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I rather get on the soap box about child predators - copper can be replaced - ins will cover some of the damage and yes it is a crime - but. A Child will never be the same - and they free and on probation and keep hurting children. We place the wrong value on crimes . If you rob a casino - you going to jail forever. Go figure
I will agree with this wholeheartedly. Those in prison for minor drug possession, statutory rape, alcohol offenses, fatal traffic accidents are all examples of folks who are likely not dangerous and could be punished for their offenses in a way different than incarceration. It is ridiculous that pot smokers and 20 year old boys that had a 17 year old girlfriend are taking up space in prisons that could be used to protect us from truly dangerous people.
Child molesters should never see the light of day again...same for rapists. Murders, violent gang members and drug dealers should never get out. Thieves and other criminals who defraud innocent people should face serious prison time. Anyone who has been paying attention to our society knows that theives and corrupt people have become a major problem. These people do need to be removed from society and the OP is right in his call to lock more criminals up.
We need a major reassessment of our criminal justice system. Our system is too harsh and ruins the lives of too many minor offenders. Your youthful beer drinking or college pot smoking should not be something that damages your record for the rest of your life. We also should make sure serious offenders like sexual predators or violent criminals never get out. Theft should be punished with prison as it is a serious crime. We are too easy on real bad criminals and too harsh with minor offenders. Even if we released all the minor offenders I believe the OP is right that we need to put significantly more people in prison in order to protect ourselves from crime.
Over the last 29 straight years in which Louisiana's murder rate has led the nation, in 25 of them it's incarceration rate also led the nation. That's what happens when a state with an inordinate amount of violent offenders continues to lock up an inordinate amount of non-violent offenders.
One of the premises in this debate is that we can't afford to build more prisons to house our criminals. If we're going to quantify prison terms, then to do a proper analysis, we need to quantify what a person's life is worth - how much sparing a person from being robbed, raped, molested is worth, the person who overdoses and so forth.
We have alot of copper thieves around here too, a couple years ago, local police said they were working with scrap metal yards in the area (which there are only 3-4 that buy scrap off the street), and they were supposed to ID everyone that came in selling copper, but apparently that has not even reduced the number of copper thefts, its still a huge problem. I doubt the scrap metal places want to go thru the hassle of carding people and taking down info, they just want the scrap material, not know where it comes from necessarily!
Another thing about copper thefts, 100% of the ones where they have caught the thieves...they were doing this to support their heroin or meth addiction, that is interesting in that the drug laws are what is causing these other crimes...just one more reason to legalize and REGULATE...STOP giving all this money to criminal organizations for gods sake!! (they already have too much).
Over the last 29 straight years in which Louisiana's murder rate has led the nation, in 25 of them it's incarceration rate also led the nation. That's what happens when a state with an inordinate amount of violent offenders continues to lock up an inordinate amount of non-violent offenders.
Correlation does not prove causation.
It could be just as well argued high homicide rates are indicative of high crime rates in general which justifies high incarceration rates.
As people have stated we lock up the wrong people.
Boy, I lost a lot of sleep last night thinking about all the copper being stolen around here.
You could sleep better if we could close down the market for stolen copper. Make it illegal to recycle copper without a certified provenance or have it done through a formal agency of some sort. You can't recycle railroad rails...I tried. It's illegal.
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