[Chest Rockwell]

I think the bigger issue is whether or not jails and prisons are rehabilitating people so that once their sentence is over they don't continue the behavior that got them incarcerated in the first place.

If not, then jails exist simply to separate criminals from the rest of the population.

If this is the case, then dangerous and violent criminals should be the ones locked up, and everyone else should simply be fined or given community service sentences. It's not worth the cost to incarcerate them if they aren't being rehabilitated, especially if they aren't a threat to the public's safety.

[marc stevens]

Originally Posted by dynimagelv;

WHAT????????? Since when are DRUG Crimes not a REAL Crime.....since when is prostitution not a real crime???? [at least in Clark County] Yes I think the tent solution is fantastic....and that includes my stepson who though it was ok to drive a car without insurance and then not follow the probation rules.....he's enjoyin 1 year with 3 hots and a cot.

Written by someone who is totally ignorant about what constitutes a crime. A crime is nothing more than a public tort: it's irrationally believed to be not just an injury to an individual man, woman or child, but to EVERY man, woman and child. Go figure.

Where is the injury to you if someone grows marijuana in his house? Where is the injury if two or more adults enter into a perfectly voluntary agreement for sexual intercourse? What injury did your stepson cause?

Aside from that, you think it's OK and funny for you to be threatened and robbed to pay for that one "year with 3 hots and a cot"?

Most people I know would not appreciate, let alone revel in and support, being threatened and robbed.

[asik]

Thanks, marc, for another voice of sanity and decency (other than my own). This board desperately needs it.
How about the one who gloats that his stepson faces possible prison rape for not showing proper obedience to the state, and not for actually doing anything.

[dynimagelv]

Originally Posted by asik

Thanks, marc, for another voice of sanity and decency (other than my own). This board desperately needs it.
How about the one who gloats that his stepson faces possible prison rape for not showing proper obedience to the state, and not for actually doing anything.

If you do the crime, you do the time....and the last time I looked it was STILL a crime to sell drugs or to operate a motor vehicle while you're using drugs or to steal from anyone and everyone in the pursuit of your personal high.

[jfkIII]

If the glove don't fit...you must aquit!

[olecapt]

Originally Posted by marc stevens

Written by someone who is totally ignorant about what constitutes a crime. A crime is nothing more than a public tort: it's irrationally believed to be not just an injury to an individual man, woman or child, but to EVERY man, woman and child. Go figure.

Where is the injury to you if someone grows marijuana in his house? Where is the injury if two or more adults enter into a perfectly voluntary agreement for sexual intercourse? What injury did your stepson cause?

Aside from that, you think it's OK and funny for you to be threatened and robbed to pay for that one "year with 3 hots and a cot"?

Most people I know would not appreciate, let alone revel in and support, being threatened and robbed.

Is regulation allowable? Can we restrict the freedom of movement of a disease carrier? Can we regulate the manufacture of alcohol? Pot? Explosives? (Likely arms under the second amendment under any reasonable reading) Nuclear Weapons? Can we criminalize the failure to conform to the regulations? Can we regulate things to protect the public health? Can we forbid one from venting carcinogens into the atmosphere?

It is interesting turf...I don't see it quite as clearly as you appear to.

[asik]

So you want to shut down Nellis AFB? There are nukes there under control of unstable maniacs and their henchmen.
How does the air force protect us again? They did such a fine job on 9-11. They must have, because no one got even a reprimand.
So, I agree with you; shut down the waste of space at Nellis.

[olecapt]

Originally Posted by asik

So you want to shut down Nellis AFB? There are nukes there under control of unstable maniacs and their henchmen.
How does the air force protect us again? They did such a fine job on 9-11. They must have, because no one got even a reprimand.
So, I agree with you; shut down the waste of space at Nellis.

Ohhh...ahh no I have little trouble with organized defense forces having ugly weapons. But that was not the question. From your views i presume you think the chemist off in the corner working up a home system for delivering arsenic or liithium is a great idea right? Let a thousand flowers grow?

A funky little biologist off in his little quarter developing a new phage that causes fatal diarhea is most of the population? Well that sound like good stuff does it not. Who would want to regulate such a clever individual?

[Charles Wallace]

Originally Posted by dynimagelv

If you do the crime, you do the time....and the last time I looked it was STILL a crime to sell drugs or to operate a motor vehicle while you're using drugs or to steal from anyone and everyone in the pursuit of your personal high.

I think a very obvious distinction needs to be made -- and made by judges on a case-by-case basis with suggested guidelines (but with the freedom to adapt them to a given circumstance)-- between violent and nonviolent crimes, and crimes that endanger others versus crimes that endanger only oneself.

Prostitution, for the most part, does not endanger me at all. If it's violent (but consensual, in an S/M way), it still does not endanger me.

As far as drug use, if the drug use alone is the issue (e.g., suburban Summerlin sinsemilla-growing for oneself), I again see no "harm" in this.

Obviously, as soon as either activity does cause harm to other people or does involve violence (e.g., a meth addict breaking in to people's houses or robbing them at gunpoint to get meth money), then yes, jail should be their next port of call. That said, though, I think it's absurd to lock up nonviolent/nondangerous offenders. Too often, they just learn newer and better ways of committing crime in jail, or become affiliated with gangs as a means of self-preservation.

[Charles Wallace]

Originally Posted by olecapt

Is regulation allowable? Can we restrict the freedom of movement of a disease carrier?

I think it would depend on the nature of the disease and the past behavior of the disease carrier. For instance, I was just watching an interesting History Channel doc. on Mary Mallon (Typhoid Mary), who was a cook for several rich families in New York, but was (initially unbeknownst to her) an unaffected carrier of typhoid who managed to spread it to the families of the people she cooked for -- a situation which resulted in several deaths, some of which were children.

Mary Mallon was initially sentenced to an island quarantine facility, but after her attorney appealed this decision, she was let free on the condition that she report to the Board of Health every year and report her whereabouts...and that she NEVER work as a cook again.

Long story short, she gave 'em the slip, and sure enough, went back to work under an assumed name as a cook -- and sure enough, more people started to die. They brought her back to the island, this time forever.

It's a tough question, because we have individual rights pitted against the rights of the rest of the world. Bottom line, I think "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one" in this case -- especially given that Mallon deliberately violated the terms of her release and was knowingly (after that point) responsible for the deaths of the people she cooked for.

However, if we're talking about a less contagious, less life-threatening disease, I am less sure. If we were talking about an individual who was committed to living with her or his disease responsibly, I'm also not so sure.