Why does the USA have so many people in jail?

Oh my. Well that's a valid position, but one I would personally disagree with. I do agree that revenge can be used to create a form of justice, but I do not believe justice should be based on or functions under a paradigm of revenge. I thought it was to deal with threats to people's rights. No matter who you kill, if you kill then you are a threat and need to be dealt with to reduce that threat.Some may feel personal justice if the matter of the dealing with the threat ends in some equal penalty (pain) for the criminal, but social justice is removing those who are willing to be unjust to others from positions to do so.Like I said though, that's my take on it. I see what you are saying and it could certainly be viewed that way.

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holmes
"Some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." (Lovecraft)

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It produces justice. How is that unproductive?

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Maybe sometimes it does.I think that much of the time it just gratifies the base, childish instinct to lash out when injured.Revenge has nothing to do with reason or logic.

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No, it does. It punishes offenders and acts as a deterrent in many cases. And it's a crucial step that heals victims

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Revenge doesn't heal. It is merely a fulfilled desire to cause pain upon those who caused you pain.Revenge is the act of sinking to the level of the one who injured you. It is as far from healing and moving on with your life as you can get. You become no better than those who made you a victim.Justice, however, does heal.We know that the death penalty does not deter crime.

Ugh, this is going to throw things way off topic. I'll make my points short. There is no evidence for such a thing as children being emotionally incapable of dealing with a sex act. They engage in it by themselves with themselves and others. Neither is something inherently violent because one engages in some activity for which a person is not fully cognizant. Children are certainly not emotionally capable of dealing with religion (as is shown by the vast numbers of people with problems associated with religion) yet taking a kid to church is not an act of violence... although now that I think about it there are usually a lot of crying children dragged in there anyway.As for your latter statement, while it might fulfill the category of rape according to law, that does not make all instances the same as forced violent sexual activity, and indeed makes little sense given the wide variety of laws on this subject. The line of age of consent is arbitrary and does not reflect any underlying reality of inherent harm or violence. If you have an issue with that, open a thread, or consult my Rind study thread within the Coffee House (so we don't pull this thread any further off topic).I would agree that the feeling of the adult is not nearly as important as the feeling of the child. That is borne out by studies on the subject. When I mentioned minimum security isolated areas, I meant for people that complusively commit violent acts against others. I was referring to child rapists, but not all those who have been convicted of statuatory rape because they had sex with children.I agree with tracking and other supervision there is less problems, but then marking is superfluous. Branding a group of people on the basis of unwarranted fears is bigotry against a group of people. I agree that in the increasingly sex-obsessed-vilified culture adults who have sex with children are equated with those who violently abuse children and so part of a second class. That does not mean it is real.There is no evidence that sexual activity inherently harms children, nor that it is inherently undesired. That is merely a cultural belief. It is even trackable (like a meme). This is not to say that many or most will want it, or that most or all instances are desired and not harmful. What evidence suggests is that children do have interests in sex, engage in sexual acts, and sometimes do have sex with adults. The level of harm is generally correlated with feelings of wanting to do it (whether you think they are "ready" or not).Here is a concrete example. There was a teacher (Laterneau?) who had sex with a young boy. He was insistent that he did want her. We jailed her and put him through all sorts of hell. Throughout that time they insisted they wanted each other and tried to see each other. Years later, when he was no longer a minor, he got legal restrictions dropped and now they are married (apparently quite happy). You suggest she needs to be stamped and monitored and kept away from all children. I think that would be unnecessary and sort of repulsive. It would be unjust.I see a large gap between her and someone who forced a kid to do something they were uncomfortable with and felt horrible for doing. In the past gays and jews were treated to the same assumptions by societies. That pedophiles are the current class does not make the same types of assumptions valid. While certainly victims of violent rape can be devastated for long periods of time, it is usually linked to the violence involved and not the sexual content. There is also evidence that children recover from this as they do with other traumas, and that some do not view sex (without violence) as traumatic at all. Please don't take this as some sort of apologetics, I am just giving you what the state of evidence is.I have no idea if nonrapists (those who do not engage in physically violent behavior) repeat their behavior over and over again. My guess is they might, but so did gays and masturbators when those were considered antisocial deviant activities capable of harming self and others. That's generally what minorities are, people who like to do things that others don't like. Its no suprise that they want to continue even after punishment for who they are.I think crimes should be based on factual analysis and evidence is not supportive of equations between pedophiles and child rapists. (Before this gets further off track I'll repeat something I've had to say every time this comes up, I think there are a basis for laws restricting sex between minors and adults, just not for the reasons currently used, and some cases would be allowed),This thread is about why we have so many in jail and persecution of sexual minorities is a nice growing population. I don't believe in treating the justice system this way. You have a valid point of view, just not one I share. I believe sentences should match the nature of the threat posed, so as to separate the compulsive violent offender from society. For those that are not compulsive, then to temporarily separate in order to direct them back into society without the issues (or with the skills) necessary to avoid further activity. Thanks and I hope my second reply did not rub you the wrong way. I am not about to try and convince you that you should like pedophiles, and indeed you can loathe them as much as overt child rapists. I will not argue against that at all. My only concern is how society uses its judicial system and so how everyone is treated by it.In this case I do not believe that evidence supports your claims, and so I do believe the judicial system (and society) should draw a line between the two groups with regard to how they should be treated.This message has been edited by holmes, 04-08-2006 04:11 PMThis message has been edited by holmes, 04-08-2006 04:13 PM

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holmes
"Some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." (Lovecraft)

Well, not every crime is committed by a person who needs to be rehabilitated, so clearly rehabilitation can't form the basis of our justice system. A man who steals cars after a life of poverty and desperation and a lack of employable skills surely needs rehabilitation and training in useful skills.But the man who, say, loses his job unexpectedly, finds his car damaged in the parking lot, goes home early and finds his wife in bed with another man - snaps - and commits a murder? Rehabilitation? It was a crime of passion, a once-in-a-lifetime mistake he's not likely to make again. Does he need to be rehabilitated? Of course not. But he does need to be punished; revenge needs to be taken for the victim.We have a saying - "the punishment should fit the crime." What is that if not a statement of proportional vengance? In what sense a threat? Just because one kills, doesn't mean one is going to kill again. There a many murderers we certainly don't expect to kill again.Some murderers have no need for rehabilitation, and we have nothing to fear from recidivism. We punish them anyway out of vengance for their victims. I think we're both right. Justice can be rehabilitating; it can be a tool of vengance, too. I guess in a democracy we can craft our laws to suit both purposes.

Again, you have a valid position, and this is primarily a difference in taste, but I'll explain where I might disagree or vary. I absolutely agree with that. In fact I'll add that not every crime is commited by a person who can be rehabilitated, or that we should bother rehabilitating due to resource demands.I believe the basis for a justice system should be maintaining peace and harmony within civilization based on preserving/protecting individual's rights. That may sound a bit flower-childy but its an iron fist in a velvet glove.Revenge often begins a cycle of vengeance which is not useful for maintaining peace, nor preserving individual rights. This is a nitpick but I do think such a person needs some rehabilitation. They need to learn skills to deal with reality. The reality is people do cheat, and one can't be allowed to blow others away for that. And there is a measure of restitution which can be done, on top of that.That said, I'm sure you can come up with an example of a person who does not need rehabilitation. But in that case I probably don't think serving time is useful. Heheheh... well it all depends on your point of view of what punishment means. You are correct that in its common meaning it is proportional vengeance. It doesn't have to though and I'm one to argue that saying is a bit of an anachronism. "Sentencing should fit the crime" would be better. Actually that was an overstatement. My mistake. Clearly people can kill enemies in combat and in self defense and that does not indicate a common threat.However, if we are talking about people that have intentionally killed another, whether for passion or for gain, then that person (to my mind) is a threat. They have violated the rights of another in one of the most extreme ways and while one can say the situation they were in is unlikely to happen again, I don't think society should treat it that way. What if it does?The person needs to deal with what they did, take responsibility for it, and get training in skills to avoid that kind of reaction in the future. Here's my problem, once justice is used for vengeance one applies a bureaucratic machine to what is inherently an emotion-based response. I realize you are arguing that action is different that emotion, but you have to admit that the action is based on the emotional needs of people. You even discussed it as vengeance for.I don't see how that will work very well, and it doesn't really seem to. Rage and intolerance set into expectations (X punishment just isn't good enough for MY victimization), and eventually one is running a system of oppression seeking victims to placate the community. This is not to mention the lowering of expectations (and behaviors) of those within the system. A system based on vengeance tends to get thuggy.My feeling is that while I agree with you that vengeance is natural and can serve purposes, it is one that a gov't is NOT good at handling and should be kept away from.I suppose a good example is 911. The people of America wanted vengeance. All those directly involved were dead. But the US gov't tried to placate the desire for revenge within the populace and so went after anyone remotely connected with terrorism (and of course settle some personal vengeance scores of their own). If they remained focused on threat and preservation of security, downplaying revenge, we might have seen a more limited war and less atrocities from our own side.

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holmes
"Some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." (Lovecraft)

Isn't that the truth.
Vengence is so constructive.
We have won so many Muslim hearts and minds we can't count them...

Do you really think more border security is going to solve this ?
Do you think longer, higher fences are a solution?
The government would go (even more) broke executing this futile experiment.
Where there is a labor demand, it will be met. So the minimum wage has been set too high ? That’s how this mess got started ?
Good grief. Let me tell you something, TC. If you paid American laborers $10 an hour to pick citrus you still wouldn’t have anyone show up. Nobody. You don’t an appreciation of the situation at all. All you have is conservative, defensive, protectionist sentiments. What a total crock of BS. You think that your punative, skinflint welfare system is a reason people want to emigrate to this country? Or your over-rated, price-gouging medical system ? Your tax dollars don’t pay a PITTANCE toward health care, welfare, or your pathetic excuse for a public education system comared to any other respectable developed country. You can’t get ANY kind of decent medical care in this country without health insurance coverage or big bucks (because they actually charge you *more* if you don’t have HI). I submit that the burden placed on our ”horrifically for-profit med system’ by illegal aliens is virtually nil given that vanishingly few are likely to have medical insurance. They would probably do as I did as an uninsured post-doc - travel to Mexico to get the same service at 1/3 the price ! The potential for fraud is not justification for abandoning a policy in principle.
It only points the way for fraud recognition and prevention. You have such a one-sided view. Firstly, there really is no “free health care” in this country, and to the extent that any type of medical service that might even be partially free, it is NOT a reason why people emigrate here, nor is it a justifiable reason for us to resent their presence here. The reason they come here is to work, not to feed off our laughably depauperate social support systems or for ”free prison cells’. You are completely ignoring the contributions these people make to our society. Not at all. I believe immigration should be selective. But the presence of these people mostly in EMPLOYED situations in the US underlines the fact that we actually need them economically. Sure, lets screen them and authorize them selectively, but right now we are scaring them all into the woodwork. Our current system is not working and apparently forcing too many would-be immigrants ”underground’. Remember, they are only here because some American is willing to hire them. Why don’t you rally your ire against all the hotel chains hiring undocumented cleaning ladies? These people are useful and if we really want to track them, know who they are, and understand why they think they deserve a right to be here, don’t we owe them a chance to prove themselves? I mean, isn’t it better for our own community that we not ostracise them any further? This doesn’t mean we have to open or borders without limits. The proposed House bill would make it a felony to assist an illegal alien. Aren’t you just the insightful Machiavelli of modern Eastern Hemisphere political strategy ?That is so pathetically nave.
Don't you see it would be mutually beneficial for Mexico and the US to defuse the problem? The strength of Mexico’s future lies in retaining laborers within its borders. They need to avoid the ”brain drain’ Canada has faced for the past 2 decades. Then look first to your market.
The same applies to the illegal alien situation.
Without work for them, they would not come.
If Americans were willing to do this work, illegals would not be a problem.
In most cases, they are not.The North American Free Trade Agreement has been good for North America because it has been the first step toward eliminating some of the continental inequities that create migration incentives for working people. If you really want to stem the onslaught of immigration from Mexico, the best approach is to help Mexico advance economically so they have a stronger local economy to employ their own people. Trust me, they aren’t coming here for the fast food and free medical. As their economy advances, so will their salaries and standards of living. The same thing happened in Japan and Taiwan. These places are no longer producers of 'cheap goods'. But their citizens are not so motivated to emigrate.

First, I take my statement back about you seeming to be reasonable!

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Do you really think more border security is going to solve this ?
Do you think longer, higher fences are a solution?

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You obviously are not reading my posts, and instead are taking a typical liberal response: emmotional. I told you a fence is not the solution. I told you that securing the border is a first step, not the total solution.

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Where there is a labor demand, it will be met.

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And water seeks its own level, and that's why it's a good idea to stop a leak in the boat.
There is 14% unemployment of Americans in the entry job market, and 4.7% overall. There are people available in America, but the labor rates can be undercut by going with illegal aliens. Teenagers used to cut the grass and work at fast food restaurants. Now they don't have many entry level jobs.

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If you paid American laborers $10 an hour to pick citrus you still wouldn’t have anyone show up. Nobody. You don’t an appreciation of the situation at all.

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Let the market dictate what people are willing to pay for labor and for the fruit. That model worked fine until Kennedy, Clinton and Bushes let the floodgates stay open.
I suggest that you get out the midwest and move to the border states to get an "appreciation of the situation".
P.S. If we eliminate all the farm subsidies, maybe the demand for farm laborers would decrease. Do you support the elimination of this corporate welfare, too?

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You think that your punative, skinflint welfare system is a reason people want to emigrate to this country? Or your over-rated, price-gouging medical system ?

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It is one reason, yes. That is part of the "opportunity". Any why is the medical system price-gouging as you say? Maybe it's because of so many free services they obligated to pay. These free health services, which you are so denying and igorant of, are a FACT. The illegals do not need insurance, because they just show up at the emergency hospitals and clinics where by law they must be helped.
Someone has to pay (i.e. the taxpayers and the paying customers).

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The potential for fraud is not justification for abandoning a policy in principle.
It only points the way for fraud recognition and prevention.

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It's not just "potential", it is reality. Fraud is already occurring with fake records of all sorts. And if that is not enough, there is an entry-level method to getting started in America.
Do you know what a "Matricula" card is?
It is a Mexican invention of an ID card for illegals in America to circumvent the IDs cards (like drivers license) of America. The Hispanic lobbyists have done a good job of getting local governments to increasingly accept these cards for services.

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Aren’t you just the insightful Machiavelli of modern Eastern Hemisphere political strategy ?

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That is so pathetically nave.
Don't you see it would be mutually beneficial for Mexico and the US to defuse the problem? The strength of Mexico’s future lies in retaining laborers within its borders. They need to avoid the ”brain drain’ Canada has faced for the past 2 decades.

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(ignoring the unfounded personal attack... Admin should have given you the yellow card)
"Brain drain"?!? The invaders are not the well-educated, but are the unemployed and criminals.

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If Americans were willing to do this work, illegals would not be a problem.

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Again, you live under the myth that corporate America and politicians have been selling to keep their situations looking better in the short term.Consider the long term effects. If you grant this amnesty program, the invasion will not stop and actually even more will come. This will create an overabundance of a poverty class with a different language and culture that will inevitably lead to more problems in the future.
Based on the polls I've seen, most Americans understand the problem, and want the invasion stopped, incentives curtailed, and criminal element deported. The nation seems split on deportation, mainly because of the costs.

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If you really want to stem the onslaught of immigration from Mexico, the best approach is to help Mexico advance economically so they have a stronger local economy to employ their own people.

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And your solution is to have their people work here, absorb our tax dollars, and export some of their earnings tax-free to Mexico? That builds THEIR country?? Throw money at the problem?
If that is not your solution, then offer one.

i live in a border state and i think you're right mad.i have done migrant farm work. americans are too worried about their manicures. they wouldn't do this crap if you paid them $20 an hour. i've done it. it's balls hard. i might do it again if you paid me $20 but i'm crazy. oh yes the poor doctors who might starve because occasionally the hospital has to provide a 10 cent tylenol or a 50 cent saline iv drip to some bastard immigrant who can't pay the 3000 dollars they charge for an er visit. gimme a break. yes the mexicans are conspiring to break us. it's not our war spending that's making us poor, it's the mexicans. WAR ON MEXICO! bush's economic policies are doing enough of that with plain old americans. not to mention what we're all doing to the black ghettos. we already have a growing poverty class and most of them don't speak proper english anyways. and the way you talk, we can't possibly go much further, because there's only about 3 mexicans still in mexico anyways. you want long term effects? how about we invest in the infrastructure of mexico so it's not such a godawful hellhole they want to escape so badly. that will give REAL long term effects. but noooo we can't give our almighty dollar to someone else. we have to pay for poor stupid upper class americans' tax cuts so they can bitch about having to hear someone speaking in a language they can't understand. that's my solution. and it seems smarter than yours. oh sure. we could lock them out. hell. we should shoot every hispanic we see because they might be illegal. how about all the jews that are sending money back to israel? can we shoot them too? and the asians sending money back to the children they can't afford to bring over? and the africans who left their mothers in squallor so they could hope to build something they could bring them to?but this is not going to make it better. they'll beat down every wall you put up for them until you make every developing country liveable. that's the problem here. americans are killing themselves in their excess while most of the world is starving to death. in developing countries, they're making war over false distinctions in society so that they can maintain enough resources for one side or the other. rich people in america get aids or tb and it all but goes away. poor people get it in africa or asia or wherever and they drop like flies. and we're worried about someone telling our big pharmaceutical companies that they have to give away their product and in so doing lose their profits and omg maybe they will only have 50 billion instead of 100 billion to share with their fatcat stockholders.
60% of americans are overweight. i think it was 30% that are obese. we have way too much money and way too much food and all we do is bitch about who is coming in to our country to steal our tax dollars to feed their starving families. unbelievable.

Well then take your beef to the American businesses hiring them.
Ask them if they are willing to hire only documented Americans.
They will tell you that, in many cases, Americans cannot be found that are willing to do many of the jobs done by immigrants, legal or otherwise, even if you increased the amount paid. The market DOES dictate what people are willing to pay. Your inference that immigrant laborers are depressing the value of work is simply wrong. The only reason there is any demand at all for unskilled immigrant labor in this country is because these are only crappy jobs the greed-driven American business community has been unable to outsource !Perhaps your memory of history is flagging, but immigrant labor didn’t start with Kennedy or Clinton - immigrants have been doing most of the crappy work in this country for over 100 years. Didn’t you get to read Grapes of Wrath in high school? The only difference is, now we want them to keep doing it without offering them any path to legitimacy or legal residency. I have lived in Florida and I also know the Brownsville area in Texas pretty well. I have also travelled extensively in Mexico and Latin America and speak fluent Spanish. Your unilateral projections of blame and resentment toward latin immigrants for problems you perceive in your own society appear xenophobic and unjustified. I don’t say we should open our doors to all would-be immigrants by any means, and I am in favor of a legal process for entry and deportation for violators, but I am not in favor of further criminalizing those who are already here and working, we are only going to put more people in jail where they won’t be able to make ANY contribution. Thinking like that is part of the problem we have so many people in jail - the point of this thread. We always seem hard at work creating new classes of criminals. This is getting OT, but yes, I believe all farm subsidies should be phased out. They distort the value of inputs and outputs in agriculture and do not encourage sound environmental management of agricultural resources, not to mention depressing the value of exports from developing countries that so desperately need to get a fair price for their cash crops. You are dreaming. Your medicine-for-profit system is not a draw for anyone, believe me. And you can’t get any kind of decent medical treatment without money, except for life-saving emergency room service for acute trauma patients. Not beyond immediate life saving interventions. Because the medical service industry is so profit-motivated, you can be sure THEY are the ones trying to deny services to anyone they can who doesn’t have insurance. They seem to do a good job of it from my experience, so you needn’t worry about some poor fruitpicker who happens to need a steel spike pulled out of him. I’m sure they’ll patch him up as cheaply as possible and send him home before he costs them any real money. Wake up call! The immigrants aren’t the reason your health care costs are sky high - it’s the parasitic health insurance industry that has consistently undermined any political will for a governtment run system that would be more equitable for everyone. Do you know that more than 1/3 of health care costs now are for ”administration’ alone? Health insurance companies now spend more money trying to shift responsibilty for claims to others than they actually pay out for providing health care. I see. So you have a predetermined image of immigrant ”invaders’ as ”unemployed criminals’. No chance some of them might be honest, hard-working people who just want a chance for a decent job and a place to call home?And yes, you are ignoring that this country’s economy and system of higher education has been a huge ”brain drain’ on foreign countries for years. They send all their best and brightest to university in the US and half of them never come home. A big part of the sustained strength of our economic and technological development has been contributed by these people. But in your tunnel vision you see only unemployed criminals. First, we’ve established it is not amnesty, just a pathway for them to work toward legality.
Secondly, it doesn’t do anything to change existing criteria for legal entry, so there is no justification to assume it would increase rates of illegal entry. Your tax dollars? Do you know how many of these people are paying into YOUR Social Security system without ever having a chance to collect on it? And if they are salaried, they get taxed on their income through withholding, the same as everyone else on salary - they just have no recourse to benefits and no chance to claim refunds.I am not saying throw money at the problem.
I am saying stop being so damn protectionist. You can’t wall out the world.
If we had spent even half the development funding in Mexico (where they like us) that we wasted in Iraq (where they don’t like us), the Mexican economy would already be stronger, with more employment, higher salaries, and with a bigger demand for American goods. We would have helped build a healthier neighbor economy. This is the only way to create long term wage equity across the border and raise their standards of living. It is economic inequality between neighboring nations that drives this type of immigration problem. You want to stop the wave of immigrants permanently, help their own country give them a reason to stay home. Otherwise, turn your ire on the big business interests that are profitting for illegal labor (the hotel industry comes to mind) but don’t blame the poor people looking for work and imply they are all useless criminals.

Well said. Now we're both likely to be branded with the scarlet letter....'L' for 'Liberal'.

No, not the "L" letter, the "C" letter .... for COMMUNISTS !!!! Hmmmm.... I just thought of a good compromise.
We could trade liberals to Mexico in return for laborers.I would love to respond to the five pages of text from the two of you, but instead I must leave it at that due to time constraints. I am surprised the Admin didn't move us to another thread.Back to OP topic a bit closer...Would you at least consider exporting the up-to-29% of prisoners in jail who are illegal aliens? (I still haven't seen a more accurate figure for illegal aliens than the Justice Dept's stat that 29% of prison population is non-citizen)

if their crimes aresomething other than being illegal, why are they in our jails in the first place?of course, sending them back would defeat my plan of foreign development; so perhaps we should keep them and count it as a loan to the respective foreign government which we collect when it has reached economic stability.and i'm not a communist. just a socialist. and hardly.This message has been edited by brennakimi, 04-10-2006 05:47 PM

I'm not an administrator... but this definitely is well below the maturity level we expect around here. (I think at least!)(Added by edit: I apologize if my humor detector is broken today and I took this the wrong way)This message has been edited by SuperNintendo Chalmers, 04-10-2006 09:14 PM

If someone here illegally is convicted of a crime, then yes, I am in favor of prompt deportation, although I understand there are also substantial costs associated with this approach. Also, there would seem to be some sort of international protocol, formal or informal, that all criminals do their time where they commit their crime and before they are deported. I was never sure why more countries didn't imediately deport non-native criminals to their countries of origin, but they don't seem to.I think our goal should be to treat working illegals with some humanity and offer them a path to legality through their honest hard work - the same path all immigrants have taken to become Americans in the past. We shouldn't assume they are all criminals. If you treat honest people like criminals for long enough you will be successful in turning them into criminals.