A giant prison camp with a big sign outside reading "freedom"
I love that Bigbart can I use that phrase sometime?
In the 90's in the US the act of self sufficiency could seriously get you killed.
In Utah they have a Mormom sect who is self suffiecient, but breaks the laws because they practice pilligamy (sp) and that is the way the man will get his foot in the door there. Once he does they will resist and he'll kill them all and call them names after they die, make up or stage evidence, call false witnesses. 20/20 and all the investigative reporters are on to this community making them look like evil horrible people. Maybe the more than one wife is, maybe them marrying at 16 is wrong to us, I don't know. But I will say, they have been around since the 1800's and they are all ugly and they aren't bothering anyone and I'd never heard about them until recently. Yep in a year or so I expect to see tanks and fire in their community and people with greater moral sense making speeches about how imoral these people were so it was better to kill them than to allow them to live practicing their religion. Go burn the mosque in NYC where terrorist's have been rounded up and you'll get the electric chair and worse.
Let them call me a rebel and I welcome it, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of demons were I to make a whore of my soul. (Thomas Paine)
Martial law in the U.S.? All I can say is woe betide whoever tried it. This country would explode. Complain as we might (and as we should) about the poor quality of many of our leaders, if you had the military exercising domestic power on the streets it wouldn't be but a few days before there were major troubles.
I think the U.S. has done a fairly good job on the crime front. All that needs to be done is to "stay the course." Like many other things, crime follows an "80/20 rule," i.e., 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people. I think the single most effective anti-crime measure is the "three strikes" laws in many states, whereby on the third felony the criminal goes to prison for life. These laws, along with tougher sentencing procedures, were passed in reaction to the crime wave of the 1970s and 1980s. People finally got tired of it and acted.
This has taken all kinds of career criminals off the streets here. What also helped in the 1990s was when the Clinton administration funded something north of 50,000 new police officers (the numbers are disputed -- Clinton said it was 100K, his opponents said no more than 45K). Between those two things plus having built enough prisons to hold the criminals, cities in the U.S. are safer than at any time in my memory. It's really remarkable. The change in New York City is nothing short of miraculous. I saw it "before" and have been there many times "after." Truly amazing. Their former mayor, Rudolph Guiliani, deserves a lot of credit, and so does their former police commissioner, Bratton, who dramatically professionalized law enforcement there.
There have been lots of changes everywhere. I had reason (long story) to sit in on a municipal court here in Seattle the other day, and I have to say that I came away pretty impressed. Folks, nothing's perfect but at least around here they sure didn't seem to be screwing around the day I was there. People were getting some pretty stiff yet fair penalties for some pretty small offenses. I was told that this is because, some years back, the voters in Washington State forced a major tightening in the system here. I walked out of there thinking something's right with the world.
Finally, crime rates in the U.S. have fallen in the past 10 years not risen. This progress has not been uniform -- we're too big of a country for everything to move in one direction. There's still more work to be done. I think about one-third of the prison inmates are salvageable with rehabilitation and re-education, the challenge being how to pick that one-third while keeping the rest locked up where they belong. It's pretty expensive to keep someone in prison. Not only the direct cost, but the lost productivity of someone sitting there and doing nothing. It's getting to that one-third that's the challenge.
The other issue with prisons is that rape is a huge problem. I'm about as harsh on crime as anyone I know (and certainly more so than my fellow "liberal Democrats"), but I don't think that being raped in prison should be part of the sentence like it tends to be today. Most of these people are going to get out, and having this happen to them while inside is a virtual guarantee of repeat offenses by a very angry person. So that's a problem that can and should be revisited and worked on. There are ways to handle that, and interestingly enough the most effective anti-rape program exists in the San Francisco jail. Guffaw, guffaw ... but apparently they've figured out how to stop about 90% of it. Someone should take a close look at what they're doing there and see if it could work elsewhere.
On crime: I have a neighbor two doors down. A big black Goerge Foreman looking retired Sgt.
Well as I said he is retired, last year btw. In my neighborhood we are middle class, not upper middle, not lower middle, just in the middle. Well most people here when they retire have their houses paid off and usually get themselves a toy to enjoy retirement, boat, sports car or motorcycle.
Well this guy bought a Mustang, top of the line, convertable, chrome. It wasn't 2 weeks and you hear this screaming and thrashing. This punk 17 year old with a cordless drill was taking his chrome off and old George caght him and was beating him retarded. The fireman next door to him was choking him trying to get him to release the boy with a shovel handle but he kept grinding his face into the pavement, I came out late and caught his old lady tossing a bucket of water on him and like a dog he let go and off ran this punk kid. Police came, no one saw much, I say the kid was 17 because a little hoodlum here was upset because his friend was beaten up. But that is Whitey style justice.
Last December some of you may remember the dopehead who destroyed displays in a store and attacked the pharmacy clerc I was in, I chased him and Whiteyized him, when the crowd converged I played it like and I was looking out for his safety till the police got there. Too bad his ankle got broken on the curb. The lady he hit was late 60's who just asked him if she could help him.
Let them call me a rebel and I welcome it, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of demons were I to make a whore of my soul. (Thomas Paine)
We are fast becoming a lawless society in the UK, you know the feeling a lot are wrongdoers but get off Scott Free, some refuse to buy car insurance, road tax and have no licences and if they can't afford to buy a car they nick one.
Road rage, shopping trolley rage, ever more vandalism, attitude problems.
Well with 5 years rigid discipline that martial law would bring I think we could knock this little old country of ours back in shape again. Rowlocks to the EC and PC a little self discipline is what is needed. A few troops on our streets instead of Downtown Basrah backed up by police and God help anyone who got out of line.
A military style prison run on Colchester or Shepton Mallett lines would make those turds thinking of causing a bit of aggro to have second thoughts.
Bring it on I say, ten shun! By the left (wwwwaaaaiiitttt for it) quick march.
Spannerman wrote:We are fast becoming a lawless society in the UK, you know the feeling a lot are wrongdoers but get off Scott Free, some refuse to buy car insurance, road tax and have no licences and if they can't afford to buy a car they nick one
I've been reading a lot about how your crime rates have now surpassed ours, and have seen the response in the form of more cameras and surveillance etc. I look at it and think hey, why don't they just send more people to prison for a longer period of time? I understand that something similar is happening with crime on the European continent. Really unfortunate, because the solutions are no different now than they ever were: Lock 'em up.
The problem in the UK is that the punishment never matches the crime. Young thugs are given warning after warning and have often notched 40/50 crimes before any form of serious action is taken against them. Now if they are not going to lock them up then bring back the stocks or the birch, I know it is a nice idea but it will never happen. Even in one of the American states they had system where they convicted had to parade around the town with placards around their neck listing their crimes so that every one would know them and just what they had done. It is a pity that the young thugs do not have their property taken by the State or Courts to repay their victims. If they took every thing they owned except for one lot of clothes and sold it all including their mobile phone and walkmans and that should make them think twice before smashing things up or stealing from people.
Sounds like you could be a cult leader mate!! Do they get a badge saying "I've been Whiteyed"?
I can imagine all these little tossers meeting up late at night when one of them rocks up with his face all smacked in...
Dude 1: "Dude"
Dude 2: "Bube" (speech impediment due to a fat lip and broken nose)
Dude 1 : "Whiteyed?"
Dude 2: "Yeb"
Dude 1: "Welcome to the club"
Drums beating, colours flying and bayonets fixed...
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Tab wrote:The problem in the UK is that the punishment never matches the crime. Young thugs are given warning after warning and have often notched 40/50 crimes before any form of serious action is taken against them.
Yeah, that's what was happening over here, too. The social worker wing of the Democratic Party got too much power in the '60s and '70s and started handing out wrist slaps. The mechanisms were ingenious. For a while there it seemed as if anyone could cop an insanity defense. Did a lot of damage, and finally the public brought it to a halt. We're still fighting the battles though, because to control crime you've got to spend money on courts and prisons and police. There are no quick fixes. It's a lot of unglamorous work by unglamorous people in unglamorous places, just slogging through and doing their duty. Takes time to turn it around.
Even in one of the American states they had system where they convicted had to parade around the town with placards around their neck listing their crimes so that every one would know them and just what they had done.
That sort of thing is usually done by some publicity-hungry judge. I tend to disagree with it, because if the miscreant is a hard-core criminal it won't matter but if the miscreant is salvagable a public humilition might be too much. It's sort of like being raped in jail. For some of these people I say, "It's about time." But then I think about what will happen when they get out.
It is a pity that the young thugs do not have their property taken by the State or Courts to repay their victims. If they took every thing they owned except for one lot of clothes and sold it all including their mobile phone and walkmans and that should make them think twice before smashing things up or stealing from people.
I like the idea of restitution a whole lot, but I wonder about the practicality. Most criminals are poor. The sort of jobs available to ex-offenders barely pay the rent and food, so I suppose if you forced them to pay restitution you could have people committing new crimes to reimburse the victims of old ones. That said, yes I would take away the damn Walkmans, and as a condition of probation I would forbid them from ever listening to rap music. I would have the rap music penalty be double if you're white.
Last edited by snyder on Fri 06 Aug, 2004 9:15 pm, edited 3 times in total.
The problem with discussing crime is that data and final analyses get tallied on a yearly basis, so if you pick up on a recent increase or decrease, it's likely based on news reports and private conversations and empirical in nature.
The Bay Area for instance has seen violent crime increase in the past two years especially. The CHP (Highway Patrol) was called in to assist Oakland PD in patrolling the streets.
In recent months, since the beginning of this year, the criminal overflow went to safer (for them) streets, over in San Francisco.
I could say I noted an increase in property damage as well as drug dealing in my own neighborhood recently (my car was broken into) but this may be temporary (school's are out).
Homicide is definitely up though, and consistent. Of course, there are also survivors of assaults with deadly weapons.
The trend seems to parallel economic downswings, and we are currently experiencing yet another one locally. Naturally: this is my perception based on what I observe and read.
I don't entirely trust the FBI's annual crime report (the UCR I believe) because local police department, which provide data to the Bureau actually engage at times in something similar to creative accounting. For instance, an assault which normally would be classed as a felony (say, if a weapon was involved) gets downgraded to a misdemeanor assault.
That in turn makes one wonder whether a number of homicides don't get cleared as 'suicides'.
The reason the do so is to not endanger federal funding to their municipality and draw the fed's attention:
"Hi, I'm agent so-and-so of the FBI. Looks like your department's got a management problem..."
From there to a takeover is a small step.
Frank, I used to deal with a lot of economic statistics and remember talking to a whole lot of very smart people about the obvious flaws I had found. They would tell me that yes, they are flawed and in some cases very badly so. But they've always been flawed, so the basis of comparison still exists. I know it made sense, but I was never very comfortable with that defense.
I am waiting to see someone come up with "Felon-Free" zones. If you have a violent felony record you would wind up banned from that area, like a zoning law.
Not that it would keep criminals from being anywhere anymore than illegal aliens. Just waiting to see the legistation pop-up. You know it is due.
Figure it will start when some bright boy figures out you cannot have crime without criminals, and starts "no-criminal"ing the high crime areas.
Then I suppose it would keep popping up and eventually zoning all the criminal history folks into a chunk of Nevada desert. Sort of like the nuke waste site at Yucca Mountain. Sort of a people hazardous waste site.
But I guess that was already all tried in Austriala by the Brits, huh?
Crime stats are sort of funny (not ha-ha funny, but wtf funny) things on the front end. Most law enforcement agencies know to keep them lower by refusing to take the reports. Seen it myself on some fairly serious crime.
How about police reaction times should be slower and American citizens well armed and lawyers bounced out of the bar for thinking of a civil lawsuit on the criminals behalf?
Let them call me a rebel and I welcome it, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of demons were I to make a whore of my soul. (Thomas Paine)
