Our justice system - can it be overhauled?

VisibleGorilla wrote: »

No we don't, at all.. not even a little bit..

yes we do

VisibleGorilla wrote: »

Prison should be the last resort, every other option should be explored fully before putting someone in custody.

it should the last resort for some types of crime, however it should the first and only resort for serious crimes

VisibleGorilla wrote: »

You think that every single crime should equal custody?!

I never said that, and I don't have a problem with giving people a 2nd or 3rd chance or maybe even more chances but I do have a limit

and its clear that some judges don't want to lock up anyone

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/courts/circuit-court/passengers-watched-as-woman-attacked-and-robbed-on-luas-1.2280555

Larkin has 30 previous convictions, including thefts and drug offences, and McGowan has 24 previous convictions, including assault and public order offences.
Judge Patricia Ryan remanded McGowan on bail pending a probation and welfare services report, accepting that the offence was “out of character” for the mother-of-tw

the above is a perfect example of what I'm talking about, and thats not some kind of strange happening in an Irish court, if you read the papers you will see plenty of cases like the one above

Guy:Incognito wrote: »

Again, fire away with any reason he shouldnt have been locked up, the floor is yours..........

So you didn't sit through the court case then?

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

No, not at all. But I think we should look at alternative measures because imprisonment is very expensive and it doesn't seem to work.

how does it not work

it works for us when scum are off the streets

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

My family home was burgled a few weeks ago. If the men who burgled it had never been born, it would have been burgled anyway at some stage, by whatever local band of housebreakers sprung up in their absence.

For this kind of crime to prosper, there must be economic inquality and the propsect of ill-gotten opportunity. If you maintain inequality whilst locking up prisoners, all you're doing is increasing the availability for ill-gotten opportunity among rising criminals. There will be a lag, but the crime rate will hardly budge.

Imprisonment appears to do nothing except put a very small, temporary limit on criminality. In the UK, it has been estimated that a 25% rise in the prison population cuts crime by 1%.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/dec/07/michael-howard-prison-works-analysis

This logic is absurd. You have no way of knowing that your house would have been burgled at some stage, so that is pure speculation.
Also, this attempt to justify crime and violence as the result of 'inequality' is horsesh1t of the highest order. The welfare system is extremely generous to the, ahem, 'poor'. In fact in some cases they have better lifestyles than the genuine working poor. All needs for food, shelter, warmth, travel, and medical expenses are covered, so I'm not buying that for a second. This may have been an excuse in the Dickensian ages, but in the modern welfare era, criminality is by and large a choice.

Take for example, street violence. Most of the subhumans who smash a broken bottle into an innocent persons face aren't doing it to feed themselves, or because of inequality. They're doing it because they are dirty rotten bullying bastards who like the image of being a hard man and hurting people. Don't try telling me that if society was more 'equal' these people would be model citizens of society. Some people are just born bad, or choose to be. And there's nothing in the world that is going to change that.

All you can do is deny them the opportunity to gouge another innocent victim. And this is what it is all about-the victims. Do you know anyone who has ever had their face glassed for walking into a pub and making eye contact with the wrong person? I have, since I was right behind him when it happened. Would you like to know what a human eye socket looks like with glass shards sticking out of it? I can tell you, but maybe only when you see it first hand can you understand the horror and mindlessness of it. It's like war, in a way. You can read about it, hear about it, and watch all the movies you like. But nothing prepares you for it like real life. Then, and only then will you realise what people like me are so frustrated about.

I could tell you about how I saw a confident, happy, easy going young man turn into a depressed, house bound, angry, self conscious demoralised shell of a human being thanks to a random unprovoked glassing. I could tell you about the thousands spent on legal fees, hours of statements to guards and solicitors, loss of earnings and massive medical fees, multiple surgeries, stares from strangers and cruel comments about facial scarring. I could tell you about getting vague threats from these feral rat humans, mentioning family member's movements and places of work in an attempt to drop the case.

I could tell you about the day of the court case, where our smirking scumbag gets a slap on the wrist for mutilating a decent, law abiding, generous and caring friend of mine. I could tell you about the other people that he has mutilated since, ones that didn't even make it to court. I could tell you about him boasting to his other knacker friends about the damage he has done to people, and laughing about maybe 'getting a hat trick' of unreported assaults due to his chicken sh1t tactics of hitting and running before the poor victim has had time to figure out what happened. Yeah, I could tell you about that.

But lets just blame 'inequality' instead.

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

If prison simply "worked" as a deterrent or as a cure, then Russia, the USA and South Africa would be safer places to live than countries with more moderate rates of incarceration, such as Denmark, Ireland and Switzerland. But the opposite is true. America, Russia and South Africa have multiple times more prisoners than Ireland, and multiple times higher rates of violent crime such as homicide.

Why are you and I, presumably, not cat-burglars, bicycle thieves, or violent thugs?

Because of our inherent good nature?
Let's not flatter ourselves !

Because we're afraid of prison?
No. Even if we knew we'd never get caught, neither of us would want to be criminals.

What then?
Accident of birth. Most criminals are born into homes with some mixture of criminality, violence, consistent poverty, relatively poor educational resources, and broken family relationships. These are some of the determinants of criminal behaviour, and they can reinforce one another, and predispose people towards lives of crime. You do not wish to be born into those circumstances. Not if you have any sense.

Sure, there are times when we must imprison people. But once they're in prison, on our turf, lets re-educate them and no longer alienate them from society.

And while we're at it, lets try to stop them getting into that position to begin with, by lowering children's exposure to consistent poverty, domestic violence, poor educational resources, and all of the other potential determinants of criminal behaviour?

Is there anything unreasonable in this proposition?

no its not unreasonable at all, I agree with much of it

again I have no problem with giving people 2nd chances, or even 3rd and 4th chances and so on, but I have my limits

I'm not talking about some young teenager who does one stupid thing and then gets years behind bars, I'm talking about people who break the law non stop

a very good example of what I mean is the Guido Nasi case

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/man-pleads-guilty-to-vicious-assault-on-italian-teenager-26069090.html

the asshole who ended poor Guido's life had tens of convictions and should have been behind bars when he destroyed a young mans life :mad:

I really don't know how you can defend scumbags like this, I really wish the Nasi case was a one off but we all know its not

a question Miltiades, how many times should someone be allowed to get away with different types of assault