Punishing people for 15 years doesn't change drunk driving. If they were *thinking* before driving drunk, or contemplating the consequences, they wouldn't be driving drunk.
Edit: I think this puts it far better than I can: http://www.cscsb.org/restorative_justice/retribution_vs_rest...
I think the punishment system we almost hilariously call a justice system needs a lot of help but this seems like a young man who was a real danger to society. A lost decade should take the wind out of his dangerously murderous antics.
What those consequences be if the society does not punish people for that? (where “punishment” isn’t necessarily prison time)
You can’t bring back dead people to life, unfortunately. For some other crimes you can be fined, make amendments in other ways, having your license revoked, etc. But not for manslaughter. For this crime any punishment is exerted only as a message to other people: don’t kill people or else those bad things will happen to you.
Given the state of most prisons in the west (Especially in the US), we are often sending people to effectively rot and even if they get out they might as well be dead they're so stunted.
Indeed, you can't bring dead people back to life. Judicial systems should not be based off of the emotions of people affected by crimes - it's not a nice thing to say but it just empirically doesn't work.
> For this crime any punishment is exerted only as a message to other people: don’t kill people or else those bad things will happen to you.
Not only is deterrent-policy usually very expensive both directly and in the aforementioned tendency to shit out people who go straight back into crime, I'm not aware of any studies that manage to disprove their null.
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/deterrence
In the extreme "capital punishment means those without capital get the punishment.".
I want radical reform of the prison system and the judicial system, but after we've made our prisons as humane as possible then I want to put this guy in there for at least 20 years.
They should tie the penalty to blood alcohol concentration and it should be substantial for anyone driving in the higher ranges.
You can cry me a river but there are plenty of drug dealers getting those kind of years in America, and it's a little telling that this case is the one that really riles your sympathy.
Is the point revenge? To make sure this doesn't happen again? Is justice = revenge? Questions...
Like I guess my point is someone who is driving drunk is already not thinking logically. You could execute drunk drivers and the rate of new drunk drivers wouldn't change.
I'd much rather see why drunk driving rates is far higher in the US than other countries with similar laws and transpiration systems.
2. Is there stuff we can do to fix the discrepancy in the US.
3. Can the perpetrator of harm in society be a part of fixing the harm they have done, and preventing more harm in society.
I think punitive justice is just the easy way out and never addresses the roots of the problems.
For example, imagine instead of jailing people for 15 years, we used that money to subsidize lyft/uber rides of 18-25 year olds when they were detected to be near bars. How much impact would that have compared to jailing?
I have been informed of cases where drunk drivers get their licenses revoked yet continue to drive anyways. Should the system just continue to give this individual another slap on the wrist? The system should work to make the necessary adjusts to protect society from these individuals. For some, putting on a breathealyser is enough, while sometimes people start to have their friends breathe into it instead. If there is no other measure that can be taken to prevent an individual from becoming intoxicated and conducting heavy machinery, then I don't see another alternative.
> You could execute drunk drivers and the rate of new drunk drivers wouldn't change.
I'm not sure how feasible it is to make this statement because I'm not aware of anyway we could test the accuracy of this statement.
One field I'm interested in being developed is detecting cars whose drivers seem to be intoxicated with machine vision software. Some cities / countries have enough state-owned cameras in public for this, and you could combine this with IoT spikes in the road or state-controlled kill-switches to completely eradicate drunk driving.
Always amazing to me that people have more empathy for the criminals than the victims.
I am so sick of seeing people who feel that justice can only be served by destroying peoples lives and making them and their families suffer to the full extent of the law. Why do we keep electing prosecutors to the high offices? Why do so many prosecutors feel they are good if they can put away the baddies for a long time? I wish we would promote and elect more defenders because they seem like the only people who see that the people facing life in prison and a family thrown into poverty are not "they" but are "we".
But 15 years? Wouldn't 5 years get the point across?
Have you contemplated the insufferable loss of the two people's families? For no fault of their own, their child gets swiped away by some drunk driver who happens to be smart at math?
It's arguable whether it prevents others from committing similar crimes - I don't think it makes much difference if its 15 years or 30 years to make a drunk person avoid driving.
Also keep in mind, the cost-benefit of the Justice system is highly dependent on the socio-economic conditions of the city or neighborhood. Living in Geneva vs. Guadalajahara, you're going to get different answers.
What if instead of drunk driving, the accident that killed your kids involved distracted driving? Say, driver was texting? Eating a hamburger?
What if the driver was just driving 10mph over the speed limit? 15mph?
What if the driver fell asleep at the wheel?
What if the driver was driving on bald tires and a blowout precipitated the accident? What if they were only 95% worn out? 80%?
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There are different levels of culpability. Drunk driving is negligent and bad, but I hope we can all agree it is not as bad as willful murder. Five years in jail is an incredibly severe punishment already - that's a quarter of this kid's life to that point.
I don't buy the revenge angle. We can expect more from people.
We have control over our decisions but not the consequences of our decisions. Punishments should fit the crime, which is fundamentally different from the result. Choosing to drive drunk is the same mistake whether it hurts no one or hurts many.
* Better party hour transport availability
* Better driver awareness, education, and propaganda
* More enforcement of drunk suspects before an accident
* Police cooperation with bars, i.e. tattle-tail programs
Moving to America I’m astonished how much drunk driving goes unpunished here. In rural areas there people often go a few dozen km to the next bar, and there is no alternative to get home except to drive. When there is enforcement it seems like it is only over the top punishment. Bartenders seem to be fine with people having a few beers and driving home (as long as they are not “too drunk”).
I think America is failing spectacularly in preventing drunk driving, and I think the main reason is that this over reliance of punitive measures that simply don’t work.
America is not failing to prevent drink/drunk driving. Many places allow you to drive with a bit of alcohol in your system.
It's up to the individual to be an 'adult' about their decision making/risk assessment.
No point wrapping everything in bubble wrap to keep everyone safe. Accidents happen and people selfishly go against what they should do
"While he's on bond, he commits a strong-arm robbery down in Monroe stealing a fifth of whiskey"
1.4 million DUI arrests in 2010 and that’s just the people who got caught.
https://www.bts.gov/archive/publications/by_the_numbers/drun...
It absolutely prevents the particular actor from driving drunk for the period of actual incarceration. It may even make it more likely that they will think before doing it again, even if they did not think the first time; and if you argue that the people who would do it once aren’t rationally deterrable even by adverse experience, that makes long-duration incapacitation such as by incarceration even more critical.
That family is done. There wont be a single day in their lives that they wont suffer.
If these crimes were handled lightly, they would occur more often.
We can go all the way down to the animal kingdom. Lions don't usually attack hippos because they know there can be harsh punishment in failure. Otherwise said attacks would be frequent. Just as I don't drink and drive recklessly because I know there can be severe consequences.
Frankly I believe the only way to reduce prison population is through education and opportunity BEFORE crimes happen but keep current punitive laws because they serve to protect the law abiding hard working citizen and to disincentivize crimes.
Most people are in favor of punitive justice, but for the "right" wrongs.
However I'd personally prefer to root out why right-wing extremism is on the rise. I had this discussion a few days ago about what should be done about the capitol terrorists, and I don't think they should face severe jail/policing.
I know of a few leftist circles that also banned any mention of FBI tiplines etc, because those individuals were just a symptom of a problem. And punishing the symptom does nothing to the disease.
Arguably leniency is precisely why the problem is what it is today. Laws are laws, the only reason why the Capitol incident happened is that the American far-right is in Q-induced fever dream completely unchecked by any feedback.
I don't think that's true. I don't think lack of policing and enforcement of laws is why white supremacy is on the rise.
If someone gets caught up in the wrong crowd at a young age, they need help not punishment - even the process of receiving that help can be sufficiently emasculating as to be punishment in itself (arguably).
If, for instance, the you-know-which Trump pardons hadn't happened, then they absolutely deserved to be punished. Similarly, tax offences at scale and (say) trying to overrule a result in Georgia...
If it weren't for my existing beliefs about the death penalty, I almost believe in capital punishment for treason - specifically espionage. Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen are unbelievably lucky to be alive.
If someone habitually rolls a die where a six gets someone killed, and they eventually roll a six, you got to ask why they were rolling the die so many times to begin with. In a very real sense the consequence is premeditated.
True, but Alcoholism is a disease and can be treated. I don't subscribe to the, frankly, beastly view of my government that the poor and imprisoned aren't mostly determined by their nurture rather than their nature and "decisions" (We don't live in a vacuum).
It is, in fact, a rather patronising view to believe only the poor and unfortunate lack personal agency to make good decisions. As if bad circumstances shut off their brains and makes them incapable of doing anything.
The difference between being poor and rich is that the poor can't recover from a bad decision, it's selection bias rather than a question of agency.