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
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 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.
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.
What if they had a 3 strikes clause for white collar crime?
Also once you’ve been convicted, it’s harder to find a job with a criminal record.
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.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunedin_Multidisciplinary_He...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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].
[0] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/cruel-an...
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/opinion/sunday/california...
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.
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.
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?
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.
To the best of my knowledge, one of the problems with US prisons today is that the resources and support you describe are not widely available.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
Should I start with the mass slaughter of native Americans, slavery, Japanese internment camps, etc?
All the while the “good Christians” either actively took part or looked the other way?
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.
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 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, 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.
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.