Therapy which serves in place of incarceration to Functional Family Therapy which is well-suited to a little less severe, though still at the level of incarceration. There is nothing that will work for everyone just like there is no medication or treatment regime that cures 100% of any illness. The programs I referenced above have a far better success rate (measured by rate of rearrest) than we have in the medical field with a lot of illnesses. Multisystemic Therapy has research up to a 22 year follow-up that shows statistically significant decreases in arrest rates and time in custody.
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