disclosure: I spent four and a half years in a state correctional facility as an inmate.
Reducing 3 strikes from minimum life to 25 is fine, but it does nothing to address the fact that expanding judicial discretion just gets you screwed in an election year. Theres nothing to keep people from getting multiple consecutive terms until its just the same as life.
The bill also doesnt address perpetual parole. When I was released after having served time, I was sentenced immediately to additional "parole" for a year and a half. This cuts into your ability to go to work in some cases (construction hours start early.) my job as an automotive mechanic started at 4 AM and school ended at 10. parole says i need to check in and be home by 6 pm, so i have to apply for extensions and variances every week. miss one and I go back to a jail term I technically already served.
$300 million dollars is nice for training, but training generally sucks in private prison and you have no recourse. For example, in a state run correctional facility you can learn shop math (trigonometry) and a trade. At the private prison I spent a year at (before it went bankrupt and transferred us all to state anyhow) my "education" consisted of painting the floor and laundry detail. you learn nothing, and surprise, are paid nothing because its education not work (work details like this in prison are supposed to be paid.)
as for the tampons and sanitary napkins, fine, its not like those were actually much of an issue from what i gather. Did you know inmates have to purchase things like soap and shit tickets? (toilet paper) There are freebies from commissary like those stab-proof pens for visitation, but use too many or upset a guard and youll get a strike for 'commissary abuse' and be restricted from buying things for a month or two. Ever wiped with a piece of receipt paper? not fun.
>The bill also doesnt address perpetual parole. When I was released after having served time, I was sentenced immediately to additional "parole" for a year and a half... parole says i miss one and I go back to a jail term I technically already served
I'm nitpicking one detail of your overall point here, but you didn't serve the time; that's why you're on parole. If you had served the full sentence there would be no parole.
So you pay an inconvenience tax in exchange for being released. If you violate those terms you go back to serve the remainder of your sentence.
No one is saying it's easy, or that there aren't aspects that couldn't be improved, but I don't see the overarching problem here.
The overarching problem is that it is usually excessively inconvenient, to the point that parolees are being set up to fail. Rather than being designed to keep people on the straight and narrow, many systems appear designed to funnel people back into prison. When they get there they then face the remainder of their original sentence, meaning that it was effectively EXTENDED by the length of time they were on parole rather than shortened.
Sure, and we can debate that, but it's not what I was responding to. The idea that he had technically served his sentence, but is on parole, makes no sense.
The opening line says he served 4.5 years. The parole started after he was released, after having served his time.
edit: after more research it seems my understanding of parole's place in the criminal justice system may have been incomplete. Also there is a distinction between parole and probation that I had never noticed.
I’m afraid you’re completely wrong. Look up mandatory parole in Colorado for example. I as well as thousands of other former inmates are required to serve mandatory parole AFTER completing a sentence.
> I'm nitpicking one detail of your overall point here, but you didn't serve the time; that's why you're on parole.
Colorado has mandatory parole period that applies on top of the base sentence of imprisonment for felonies. They may not be unique in doing something like that; the US has more than 50 different criminal justice systems, and most generalizations about them that aren't federal Constitutional mandates have exceptions.
Why is this being downvoted? It's the same thought I had. Parole is early release. You are not on parole if you serve your full sentence.
I don't know how good behavior credits factor into this. Typically a prisoner can get a significant reduction in time served for good behavior, but I don't know if that really means early parole or actually full release from the sentence.
I agree. Actually active prisoners should be allowed to vote too. Especially when prison populations are factored into district representation population formulas.
When I was released after having served time, I was sentenced immediately to additional "parole" for a year and a half.
Isn't parole duration limited to one's original sentence? If one is sentenced to, say, 3 years but released after 2 years with 8 months' parole, that's not "additional" time per se.
The multiple consecutive terms business has always bothered me. I read about somebody who made the poor decision to drive while drunk and high, and ended up killing somebody. He ended up being charged with something like 6 charges--manslaughter, manslaughter w/alcohol, manslaughter w/drugs, reckless endangerment, etc. Since all of these had minimum prison terms and were served consecutively, he ended up going away for 25+ years. It doesn't seem right to charge someone for 6 different crimes as the result of one bad judgement.
> When I was released after having served time, I was sentenced immediately to additional "parole" for a year and a half.
Could you expand on this? It sounds like you served your full sentence, then got additional parole on top of that. And, 'sentenced' - without a new trial/charges?
No parole, but there is probation, halfway house, home confinement, supervised release, and even the occasional furlough.
And his gripes about parole can certainly apply to US Probation Officers, US Marshalls, and other BOP designates, depending on the one you get assigned.
I've done time with a state system and also with the federal system. I decided during my second incarceration to get my act together and I cakewalked my release supervision.
The post-release supervision is there for a reason. People in prison talk about how they're going to have a blast when they get out. Live it up. Do exactly the kind of things that led to them breaking the law in the first place.
I got a saying for those people who cry about prison and cry about the "bs" they gotta put up with on release: "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time."
I'd argue that one of the reasons we have so many violations of basic human dignity in our prison system is that Congress has gone out of its way to prevent inmates from suing for their rights.
Nobody likes lawsuits or lawyers, but judicial remedies are often the only option for relief that inmates have. When you take that away from them, they are at the absolute mercy of the prison bureaucracy.
Your constitutional rights have been violated? Tough, go fill out a grievance form.
I think part of it is the underlying costs of putting so many people in prison then having to eat the "for profit" costs of supplying them with tampons and napkins - i.e. necessities. Even then, you can't even do something like hand out diva cups and reusable clothes?
"The bill, which is expected to be debated in the House of Representatives on Wednesday, would only affect federal prisoners accounting for about 10% of the total US prison population."
The other 90% of prisoners do not necessarily have them. It really isn't a thing already, even with this.
Maybe a judge could apply due process to force private prisons to apply the same protections for prisoners similar to how the federal govt, specifically District of Columbia, was forced to integrate schools in Bolling v. Sharpe. The 14th amendment should apply if it was a state prison but being federal makes it different.
While this is definitely a factor, I'd like to point out that there is a whole range of humiliating policies(like the fact that you may have to go without toilet paper for bad behaviour) that affects men and women alike, and then the fact that women can be just as bad towards other women too. I wouldn't be surprised if a woman administrator made the same decisions because degrading prisoners is considered a good thing in many places.
It's actually not true, and that's what makes the lack of these protections so terrible.
It's women, who wrote guidelines about how to treat women, and came up with guidelines worse than guidelines that a bunch of old stodgy men in congress came up with yesterday.
That's a real problem. And it's a problem that we need to try to solve in "Second Step".
I mean, why even have female administrators and wardens putting this stuff together, if they are just going to get their cushy jobs and sit there and try to out "man" the men? The entire reason you're there is to supposedly bring a different sensibility.
What's unstated in placing those requirements in this bill, is how much of a dismal failure our hiring programs have been in bringing in people, (men OR women), with different sensibilities. Whether they are male or female, black, white, asian, or hispanic, these positions seem to attract the same sort of people. People who look at the way things are done, and don't see any problem with it.
We need to start looking past identity politics and start seeing that issue.
Like the one requiring pregnant prisoners NOT to be shackled? You know, the entire First Step reform bill.
Problem isn't white men, but the team we placed in charge of federal prisons in terms of administrators and wardens. There have been literally hundreds of them while this treatment was going on. Male and female. Black, white, asian, and hispanic.
Things like this used to be what the officer's discretion was for. It used to be that "inhumane treatment" was used on a case by case for prisoners who would take advantage if treated normally (shackles for the prisoner who will run if not shackled, toilet paper instead of tampons for the prisoner that will do I don't know what if given tampons, etc.). Over time these things became the default and decent treatment became the exception rather than the norm. Therefore we didn't used to need a law but we do now.
I'd like to know what mechanism any one Congressmember could use to block a bill without being Chairman of a committee that must be navigated. The House doesn't have the "hold" mechanism that the Senate does.
Just a guess, but often politics is less about what gets done than it is about who gets to claim credit. Stalling until the next Congress could be someone either trying to take credit or offload blame, possibly not even the person or party seeming like the obstacle, since they trade favors. It could even be something as simple as being able to claim bipartisanship after the switch.
“We have been working on this bill in order to advance it, including working with DOJ and stakeholders to address issues with the language,” a Judiciary Committee aide said.
No idea at all. A sibling comment notes there some mushy statements about working with the DOJ. It's very, very hard to believe that Rep. Goodlatte is unique in his cares or communications with the DOJ about the impact of the bill. Occams razor points to something pettier.
This is a good step forward IMO. Life sentence was pretty harsh for 3 strikes on drug charges - 25 years is still a lot, but this sets the bar for the next iteration to keep getting lower
I have no idea if this is still the case, but I was surprised to learn about twenty years ago that Brazil’s constitution prevented anyone from getting a prison sentence longer than 35 years. Brazil also doesn’t have capital punishment.
Most violent crimes are committed by young men, say from teenagers to early twenties. I don’t know anything about Brazil’s juvenile justice system, but a twenty year old who gets a 35 year sentence is very unlikely to be a violent person at 55. And if not, another 35 year sentence puts him away until he’s 90. It doesn’t take very many prison sentences like that to completely get rid of the risk of recidivism.
I've always found it fascinating how people are still willing to risk life imprisonment for a third strike after getting caught twice already. It really boggles my mind. I'll never quite understand this mentality. Whether the punishment is life, 25 years, or something else - I just don't understand how the risk/reward ratio plays out in their mind.
I get that one argument is that many have "nothing to lose". And yeah, maybe they are very poor, unemployed, without a proper education or skills so their situation doesn't look great. But to then say "well, doesn't matter if I end up in prison for the rest of my life is truly mind-boggling.
> I just don't understand how the risk/reward ratio plays out in their mind.
For the most part, the same as in most people’s minds for most decisions—if it plays out at all, it does so only as a post hoc rationalization for decisions not made based on risk/reward calculus in the first place, which conveniently juggles facts to support the action already undertaken.
Rational choice theory is a nice model that has some use in modelling behavior in some domains in broad aggregates, but has little to do with how individual decisions are actually made.
Honestly, yes. I realize that response sounds stupid but we're talking about something pretty obvious. Like "hey, if we catch you selling drugs again you go to jail for the rest of your life." Why anyone would ever take that gamble is simply lost on me. I don't care how uneducated or unintelligent a person is - everyone who isn't very mentally handicapped can understand that. And they still do it. I just can't wrap my mind around it.
It's more that 3 strikes can happen all at once. The justice system isn't fair by a long shot. Hardly anyone is charged with a single crime, so usually the 3 strikes happen through a single instance.
Is that true? If so, I wasn't aware 3 strikes could happen all at once. I thought a strike was incurred at a given sentencing, which incorporates all the charges from a single crime.
> It's more that 3 strikes can happen all at once. The justice system isn't fair by a long shot. Hardly anyone is charged with a single crime, so usually the 3 strikes happen through a single instance.
Yeah, that's actually incredibly possible in our legal system, and it's incentivized by the plea bargaining system, because the more charges the prosecutor can pile on, the stronger her negotiating position.
Suppose you rob a bank with a gun, the old-fashioned way. Clearly, that's at least one crime: armed robbery. Now, usually brandishing a weapon is a crime in itself, and if you're brandishing it at people, that's also assault with a deadly weapon, and if you're threatening people, that might qualify as terroristic threat. Arguably, the single act of "waving a gun around and demanding money from the bank teller" has double jeopardy protection and it should only count as one of these three crimes. But what if you point the gun at more than one bank teller? What if you point it at the customers and demand that they get on the floor? I don't know. I'm not a lawyer.
Suppose things escalate and you, for example, don't even shoot the gun, you just pistol-whip someone. That's definitely an additional crime. It's an additional crime for each person you pistol-whip, let alone shoot. Probably some sort of aggravated assault or assault and battery type thing, depending on the laws in your particular state.
Let's imagine that during this bank robbery, someone dies. They don't even die of being pistol whipped. There's a little old lady at the bank who just wants to deposit her Social Security check, and here you come, screaming and yelling and pointing a gun in people's faces, and she dies of a heart attack. Was the heart attack caused by the stress of being in the middle of a bank robbery? Yes, and the medical examiner would rule the cause of death as "homicide". Which means, merely by virtue of robbing the bank in the first place, you are now guilty of felony murder.
Now, let's suppose you didn't just walk in the front door, like an idiot, and you instead did something more creative like crashing through a window. Breaking the window is probably a type of vandalism or malicious mischief, so let's add that on too. Likewise, if you fire a warning shot into the ceiling, like in the movies: lots of property damage there (and, of course, strict liability for anything or anyone else that stray bullet happens to run into.)
Let's talk about the gun. Is it an unregistered gun in a state that requires gun registration? Did you carry it concealed and loaded on your way into the bank without having a concealed carry permit? Did you buy a stolen gun from a fence instead of having an obvious paper trail at a legitimate gun dealer that has your name and ID on file? Probably a crime or two in there as well.
The getaway is its own unending font of possible crimes. Let's suppose you get your bag of cash, jump in your car, and drive away. If at any point in this process you're being pursued by the police, this constitutes resisting arrest. You're likely committing reckless driving, too. Obviously if you run over a person that's vehicular assault and felony murder again, but depending on what else you run into, you could also be guilty of animal cruelty, mailbox vandalism (actually a federal offense), damaging government property, just plain normal vandalism, and so forth, not to mention all the trespassing and moving violations you're undeniably committing as well.
Also, if you ever discussed this plan with anyone, there might be a case for conspiracy. It might not hold up in court or anything, but a clever prosecutor will pile this on anyway just to turn a witness against you or for cheap bargaining leverage.
i agree with the poor impulse control claim but beyond that, for people who feel disenfranchised by the system and as though they have no other qualities they can actually use to survive in society, at least wrt the concept of selling drugs, that is an extremely reliable way to make enough money in order to support your life and the pursuit of your desires. that being said, i do believe that anyone can improve their position in life if they stop allowing themselves to believe that they are completely limited by their societal status. however, as someone who struggles to integrate into society in any meaningful way and ultimately support myself, I do get how easy it is to convince yourself that there is no other choice other than what you currently have. it's a super toxic line of reasoning and antithetical to the pursuit of happiness as it were, but man its really easy to do. and as we all (likely) know, many humans tend to prefer to just do things the easy way and rely on what they know or are comfortable with
That's ok. The important thing is to recognize it exists. Too often, be it taxes on cigarettes or theft or laws like this, people apply their personal lifestyles instead of others.
It's really easy to rack up multiple crimes when you can't afford a good lawyer because they always throw the book. A lot of times "doing X while committing a felony" is also a felony.
People also forget that tons of petty crimes that are misdemeanors have felony equivalents and which one you're charged with is often up to the discretion of the prosecutor.
i'm not sure why it's difficult for you. perhaps you are doing a good job demonstrating how privilege impacts thought.
big scary retaliation can only really gain purchase against those who really perceive other options for themselves. if you don't perceive options, you're likely to just be resigned to what you see as your fate. it's not crazy to see prison as shelter and food, and far better than starving in a ditch.
we also cannot assume that people are in an emotionally and psychologically healthy position when deciding what risks are worth taking, or even that people are considering risks at all, or when they do that the risks are even perceived as optional.
Yep. Some people just don't think right. Their minds are broken.
The whole point of the 3-strikes laws is to acknowledge that rehabilitation is simply not possible with some people. Such people will forever be a hazard to society, and thus need to be separated from society.
Not meaning this in a combative fashion, but why is only what you think right in this case? I think there are plenty of people that were actually OK with the 3 strike penalty, and more that would be OK with 25 years. Why set the bar for the next iteration to keep getting lower? A large segment of the population does not agree with decriminalization of drugs as policy.
Personally I would be a fan of 3 strikes and you are committed to mandatory drug rehabilitation, and aren't let out until you are clean for x number of whatever amount of time seems fair and reasonable.
The 3-strikes law had an ostensible worthy purpose, which was to prevent incidents in which judges made ill-informed lenient sentencing decisions, which could happen through pure incompetency or ignorance. But like all simplifying algorithms, the downside was a sentencing system that was indifferent and uncompromising to absurdities, such as sentencing someone to life in prison no matter how relatively minor the first- and second- strikes were.
Even the name and implementation of the law -- "3 strikes" -- feels absurd. IIRC from the Congressional debate, the choice of 3 strikes is rooted in the familiarity of the term from America's pastime, not based out of an analysis of penalties and recidivism outcomes.
The problem of ill-informed lenient sentencing decisions was already dealt with by mandatory minimum sentences.
The 3-strikes laws serve a different purpose. The trouble is that some people simply won't get the message that crime is unacceptable. It doesn't matter how long we keep them in prison. Letting them out is like being an accomplice, because they are going to commit that crime. The only solution is to separate these criminals from society.
They are the same purpose and the same thing. 3-strikes is by its very definition a mandatory minimum sentencing guideline. Moreover, not every kind of felony has a mandatory minimum statute, whereas a broad range of serious crimes could qualify as part of 3-strikes sentencing.
It's true that some criminals may be irredeemable. The ideal is that only these criminals face the punishment intended by 3-strikes, the reality is that otherwise rehabilitatable criminals might be unduly punished. For example, prosecutors can use the statute to pressure a defendant to plead guilty or testify as state's witness, with no ability for judges to act as a check on sentencing if the defendant goes to trial and loses. And of course, there are the criminals who get life in prison for minor, usually drug-related crimes [0].
1. It can reform. This is often officially implied by names that contain the word "corrections".
2. It can satisfy victims who would otherwise enact their own idea of justice.
3. It can be a deterrent for others.
4. It can be a deterrent for that same person, if later released.
5. It can protect society by making the attackers be dead or physically contained in cages, and thus away from society. It's hard to rape kids when you are all alone in a concrete box.
6. It can fulfill a religious duty.
You seem to think that numbers 2 and 6 are all we get out of the deal. This is not the case. We get all of the above. With the possible exception of number 6, all of them are beneficial.
I'm pretty sure that number 5 is what the American system is mainly about. If you can't behave, you can't be with the rest of us.
The purpose of prison should be to keep dangerous people out of society. It costs society to keep people in prison, so naturally this makes sense - in a way it's our tax for the privilege of not having dangerous people around.
Non-violent offenders should not be in prison. Punishing people with prison doesn't fix the problem, better mental health services and education (real education, not lies about drugs == devil) does much better. If you want to punish drug users, you're right (and in morally questionable standing imo) and you'll have to pay for that, but if you want to reduce the drug problem you're not in the right.
> The purpose of prison should be to keep dangerous people out of society
Whatever happened to purpose of prison being rehabilitation? I mean... they are called correctional facilities. Are we so far gone now that we think criminals are beyond redemption and change?
> Whatever happened to purpose of prison being rehabilitation?
You can't change someone's behavioral tendencies against their will. The criminal has to choose for himself to change and to be rehabilitated. The most you can do is to provide the resources and support he needs to carry out that decision once he's made it.
What you can do is (a) provide a disincentive for committing crimes and (b) separate people with a known tendency for committing crimes from the rest of society. Prison and the death penalty both accomplish these goals, but prison is cheaper and more reversible.
Yeah, and that sucks, and I'd like it to change. But I don't think turning American prisons into Norwegian-style resort hotel prisons is going to magically convince every American criminal to turn into a productive citizen.
> But I don't think turning American prisons into Norwegian-style resort hotel prisons is going to magically convince every American criminal to turn into a productive citizen.
I think you're arguing against a strawman here. I don't think most people who support moving from the current system towards a more Norwegian-style approach are arguing that it is the panacea that will reform all criminals, only that it will do a lot better that the current system.
It’s not an uncommon fallacy to think that people only commit crimes because of poverty, desperation, or oppression, and that solving these problems is sufficient to stop crime. It’s also not an uncommon fallacy to think some sufficiently liberalized, rehabilitative form of incarceration would actually work for 95% of criminals. The fact that some people are just awful and need to be quarantined from society is uncomfortable, taboo, or alien to a lot of people.
Maybe this comes across to you as a straw man argument because you don’t live somewhere completely insane where there is political opposition to building jails and police stations in the first place because of wacky leftist ideology. Sometimes I envy people who assume I’m arguing with a straw man.
There are better ways to rehabilitate non-violent offenders. Prisons should focus on rehabilitation, but what sets it apart from other methods of rehabilitation is that they keep dangerous people out of society in the meanwhile.
Because I don’t really care about someone’s moral belief in what’s right or wrong as long as it doesn’t effect anyone else.
We have an existence proof that the “War on Drugs” has been a failure, has not made drugs any harder to get, and penalties are unequally applied on the poor and minorities.
> Because I don’t really care about someone’s moral belief in what’s right or wrong as long as it doesn’t effect anyone else.
Moral beliefs tend to eventually end up externalized in some form or fashion. What then? What if I told you that everything we do affects someone else? This post-modernist idea that you can do whatever you want as long as it doesn't affect someone else is a fallacy. Unless you live in an isolated, self sustaining biodome in Antartica, chances are you are impacting at least one other life in extreme cases, if not more.
The "Desert Fathers" of the ancient Church, of whom left the holy cities with the extent purpose of leaving the world to not impact others (or be bothered by the cares of the world) ironically, impacted millions.
Yes and someone else’s moral belief led to miscegenation (interracial marriage) being illegal into the late 60s, Jim Crow laws, laws against homosexuality, and the War on Drugs.
Let’s not forget if those preaching “morality” had their way they would also ban birth control.
You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t pay too much credence to the “moral majority”.
This is flawed perspective and your three examples are a very mixed bag of unequal occurrences. All three of those situations are unlike the other. Jim Crow laws were very much not due to a "majority" -- if you remember, the country went into civil war over the issue of slavery, and the North has always been the more populous part of the country. Laws against Homosexuality were part of the fabric of pretty much most of the world (still so in 72 countries, as well as 70% of the commonwealth states), so not sure you can attribute that to any one particular moral majority, it was more of a global majority, so there goes that comparison out the window. And finally, the War on Drugs had nothing to do with morality, but basically one man's smart campaign to manipulate the public so that he could target minorities and anti-war protestors (later -- the CIA learned you could make a nice dime, so they continued it in the name of "national security" -- wonder where we heard that before)
And finally, your argument is very flawed because systems of morality are what have lead to the greatest human progress for thousands of years, and you are invalidating all of that on some unfortunate decade-long (strong emphasis on decade long, not millennium long) effects of fundamentalists and charlatans who, as history has already judged, were on the wrong side of things? You must have a very bleak outlook on humanity.
Certain addictions are pretty much life sentences. Heroin addicts will always want another hit regardless of how good they are at suppressing the addiction. A lot of people OD because they've been clean for so long that their tolerance isn't what it used to be. Maybe rehab should be the first step and not the third. Catch someone as early as possible into their addiction and they might have a fighting chance. Catch them when they've already been through the prison system a couple times and there's little hope. No one wants to hire a recidivist junkie.
There's two overlapping issues being conflated here: whether drug possession and use should be a crime, and how criminals should be punished.
I have no problem with the notion that violent criminals, thieves, and con men should be punished, and that those who persist in their crimes should be permanently removed from civil society. I do have a problem with the notion that someone only guilty of carrying two ounces of cannabis or transporting a particular species of fish across state lines should be punished in a similar fashion. That's because I think one category of felonies should continue to be felonious, and the other category should cease to be felonious.
> Not meaning this in a combative fashion, but why is only what you think right in this case?
The law of noncontradiction: to believe X is necessarily to believe they the belief in not-X is incorrect. One may believe it is right to tolerate or accommodate the incorrect belief, but that's not the same as viewing it as correct.
> The law of non-contradiction is valid for mathematics and propositional logic, not politics and ethics.
The law of noncontradiction is valid everywhere. One can have a meta-ethical view (which would apply to politics insofar as that depends on ethics) that ethical propositions are neither true nor false but simply subjectively preferred behavior or subjectively opposed behavior, but then one wouldn't actually believe any subordinate ethical proposition to be true; noncontradiction would still hold just fine.
But lots of people believe that ethical propositions can be true or false even if they accept some area of preference, and anyone who believes a particular ethical proposition is true must also believe that any contradictory position (the simplest case of which is simple negation) is false.
If you accept 'areas of preference' don't you also accept that other positions, even those in direct conflict with your own, are not necessarily wrong or false, but could simply be different?
> If you accept 'areas of preference' don't you also accept that other positions, even those in direct conflict with your own, are not necessarily wrong or false, but could simply be different?
If you accept areas of preference, then your beliefs in those areas are not of the form ‘X is right’ or ‘X is wrong’ but ‘X is my preference’ or ‘X is not my preference’. A statement about someone else's preference in that area does not conflict with yours even if the preferences differs (‘A prefers X’ does not contradict ‘B prefers not-X’.) Any statement of universal truth by a third party in the area of preference conflicts with the belief that it is validly an area of preference, OTOH, and cannot simultaneously be viewed as anything but incorrect while believing the area to be validly one of preference.
And as far as the law is concerned. The only “ethics” that the government should legislate are behaviors that infringe on someone else’s liberty/property/rights.
If someone feels that drug abuse is “unethical” shouldn’t matter as long as the drug addict is not breaking into your home or otherwise causing you harm.
I think ethics do (or should) play a part in large areas of politics, e.g. taxation, healthcare, foreign policy, criminal justice sanctions, et.c. Governments should legislate based on more than economics alone.
I agree but the war on drugs and deciding that someone should be convicted for using or buying drugs is based solely on someone’s personal belief about what someone else should do with their own body.
Yes, and we should wary of anyone who proposes to forcfully enslave others for simply excersizing their liberty to consume drugs w/o a permit from a prescriber.
> The bill, which is expected to be debated in the House of Representatives on Wednesday, would only affect federal prisoners accounting for about 10% of the total US prison population.
However I think a lot of the problems with the prison system in the US seems to be in the state/country level.
Great to see this happen. Criminal justice reform seems like one of the rare bipartisan efforts in quite awhile, especially when it comes to an issue in which the most direct beneficiaries are a non-voting constituency. There was a great "This American Life" episode pre-2016 [0] about a billionaire conservative family -- the Deasons, not the Kochs, but in that same strata -- who, like the Kochs, were passionate about pushing through criminal reform. And then Trump -- whom the Kochs hated -- became the nominee and split the conservative base and attention. The TAL episode was about how the Deasons were so impressed by Trump that they parted ways with the Kochs and backed Trump despite not knowing whether he's support criminal reform. Back then, it truly did seem that regardless of Trump's beliefs, criminal reform would fall by the wayside with respect to the other political issues that Trump prioritized.
That the Kochs and the Deasons were so committed to criminal reform, aligning themselves with the likes of ACLU and left-leaning groups, I remember reading op-eds/screeds from activists accusing the Kochs of having an ulterior agenda. But not much evidence has surfaced of this. FWIW, the TAL episode refers to a 2015 NYT op-ed that Doug Deason wrote about how close his life came to being ruined by a felony burglary charge, which is a great read [1].
I don't think the Kochs have an ulterior agenda, but I also don't think they are being entirely altruistic in their motives. They have built a vast political influence machine to push their agenda of de-regulation and tax cuts, so using some of that influence to push for modest criminal justice reforms is a convenient way of demonstrating 'bipartisanship', while not really sacrificing much in the way of core values[1]. The fact that this bill is getting pushed through in the lame duck session in the waning days of total Republican control is also a signal as to how much of a priority it was. Also, the Kochs have faced criminal investigations in the past, so they probably hold some personal animosity towards our justice system.
[1] My very limited understanding of this bill, is that it will reduce spending overall (i.e. smaller government), and the only increase in spending is going to private institutions.
You seem to be repeating a common misunderstanding, which is that the Koch brothers supported criminal justice reform because they care about the fate of incarcerated people.
That is provably false. They care of criminal justice reform because they don't want corporations--or the people who own them--to be held criminally liable when those corporations violate the law. This is particularly important for a family whose fortune comes from the extraction of oil.[0] They purchased ads around the country criticizing judges and politicians as "soft on crime," and actively supporting a Republican gubernatorial candidate who opposes criminal justice reform and criticized Obama for releasing "dangerous thugs."[1]
From the Intercept: "Koch’s interest in criminal justice reform was sparked not by the plight of overcrowded prisons or racial disparities in law enforcement, but by the company’s own environmental crimes. In 2000, Koch was indicted over claims that it had polluted huge amounts of benzene, a known carcinogen, from a Texas refinery and then attempted to cover up the crime. The indictment came on the heels of a series of state and federal probes that had forced the company to pay what was then the largest civil penalty for violations of environmental law for allowing hundreds of oil spills across six states."
No, the Koch's interest in criminal reform for the sake of the greater good is not "provably false". The Intercept article you posted is full of circumstantial evidence and rhetoric, and contains nothing that would be regarded as "proof". The strongest points it makes are:
1) The Kochs' money goes toward Republican candidates who oppose criminal reform.
2) The Kochs' interest was "sparked by the company's own environmental crimes"
Point 1 is as convincing as arguing that the ACLU and other liberals are also anti-criminal-reform, given that the majority of them likely voted for Bill and Hillary Clinton, despite the former being the president who advocated and signed America's most punitive federal sentencing reforms. The Koch brothers support conservatives, and some/many conservatives don't support or prioritize criminal reform. Also, you mischaracterize their political ad efforts. Their money goes to Republicans who have the discretion to spend it on whatever they like, including tough-on-crime candidates and platforms. The Kochs are indeed an accomplice to whatever their supported candidates decide to do with the money. But if the Kochs just want conservatives to win and don't actually care about criminal reform, why would they be quitely spending millions directly to support the kind of criminal reform advocacy that undercuts the GOP's status quo?
And the TIME article does indeed assert the Kochs' interest in criminal justice reform dates back to when their company was charged with environmental crimes and fined. And the Kochs' general counsel is quoted as supporting that timeline and that non-altruistic origin story:
> The owners believed they had been victimized by overzealous prosecutors and unclear statutes. “Our view was if we, a large company with many resources, were treated this way, what’s happening to the average American?” Holden says.
And...so? I didn't say the Kochs' got into criminal reform out of altruism. The op-ed I linked to from Doug Deason clearly has Deason talking about his personal run-in with the law. What I'm claiming is that, however they were first interested, what they are advocating now is reform that affects millions of convicts who are nowhere near Kochs' strata of self-interest, which the TIME article details (and the Intercept ignores). What does lobbying for better legal counsel for low-income/indigent defendants, restoring rights to youthful non-violent offenders, and reducing mandatory prison sentences, have to do with protecting the Kochs from prosecution for white-collar crimes. If the Kochs wanted to mitigate their exposure to future prosecution, they could just focus on lobbying for corporate and environmental deregulation.
The New Yorker has a more thorough article about the Kochs' possible motives and potential Trojan horse [1]. It notes that a previous iteration of the criminal reform bill, passed by the Senate committee, the House Judiciary Committee added provisions that would "weaken the government's ability to prosecute an array of corporate crimes". The Kochs spokesperson told the New Yorker at the time that the Kochs supported stripping the white-collar-crime provisions if that meant the bill could be passed.
Yeah, agreed. What people often forget is that the Kochs are libertarians, and like most libertarians, they have pretty strong, fundamental disagreements with the mainstreams of both parties and have to make some hard political compromises. Probably because of their vested interests, they've chosen the compromise of supporting Republicans. But many of their actions are unambiguously libertarian in tenor: they founded the Cato Institute, are the primary funders of Reason, and David Koch himself was the Libertarian Party's 1980 Vice-Presidential candidate.
Or maybe they're just fighting a shadowy proxy-war with George Soros. Who knows. Just always seems funny that when a billionaire is working towards political reforms you like, they're the good guy, and when they're working towards political reforms you don't like, it's a shadowy conspiracy to rig the system and get richer.
Libertarianism is a subset of Republicanism in the US. Both serve the rich. Both always stand for the greed and selfishness of the individual over any greater good. Both want to be unconstrained by the will of the people as it interferes with their greed. Both always want more money. Both hate the commons and want it seized, given away, or sold off, for the interests of the wealthy.
Reducing 3 strikes from minimum life to 25 is fine, but it does nothing to address the fact that expanding judicial discretion just gets you screwed in an election year. Theres nothing to keep people from getting multiple consecutive terms until its just the same as life.
The bill also doesnt address perpetual parole. When I was released after having served time, I was sentenced immediately to additional "parole" for a year and a half. This cuts into your ability to go to work in some cases (construction hours start early.) my job as an automotive mechanic started at 4 AM and school ended at 10. parole says i need to check in and be home by 6 pm, so i have to apply for extensions and variances every week. miss one and I go back to a jail term I technically already served.
$300 million dollars is nice for training, but training generally sucks in private prison and you have no recourse. For example, in a state run correctional facility you can learn shop math (trigonometry) and a trade. At the private prison I spent a year at (before it went bankrupt and transferred us all to state anyhow) my "education" consisted of painting the floor and laundry detail. you learn nothing, and surprise, are paid nothing because its education not work (work details like this in prison are supposed to be paid.)
as for the tampons and sanitary napkins, fine, its not like those were actually much of an issue from what i gather. Did you know inmates have to purchase things like soap and shit tickets? (toilet paper) There are freebies from commissary like those stab-proof pens for visitation, but use too many or upset a guard and youll get a strike for 'commissary abuse' and be restricted from buying things for a month or two. Ever wiped with a piece of receipt paper? not fun.