This encapsulates everything that is wrong with this 'society'.

The bigger question is why do we let people away with reoffending? Give the guy as much help as possible to change his ways while locked up for first offence......if it happens again lock him up longer and throw rrsources at him to change....third time lock up and throw away the key.......

It might be the elephant in the room, but it can't be defeated, so we will continue to read these types of stories.

The 'War on Drugs' is lost. Its unwinnable.

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/aran-island-parochial-house-robbed-by-dublin-based-drug-user-1.2024678



Good honest people are paying for this person's lifestyle with their labour through their taxes, and through the 'liberation' of their property more directly.

Why should we tolerate this?

Perhaps it is tolerated because there is no "we"?

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

What really bugs me is the frequency of court reports with offenders with 100+ convictions. What is the point of a criminal justice system that permits this? If you didn't learn your lesson the first time your sentence should be doubled, same for each reoffence.

A moment's thought suggests that "the frequency of court reports with offenders with 100+ convictions" points to the ineffectiveness of criminal penalties as an instrument of reform. When the evidence suggests that a particular strategy doesn't work, implementing the strategy with greater vigour is hardly a rational response.

Lif in prison for petty theft? You don't think questions of justice and proportionality enter into this at all?

Plus, even if you think life in prison is warranted, does the cost-benefit question not cross your mind at all? If you're prepared to spend that amount of money to address the problem posed by just one petty thief, should you not at least consider whether there might be more cost-effective ways of spending that sum to address the same problem?

jank wrote: »

The free travel malarky for the old and unemployed is a joke. Get rid of it already.

I disagree with this. You pay taxes for your whole working life and it is very useful to most retired / elderly people be able to get some sort of a perk out if it. Personally I cannot imagine a more beneficial perk than to be able to travel outside your area more frequently especially in your senior years when money is more likely to be an issue, particularly given the benefits to mental health and emotional wellbeing and the overall benefits that this has on society.

jobbridge4life wrote: »

You are pre-supposing that incarceration is a successful way of encouraging desistance. It isn't. In fact the opposite may be true. Imprisonment may be criminogenic.

In general I hate these Daily Mail-esque welfare scare mongering. Yes some people on welfare cheat and abuse the system. The huge majority do not.

The guy gets two chances to sort himself out at cost to the state as well as the state providing an income for him. Why should he expect or get any additional free reogn after a third offence. I have no doubt the vast majority of welfare recepients and indeed everyone else is law abiding. My comment were in relation to convicted criminals who continue to re offend with serious crimes while getting supported by the state.

jobbridge4life wrote: »

I am not really arguing about this individual but rather your portrayal of prison as a solution to criminal activity or temptation. It isn't. Sending him to prison the first time may (thats a big may as I obviously don't know the details) have actually cemented his criminality.

How many chances do you estimate this guy got before he went to prison the first time? Persistent serious criminals deserve jail time it keeps thouse of us that behave safer.

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

On the contrary, some people just need to be kept off the streets tbh.

Completely agree. Look how much Irish water and its backers have taken and will take from this country. The bankers and thier puppet politicians. Big time criminals walking the streets. Taking peoples houses and destroying our country. They need to be taken off the streets asap.
But lets focus on the needy/uneducated and punish them for acting desperate during desperate times.
That is what is messed up about this society.
People turn on the poor and neglected while the real damage is being done by "respected" individuals and organisations.
What a backwards world this is.
It makes me wonder, is that drug addict as uneducated as the rest? Maybe he knows the deal...
Because the people propping up this system are more responsible for the issues we have than the people who are a symptom.

The Corinthian wrote: »

So if custodial sentences don't work, how would you suggest society deals with those who are habitually anti-social? Harsh language?

Unfortunately I'd agree that custodial sentences are not the solution, but regrettably, faced with people who will act against the common good repeatedly, the only thing left is to take them out of society, at least for a while, so that they cannot continue causing harm. As such, putting them in prison is not ideal, but it still is much better than doing nothing.

Falso dichotomy, surely? The alternative to prison is not "nothing"; it's using the funds which might have been spent imprisoning someone on more creative, and quite possibly more effective, ways of tackling the problem of crime, the consequences of crime and the fear of crime.

Peregrinus wrote: »

Falso dichotomy, surely? The alternative to prison is not "nothing"; it's using the funds which might have been spent imprisoning someone on more creative, and quite possibly more effective, ways of tackling the problem of crime, the consequences of crime and the fear of crime.

Somebody has 100 offences and is a career piece of garbage. Create me a way of dealing with it!

The Corinthian wrote: »

I completely agree, which is why I asked as to the better alternative. If better no alternative (and "could be policing strategies, they could be social strategies" is an vague aspiration, not an alternative) is available, then you're left with taking the best available one, which is that of imposing custodial sentences.

But you have done nothing to demonstrate that is is the best available one; you just seem to assume that it is. Yet as we both agree that prison is a massively expensive way of achieving very little, and that locking up one criminal may simply create a gap which another one will fill. Given that, it's not very likely that the strategy of more and longer imprisonment will in general turn out to be "the best available one". And in this particular case, where the underlying problem is heroin addiction, the notion that lengthy prisons sentences are the most cost-effective way of reducing heroin-addiction-driven crime seems to fly in the fact of common sense and common experience. Heroin addicts are not that responsive to concerns about prison sentences.

The Corinthian wrote: »

Problem is there is no single reason or group of reasons why crimes are committed in the first place. Correlations exist, but even if we address those the problem won't go away and we will still need a means to deal with those. Or are you suggesting that a solution is possible that will lead us to a golden age where no one will ever break the law? If so, I'm all ears

You're setting the standard a little high there, Corinthian. Non-custodial policy doesn't have to result in zero crime to be the best option; it just has to result in less crime than a similar expenditure on custodial policy is likely to give us. And since we know that increasing sentences does little to reduce crime rates, the odds are looking pretty good.

Note that I'm not saying that there is no need for, or place for, custodial sentences. I'm responding to the knee-jerk assumption manifested earlier in this thread that if we have unacceptably high crime rates the proper or best response is more and longer sentences of imprisonment. There are other possible responses to rising crime rates; most of them cost less than prison and offer a fair prospect of producing the same or a better reduction in crime rates, given that longer sentences produces virtually no reduction. It's far more likely that the vast resources consumed by the prison policy mean that we're not trying more effective policies than the other way around.

Actually, Corinthian, I don't think either of us have done much to prove our respective contentions.

You keep saying that "custodial sentences are the best of a bad lot", but you don't have any evidence for that. You can say that at least sending this bloke to prison stops him from (most) offending for as long as he's in prison. On the other hand, it does nothing to prevent any other bloke from committing the crimes that, if not imprisoned, he would have committed, and if the factors that led him into crime have not altered (and the prison policy does nothing to alter them) then our expectation should be that, on the whole, some other bloke probably will commit those crimes. So what you have identified is a very limited benefit, and you have nothing to suggest that it represents a better outcome than anything you could hope to achieve if you had devoted the same resources to some different strategy. The outcome you identify may be the best outcome that any strategy could achieve, but you have no basis for asserting or assuming that it is. it could be the worst. Or somewhere in the middle.

Conversely, I've got nothing to show that devoting the same resources to another strategy would produce a better outcome. I think we have grounds for a fair degree of optimism that it would - viz, the cost of prison is so high, and the benefit in terms of crime reduction so limited, that it's a real counsel of despair to suggest that no alternative strategy that we might devise could possibly produce a better outcome - but actual evidence? Nope.

I'd agree with you, incidentally, that there are not better options for all cases. Sometimes a custodial sentence will be the best option. I really came into the thread, though, in response to the case in the OP, and Hotblack's suggestion that since custody wasn't preventing crimes, the proper response was longer and longer custodial sentences. I would have thought that the case in the OP - crimes committed habitually by heroin addicts - is almost the textbook example of a crime problem which is demonstrably not effectively tackled with custodial sentences, and that spending more and more money on a very expensive policy not expected to work and demonstrably not working in practice was not a proper, or even a rational, response. Unless you are going to imprison all heroin addicts before they have committed any crimes (even if that were possible or morally acceptable) custodial policy is never going to prevent heroin addicts from committing crimes. Money spent tackling the causes and consequences of heroin addiction is almost certainly going to yield better returns, in terms of crime reduction, than longer and longer sentences for addicts who have already committed crimes.

Or, at least, I have a strong sense that this is so. But no actual evidence!

The Corinthian wrote: »

With all due respect, I do think the onus is on you to show evidence that better options exist, rather than I having to prove they don't.

With even more grovelling respect, Cor, if you assert -as you have repeatedly done - that imprisonment is the best of the not very good options available, I think the onus is on you to show that it is the best.

Your claim is actually more extravagant than mine. You are saying that, of all the options available, this one is the best. I am saying that, of all the options available, at least one of the others is better than this. In the absence of any evidence at all, the smart money will be on me; the odds favour me. In the absence of evidence, we are identifying the best policy att random, or because it appeals to our preconceptions. But, using this method, you have to hit the bull's-eye to win, and identify the best policy; I win if I hit the dartboard anywhere at all, so to speak.

I'd go a bit further than that; I have at least offered reasons for thinking that, in this particular case, the imprisonment option is unlikely to achieve much, if anything, in crime prevention terms, and you haven't really quibbled with anything I have said about that; in fact you have a agreed with it. So your position is that a policy which will admittedly achieve little or nothing is, nevertheless, the best policy. Even if you have no evidence to support this belief, you could at least offer an account of why you hold it.

Torakx wrote: »

Imprisonment with options to work it off through community service, might be a middle ground, a way to transition to a more productive and positive social engagement with society, for re-integration and rehabilitation.

I don't actually know what the fuss is about here.

There is plenty "non" penal options granted to criminals depending on the crime and indeed plenty rehab programmes but inside and outside prison.

If however a person doesn't interact or take part in whatever supports and services the state tries to help them with on a consistent basis, and they continue to re-offend there is no alternative for society but to lock them up for longer periods to keep themselves and the remainder of society safe.
The guy above is a persistent re-offender despite being granted leniency and supports by the state.