New Jersey is moving towards a ban on capital punishment..

[truthhurts]

Originally Posted by saganista

It isn't a deterrent for any. And in the case of rape, it only increases the incentive to make sure that the victim dies.


Have you corrected this insightful analysis for any tendency toward an increased reporting of rape over this time period?


Actually, I said 600 to 700 thousand. Interesting that you don't know where the numbers come from, but are quite convinced that the range cited is not remotely factual. So tell me, what do you think the number really is???


Oh, there's no question that we can put some people away! My God, we do that at a rate roughly five times the global average. Not only do we have the highest rate of incarceration of any country in the world, but we have the largest imprisoned population of any country in the world. Why, it's now to the point where just about 1 out of every 4 people in the world who is in jail is behind bars right here in the good old US of A. We may lag behind some of these other countries in any number of categories, but by golly, locking people up is definitely not one of them.


Per DOJ's published data, the 3-year recidivism rate re any felony or high misdemeanor is 67% for an arrest, 47% for a conviction, and 25% for more jail time. Meanwhile, the 5-year recidivism rate for a child molester was 13% for a sex crime of any sort, and 37% for a crime of any other sort. Recidivism rates for sexual offenders in general are low, and are falling.

BTW good find on the research and i'll stand strong behind my assertion that sexual offenders are number two behind felons in recedivism rates.

We have a prison population of 2.2 million most of which have sentences longer than 10 years and most of which are drug related. Although the bulk of the population is violent offenders there is a substantially prison population, that are not sexual offenders or violent offenders etc.

Before you rant on how many people we look up a year you have to know the background information on the marginal cost to lock individuals up verses the marginal benefit. It is estimated that 1 prisoner cost a state $30,000 dollars to house, but the extent to the level of crime this person would have committed is more than $200,000 dollars worth of crime. The cost of a police officer in most states is 60-80k a year.

200,000
(30,000)
(80,000)

90,000 dollar benefit to law abiding citizens, so if we need to lock up more criminals and get even tougher laws on the books i'm for it. As long as the marginal benefit out weighs the marginal cost to society.

You might have a valid argument in reported rapes in the 1900's-1950's etc, but again to argue that a criminal that faces the possibility of losing their life for rape is not a significant deterrent is silly. The argument that a rapist will just kill the victim is bs, because that happens now and we do not enforce the death penalty in most of those cases, becuase a lot of states do not practice it. However, i do not care enough to look up states with the death penalty in terms of rape, but if you did that you could tell me the difference in the number of rape victims killed after a rape verses states where there is no death penalty etc......

If the purpose of the death penalty deterrent would not be to stop all rapes as that would be impossible. However, it may make a lot of would be rapist think twice before it even gets to that level. This is the point of a server deterrent.

Also side not making the argument that we have more prisoners by size is silly. We are significantly larger than most other western countries in terms of size and individual people. It just sort of goes with the territory

Most European countries have populations of less than 62 million people...we have 300 million people and lock up 2.2 million

2.2/300 million people that's not half bad = less 0.007 percent of the population

[66nexus]

Originally Posted by saganista

I'm sure the friends and families of guards and other prison workers are standing and applauding your every word. So, no doubt, are those of inmates up on drug raps and assorted other low-level and often non-violent crimes. Maybe you should consider that the system dumps between 600 and 700 thousand prisoners back into society every year. That's more than the entire population of Boston. Or Denver. Or Atlanta. Every year. Exactly how sick and he!!-bent for revenge do you really want these nearly 2,000 per day to be???

Hey I didn't say torture. They are probably already hell-bent on revenge. And low-level or non-violent crime offenders aren't what I'm talking about (even though I still don't think they should have computers and such), I'm talking about the fellas who rape/murder/destroy. They can want revenge all day, but they won't be going anywhere to act on it.

[truthhurts]

Here's a link

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/crimoff.htm#recidivism (broken link)

[saganista]

Originally Posted by truthhurts

BTW good find on the research and i'll stand strong behind my assertion that sexual offenders are number two behind felons in recedivism rates.

Many sexual offenders are felons. These aren't mutually exclusive groups. As noted earlier, recidivism rates for sexual offenders are low and are falling, particularly with regard to the commission of additional sexual offenses. About three times in four, when a prior sexual offender re-enters the system, he does so on the basis of a non-sexually related crime.

Originally Posted by truthhurts

Before you rant on how many people we look up a year you have to know the background information on the marginal cost to lock individuals up verses the marginal benefit. It is estimated that 1 prisoner cost a state $30,000 dollars to house, but the extent to the level of crime this person would have committed is more than $200,000 dollars worth of crime. The cost of a police officer in most states is 60-80k a year. 90,000 dollar benefit to law abiding citizens, so if we need to lock up more criminals and get even tougher laws on the books i'm for it. As long as the marginal benefit out weighs the marginal cost to society.

This is not exactly a rigorous examination of the issue. While the total direct costs of incarceration do come to something on the order of $30K per inmate per year, these are far from being the only costs of incarceration to society, and there appears to have been little more than crude speculation involved in estimating the benefits. If this is the bedrock on which a defense of a harsh penal system is built, that defense is not set on very solid ground.

Originally Posted by truthhurts

You might have a valid argument in reported rapes in the 1900's-1950's etc, but again to argue that a criminal that faces the possibility of losing their life for rape is not a significant deterrent is silly.

No, it simply seems counter-intuitive to those who believe that the model for criminal behavior is that of a rational man sitting at his laptop doing a cost-benefit analysis for going out and raping someone. This is a flawed model.

Originally Posted by truthhurts

The argument that a rapist will just kill the victim is bs...

The point raised was with respect to increasing the incentive to be sure that the victim died. You seem to be counting heavily on the incentives of harsh criminal penalties, but only when they conform with your support for harsh criminal penalties. In the opposing situation, you prefer simply to label them as bs?

Originally Posted by truthhurts

If the purpose of the death penalty deterrent would not be to stop all rapes as that would be impossible. However, it may make a lot of would be rapist think twice before it even gets to that level. This is the point of a server deterrent.

The penalties for rape are already quite severe, and if severity of punishment were shown to be an actual deterrent, these could be made more severe yet in ways that do not involve killing people. It isn't really much of an arsenal if one's only response when confronting a problematic population is to say 'Let's kill them.' That's the sort of thing that sets people to wondering about one's underlying motivations.

Originally Posted by truthhurts

Also side not making the argument that we have more prisoners by size is silly. We are significantly larger than most other western countries in terms of size and individual people. It just sort of goes with the territory.

The statistics cited earlier were all based on rates per 100K of population. That is, even when corrected for population differences, the US imprisons people at the highest rate in the world, a rate that is five times the global average. The exception was with regard to the total number of persons incarcerated. The US, in terms of simple head count, holds more people in jails and prisons than any other country in the world.

[saganista]

Originally Posted by 66nexus

Hey I didn't say torture. They are probably already hell-bent on revenge. And low-level or non-violent crime offenders aren't what I'm talking about (even though I still don't think they should have computers and such), I'm talking about the fellas who rape/murder/destroy. They can want revenge all day, but they won't be going anywhere to act on it.

You seem to have the entire US prison population confused with the very small proportion of those who are sociopaths. The prison system does not now, never has, and never will, run on a lock-them-up-and-throw-away-the-key paradigm. While such an approach would certainly be desirable in many ways with respect to known sociopaths, the simple fact is that the system runs on a time-out model. The vast majority of those we send off to prison will one day be asked to return to society. The question posed is over what those returnees...nearly 2,000 of them per day...should look like and how should they be treated. Should we jail them hundreds (if not thousands) of miles from home, abuse them as much as we possibly can over the six years or so that we might have them in custody, then turn them lose into society with no public support and with no remaining network of family or friends to turn to, and deny them employment in virtually any field on the basis of their being ex-cons, all the while expecting them somehow to reform themselves and turn into model citizens? Do you see any point where there would be a risk of such a system breaking down and failing to achieve the results that we expect of it? I'm afraid that I do...

[texanborn]

I don't know if anyone else has posted this yet but I saw on the national news yesterday that one of the SOB's now moving off of death row in NJ is the one that killed the little girl that Megan's Law is named after...
Her father was interviewed and he cannot understand why this scumbag would be allowed to live..

I hope NJ puts him into the general prison pouplation and maybe then he will get his just reward....

[66nexus]

Originally Posted by saganista

You seem to have the entire US prison population confused with the very small proportion of those who are sociopaths. The prison system does not now, never has, and never will, run on a lock-them-up-and-throw-away-the-key paradigm. While such an approach would certainly be desirable in many ways with respect to known sociopaths, the simple fact is that the system runs on a time-out model. The vast majority of those we send off to prison will one day be asked to return to society. The question posed is over what those returnees...nearly 2,000 of them per day...should look like and how should they be treated. Should we jail them hundreds (if not thousands) of miles from home, abuse them as much as we possibly can over the six years or so that we might have them in custody, then turn them lose into society with no public support and with no remaining network of family or friends to turn to, and deny them employment in virtually any field on the basis of their being ex-cons, all the while expecting them somehow to reform themselves and turn into model citizens? Do you see any point where there would be a risk of such a system breaking down and failing to achieve the results that we expect of it? I'm afraid that I do...

If that vast majority you say we send back home are killers/rapists then we have a problem. But again: I'm not talking petty theft here.

What I don't understand is that if we pretty much sign off on death row inmates (where there is no return to society), why can't the same be done in a world w/o the death penalty?

You're arguing about 'regular' bad guys, I'm talking about killers/rapist. People who make it to death row are never asked to return to society.

As far as you saying ex-cons would have a hard time trying to remake their lives and the system breaking down...this is already in effect. It's already hard, damn near impossible, for an ex-con to get a job out of prison. Has been for years

[milliebfit]

Originally Posted by texanborn

I don't know if anyone else has posted this yet but I saw on the national news yesterday that one of the SOB's now moving off of death row in NJ is the one that killed the little girl that Megan's Law is named after...
Her father was interviewed and he cannot understand why this scumbag would be allowed to live..

I hope NJ puts him into the general prison pouplation and maybe then he will get his just reward....

yes his name is Jesse Timmendequas he raped and murdered 7 yr. old Megan Kanka...he is a happy camper now that he is allowed to live...I agree general prison population would be a good spot for him!!!!!

[truthhurts]

[i][quote=saganista;Many sexual offenders are felons. These aren't mutually exclusive groups. As noted earlier, recidivism rates for sexual offenders are low and are falling, particularly with regard to the commission of additional sexual offenses. About three times in four, when a prior sexual offender re-enters the system, he does so on the basis of a non-sexually related crime[/i]

Argument is that sexual offenders often abuse 100's of children before they are actually caught for the first time. Then they are released, because of no prior conviction in which they have high recedivism rates and returned on usually worse charges.

you stated
No, it simply seems counter-intuitive to those who believe that the model for criminal behavior is that of a rational man sitting at his laptop doing a cost-benefit analysis for going out and raping someone. This is a flawed model.


No, Sangnista, I disagree. When i used the term criminals are "rational," I was not referring to them doing an actual "cost benefit analysis" on their MAC lap-top before they go out and rob, rape, murder, or pilige an entire community. I was referring to "rational" in the same sense that a person aspires to be a doctor, lawyer, athlete, entertainer, etc, because it will make them better off.

A criminal is "rational" in the sense that the crime they are committing will make them better off than the next best alternative. Obviously criminals are not running the numbers before they commit a crime.

However, they are rational thinkers no differnet than you and I. You and I may rationalize that our best option for success is a college education and then going to law school to become a lawyer vs the next best alternative of dropping out of school and becoming a high school janitor per se. A criminal thinks the same way. Crimanls only commit crimes if in the end they feel they are going to better off by doing it versus the next best alternative.

Last example. If becoming a doctor only paid 20k a year how many people would spend 8+ years in school at a cost of 150k+ to become a doctor?

If statistics said that 1 in 3 burglers were shot and killed while trying to burglarize a home how often would they occur?

to the opposite effect

If statistics said that 8 in 10 burgleries result in an average of $100 dollars being taken per each house how manny burgleries would occur?

My point is simply people "rationally" do things because they believe it will make them better off in the end.

you stated

The statistics cited earlier were all based on rates per 100K of population. That is, even when corrected for population differences, the US imprisons people at the highest rate in the world, a rate that is five times the global average. The exception was with regard to the total number of persons incarcerated. The US, in terms of simple head count, holds more people in jails and prisons than any other country in the world..

Also have you noted the alarming rate of crime in the UK vs the preciptiously dropping crime rate in the US? With the exeption of murder and rape the UK leads the US in all other violent crime categories (assault, robbery, and vehicular theft). Why? Well, the average length of a sentence for the following in the US is much stiffer than the UK. The average lenght a person in the UK serves for the same crime in the US is significantly less. The UK has a ridiculously high recedivism rate, because they choose not to be tough on crime. The US has done a great job reducing crime, because we are for the most part when compared to other western worlds fairly tough on crime. The US fails on the "war on drugs." Our prison populaton would not be nerely as high if it weren't for this bs war.