Similar to a line in a David Drake book. "A comfortable detention facility is counterproductive." As previously stated, though, it's imposible to get truly effective punishments past the cruel and unusual standard.

Personally, and this is only my opinion, SpacePony got off entirely too easy. Absurdly easy, considering the nature of the offense. Sure, the sexual assault part is crap, but the beating described could easily have been fatal, and was grossly disproportionate to the original offense. The call to the lawyer shows clear premeditation and knowledge of the illegality of the action. Defense of self or others is one thing, vigilante justice is something else entirely.

While I guess congratulations are in order on a personal basis, the original sentence was wrong IMO.

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By that logic the Middle Ages would have been crime free, which it clearly was not.

How this is expressed by most people depends to a very large degree on one's basic belief - ie is "Jail" (etc) there to punish, ie legalised retribution, or is it there to re-educate to ensure as far as we can that criminals do not re-offend. It is almost inarguable that modern detention centers - of whatever nature - are very effective Degree Courses in Crime as far as inmates are concerned. Whether they do re-offend - and the latter is the biggest sector of recorded crime - will depend to a great degree on whether or not the inmates basic take on life and values has changed during incarceration. Rarely the case at present.

As always there are no simple solutions, no silver bullets, no "one size fits all". The latter applies just as much to the stentorian cry of "hang em all" as it does to the extreme liberal view on this topic. What is for certain, is we have not got the balance right yet, else we would not have the epidemic levels of re-offending from ex-inmates. Most certainly in reaching that balance each person must be taken as an individual, and "treated" from that point, blanket emotionally driven, or Vote seeking Policies are doomed to fail before the ink is dry on the Statute Book.

As a "race" Humans want instinctively to punish - get retribution - we've all been there. What is a much harder route is to change the mindset of those who have offended, or about to offend. A pure hang em all approach does not work, never has. Even the much quoted argument of the Middle Eastern practices does not hold true. If it did, there would be people only missing on limb, not two, three, or four of them out there! In any case the religious impact on crime is far far more palpable than with Christian religions.

Not a simple topic in truth, but neither is "Hang em All" the simple answer. The proponent may go to bed with a warm feeling and feeling great about themselves, but meanwhile in the real world it has done squat to solve the real problem. That approach has been tried too many times to mention, why would it work now? In reality, it will not, and frankly never will.

Regards
Zy

That could just be because most of the people in the middle ages were poor.

I agree, its most likely, and illustrates the whole point.

Crime is motivated by many scenarios, a large number are independent of "good practices" in being a "model citizen". A "Hang em All" approach does not address that, never will, the motivation and drivers for committing the crime are wholely independent of the thoughts on consequencies.

Its the thought process we have to address, and simplistic emotional approaches never work

Regards
Zy

You cant solve crime, only make it smaller. But for that to work you need a lot of diffrent types of punisments for diffrent people. What do you with the poor how need money, the kleptomaniac, the drug addict, or the drunk how did for now reason. Its easy to give them all the same punisments, but how fare is that?

Precisely my point. Add to that, the fact that there is little point going down a punishment only route - you just breed a more determined criminal with a recent Honors degree in Criminology (the wrong sort of criminology ..... ) and they constantly reoffend.

Meanwhile the "Hang em All" faction are oblivious to this outcome. As like the ostrich, they tend to have have their heads in the sand and cant see whats going on, unless its what they want to see - so to speak .....

Regards
Zy

What I would do is this. Give the poor how steal jobs a labors, the kleptomaniac should be put into a instatuion, the drunk and the drugy need to be put into rehab, and the proffesnonial should be denied from learning how to steal better. Gangs should be broken up so they cant work to gether. Gangs work because they are a team, break up that team and they become less efective.

"Again, the UCR and NIBRS are fundamentally incompatible. In 1960, if someone drove up to you, pulled out a gun said they were gonna kill you, shot at you, missed, and ran off, no crime would have been committed statistically. Today, it would have (2 possibly).
Now say the suspect shot you and hit. In 1960 that would be 1 crime statistially. Today, I can think of atleast 3 right off the bat. Same action, triple the crime rate.
Omnibus and GCA didn't even exist until 1968, neither did DV type crimes (considered violent crime). I haven't even mentioned drug crimes."

Unconstitutional gun laws do not change the way the murder rate is reported. Neither do the changes from the UCR to NIBRS systems. If the crime rate changes were a function of the switch, they would not be across the board changes, only less severe crimes would have increased. It's irrelevant anyway, the system wasn't changed until crime rates had quadrupled. There is no magic increase after the switch, it's before the switch. The changes in law and reporting do not coincide with the increases. Assumption is the mother of all fuckups.

"I'm very interersted in this. You mind showing me the law or court case that established Criminal Gangs as protected groups?"

Easier done than said. The Bill of Rights.

Belonging to a criminal organization qualifies as probable cause unless you are a complete fucking idiot, yes? Thus belonging to a gang, whose purpose is the facilitation of criminal activity, is probable cause to be searched. When a gang is caught in criminal activity, that should be it. You then have probable cause to tag every one of the bastards, nail them on every violation you find, charge them with facilitation in each others crimes, the works. Just belonging to the organization at that point should be a crime as well. It's not because Brandenburg V. Ohio struck down criminal syndicalism laws that made simple membership illegal based on the First Amendment. Membership in a criminal gang is protected. The surviving laws deal with explicit promotion of criminal activities to further the criminal syndicate, ridiculously hard to prove.

By the way, that was in the sixties too.

Doubtless we could all write a book on the detail of that - rights and wrongs etc. However I agree on its general direction, and the avoidance of the "lock em up and throw away the key" syndrome. The latter does absolutely ziltch to solve anything, it just becomes a vehicle for new resentment that boils over after release into reoffending.

As for a draconian increase in sentencing aka many in the far the Far Right would advocate (and I consider myself "Right of Atilla The Hun" in political outlook), apart from not solving anything as previously discussed, its not practical anyway. They soon shut up when see their potential Tax Bill rocketing skywards to pay for all the hundreds of new Prisons they will need! There's only so many times the phrase "the government should pay", can be used before the "pot of gold" runs out.

Anyway it came from us in the first place - its not "The Government's" :LOL:

Life is never simple, however much we would wish it, or claim it to be.

Regards
Zy

True ZY. its kind of hard to cover all the bases on this issue.

Very true.

On a side note, I saw an article on the news last night(I beleive it was ABC). Apparently, with the climbing Inmate population, and the declining tax revenue, Staes (they mentioned Ky Specifically) have started releasing inmates out of prison early (starting w/ the lowest offenders) and are pushing for more CCS sentences (Community Control Sanctions - ie - everything from counseling to probation)

Of course most people (including the news) don't know the difference between Jail and Prison, and it differs from state to state, so I do wonder exactly who are they letting out?

Any opinions??

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Allow me to illustrate it for you. UCR does not allow for Attempted/Completed classifications. NIBRS does. So if someone were unsuccessful in the commission of thier crime, UCR wouldn't take it. NIBRS would.

-But if someone didn't commit the crime, why would it be reported as a crime?-

Because attempting is still illegal. Many crimes include "attempted" in thier language. Take for example, your basic assault:
2903.13(A) - No person shall knowingly cause or attempt to cause physical harm to another or to another’s unborn.

So if someone comes up to you and tries to assault you and fails (you beat them up/defended yourself, whatever.). They would have committed a crime, but UCR wouldn't necesarrily take it. NIBRS would.

Also, you implied that the peak of crime was durring the 90's in your earlier posts ("...rates at the peak of the idiocy in the ninties..."). NIBRS was introduced in 1988.

---

I'm still really interested if you can show me the Law or Court Ruling establishing Criminal Gangs as a Protected group.



No it didn't. Brandeburg v Ohio (1969) was about inflammatory speech. Brandenburg had nothing to do with gang membership. The entire Brandenburg issue was not that he was a gang member (in this case the kkk), it had do to with he content of his speeches and that he was advocating acts of violence toward the gov't (and others) and the fact that he participated in an anti-gov't rally. The statute he was cited under specifically stated:
- advocat[ing] .. . the duty, necessity, or propriety of crime, sabotage, violence, or unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of accomplishing industrial or political reform
-and-
"voluntarily assembl[ing] with any society, group or assemblage of persons formed to teach or advocate the doctrines of criminal syndicalism {stated above}."

Its essentially a wide anti-sedition statute.

In Brandenburg, the SC looked at the "Bad tendencies" test and determined that the test breached 1st admendment rights (and 14th - obviously in this case). Actually while they didn't address Bad tendencies directly in their opinion, the effect of teh opinion was to all but nullify the bad tendency test. Essentially what they argued was that the abstract advocacy of violence or law violation is not something that can be punished.
Hence:
"These later decisions {Denis vs US 1951} have fashioned the principle that the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."

Thus, you have the Imminent Lawless Action Test, the current test which is used to detemrine when the gov't may act when faced with inflammatory speech. (ie someone trying to incite a riot)

No where does it explicitly establish a Criminal Gang as a protected group. A Criminal Gang has no special Constitutional protection over the rest of us. Never has. If you're attempting to say that the application of the 1st admendment right to free speech applies to gang members as well as the rest of US citizens and somehow gives them a protected status, could you specify exactly what preferential treatment they get as a protected group compared to any other group or citizen in the US?

The amendments apply to everyone, period. There's nothing special, preferential or "protected" about that.

Saying that something as horrid as a Criminal Gang gets preferential treatment is rather extreme, to say the least. There's no way you can begin to defend such a statement. I knew that, which is why I asked for you to come up with some proof. I was (and still am) very interested to see what you come up with. A fresh set of eyes is always a good thing. Its why we have debates, so we can learn about different perspectives.

FYI: A Criminal gang has no special protection. Participating in a Criminal Gang is Illegal:

2923.42 Participating in criminal gang (abridged).

(A) No person who actively participates in a criminal gang, with knowledge that the criminal gang engages in or has engaged in a pattern of criminal gang activity, shall purposely promote, further, or assist any criminal conduct, as defined in division (C) of section 2923.41 of the Revised Code, or shall purposely commit or engage in any act that constitutes criminal conduct, as defined in division (C) of section 2923.41 of the Revised Code.

(B) Whoever violates this section is guilty of participating in a criminal gang, a felony of the second degree.

"ridiculously hard to prove"? Not really. Let's look at your example, "gang is caught in criminal activity [Element 2]...nail them on every violation you find, charge them with facilitation in each others crimes, the works. Just belonging to the organization at that point should be a crime as well [Element 1]. - Seems to fit perfectly. The only issue is culpability and that's what threat group assessments are for.

So a M4 tagger (CD) suddenly becomes an F2. Not bad at all.

The law is dated 1999, so its post Brandenburg and therefore Prima facia valid.

The only thing that explains your continued harping on the statistics change from UCR to NIBRS is a total ignorance on the results. You can find them at the justice department, on wikipedia, and numerous other sites. Look at them and stop wasting time. Arguing against the rise in crime will be more useful if you actually know when the rise is.

Brandenburg v Ohio was used to strike down criminal syndicalism statutes. Recite the case all you want. Higher penalties for crimes associated with gangs aren't the same thing as penalties just for belonging to the gangs in the first place. It used to be standard practice than if you rode with the outlaws, you were an outlaw.

It's not the free speech, it's the right to assembly.

The right to peaceful assembly has always existed, even before the modern "criminal Gang". The Criminal Syndicalism statutes were deemed unconstitution as they were too wide in thier use as anti-sedition acts.

Look at the Language of the Criminal Syndicalism act. "...accomplishing industrial or political reform..." That phrase limits it to essentially anti-gov't/society groups. A group of criminals (like a Gang), wouldn't apply unless they were advocating violent gov't reform or inciting people to riot (bad tendencies) and at that point, the offender can be anyone and doesn't even need to be in a gang.

Those acts have always been controversial going all the way back to the first ones (1797-8). The major question at the heart of those laws and th cases surrounding them has always been: At what point do the protections of Free speech and Assembly cease to exist?


It is. If you are "riding" with a gang, you are A) actively participating in a criminal gang, with knowledge that the criminal gang engages in or has engaged in a pattern of criminal gang activity. That's the first Element. Get caught doing something gang related, You get the higher Charge.

Claiming Gang affiliation isn't probable cause. Why not? It's obvious. People say and do things that they might not be aware of its implications or that they don't mean at all. Look at the photos of kids in High School. There's kids in 'Burbs Flashing signs only cause they saw it on the last music video and they think its cool or they want to pretend they are hard. Stupid? yes. Illegal? Of course not.
Catch a kid painting stars on a wall? Illegal? Yes. Gang realated? Well only if he's in a gang(Folks/People). That's the point. Penalize the Criminal Gang members, not normal citizens(who in this case are getting penalized for something anyway - just to a lesser degree).

The Law is intentionally designed to require LE to determine if the offender is in fact a gang member (a very easy thing to do), hence the Def section. Otherwise "virtue of membership" could be used to arrest anyone of any group deemed "hostile" to the gov't/soc.



I'm not aware of any current state laws that do this. On the federal Level, some of the Anti-terrorism laws might do this, but I'm usure of thier application to loacal Criminal Gangs. In either case, using the "Back in the Day" arguement doesn't really work. Would you mind showing us the current law that makes Criminal Gang membership illegal by sole virtue of claimed affiliation? I'm really interested to see if one exists.

"I'm not aware of any current state laws that do this. On the federal Level, some of the Anti-terrorism laws might do this, but I'm usure of thier application to loacal Criminal Gangs. In either case, using the "Back in the Day" arguement doesn't really work. Would you mind showing us the current law that makes Criminal Gang membership illegal by sole virtue of claimed affiliation? I'm really interested to see if one exists."

You want me to prove the existence of what I've told you no longer exists due to Brandenburg v Ohio and like rulings? Read slower.