[Gunnair]

ridenrain ridenrain:

.. worked for the russians too.

Simply forcing someone to stay in their own house or neighborhood isn't much of a punishment so there's really little point to it.

Nice to see we're finally starting to dismantle the Trudeapian socialist state though.

Agree. Hardly doing time when XBox and internet porn are so readily accessible...

[Donny_Brasco]

OK, think of it this way.

Guy fucks up, first offence. Today his options are that he pleads guilty, explains himself, takes responsibility and asks for lenience. Good chance to get a conditional sentence. Generally the story ends here and we never hear about this guy again. Sentenced at home or in the community, works, pays rent and taxes.

Cost to the public is a minimal onetime event.

After this passes everyone who fucks up will use a lawyer, maybe the public funded one, to fight tooth and nail not to go to jail. Once in jail hangs out with other criminals and forms a bond and network with these people. Gets out of jail homeless with a bunch of criminals as friends, and re-offends.

Cost to the public is astronomical. Courts are backed up for years more than they already are. Jails filled. Judges and lawyers paid off the public dime several times for the same person.

Seems like a no brainer to me.

[ridenrain]

By the picture you paint, the guy who fucks up as a first offense will still be given leniency, community restitution or what have you. The people who take responsibility for their actons are a very small fraction of a huge problem.

This is aimed at the habitual offenders who make up the majority of the million dollar property crime problem that sweeps Vancouver. These crimes are usually obvious and blatant and shouldn't take long. Since these habitual offenders are commiting some 10 crimes a day, by taking them out of circulation, the number of crimes comitted drops by a multiple.

[OnTheIce]

Donny_Brasco Donny_Brasco:

OK, think of it this way.

Guy fucks up, first offence. Today his options are that he pleads guilty, explains himself, takes responsibility and asks for lenience. Good chance to get a conditional sentence. Generally the story ends here and we never hear about this guy again. Sentenced at home or in the community, works, pays rent and taxes.

Cost to the public is a minimal onetime event.

After this passes everyone who fucks up will use a lawyer, maybe the public funded one, to fight tooth and nail not to go to jail. Once in jail hangs out with other criminals and forms a bond and network with these people. Gets out of jail homeless with a bunch of criminals as friends, and re-offends.

Cost to the public is astronomical. Courts are backed up for years more than they already are. Jails filled. Judges and lawyers paid off the public dime several times for the same person.

Seems like a no brainer to me.

A person with Native roots worrying about how much tax dollars are being spent on the justice system.....I've seen it all.

[jason700]

Donny_Brasco Donny_Brasco:

OK, think of it this way.

Guy fucks up, first offence. Today his options are that he pleads guilty, explains himself, takes responsibility and asks for lenience. Good chance to get a conditional sentence. Generally the story ends here and we never hear about this guy again. Sentenced at home or in the community, works, pays rent and taxes.

Cost to the public is a minimal onetime event.

After this passes everyone who fucks up will use a lawyer, maybe the public funded one, to fight tooth and nail not to go to jail. Once in jail hangs out with other criminals and forms a bond and network with these people. Gets out of jail homeless with a bunch of criminals as friends, and re-offends.

Cost to the public is astronomical. Courts are backed up for years more than they already are. Jails filled. Judges and lawyers paid off the public dime several times for the same person.

Seems like a no brainer to me.

Good post. Seems to me that the Conservatives think the easy answer is just to lock everybody up. It isn't. I like that judges have options and that they can look at a case individually and decide what is best for the person being charged and the community. It's kinda their job.

Here's a real life example. My best friend has a sentencing coming in July. On the 5th of June he pleaded guilty for breaking and entering. At the time of the crime he was addicted to painkillers. He's been clean since October, perfect attendence with his drug councillor. The woman whose house he broke into did not press charges. The kicker may be that, he's not exactly a first time offender. Years back, he was charged with joyriding. Is prison right in this case?

Add to it that they want to get rid of the faint hope clause that gives people hope of getting out early. I hope they're planning on replacing this with something else. Why else would someone in prison want to behave?

[jason700]

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

A person with Native roots worrying about how much tax dollars are being spent on the justice system.....I've seen it all.

A little ad hominem anyone? It makes discussions so much more fun.

[Donny_Brasco]

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

A person with Native roots worrying about how much tax dollars are being spent on the justice system.....I've seen it all.

Brasco Rule.

[Canadian_Mind]

Donny_Brasco Donny_Brasco:

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

A person with Native roots worrying about how much tax dollars are being spent on the justice system.....I've seen it all.

Brasco Rule.

Don't make me puke.



Anyways, I've got no problem with giving conditional sentances to guys who make mistakes, admit they are guilty, ask for leniancy, and never do something wrong again. But as Rindenrain said, this never happens.

Possible idea could be a credit system so then when a guy does plead guilty, he only goes to a halfway house or is under house arrest. But if he fucks up again, he gets to complete his sentance in jail AFTER he completes the full term of what his first time in jail would have been if he hadn't fucked up. Thats incentive to stay out of trouble a second time, accidental or otherwise.

[jason700]

Criminals plead guilty all the time. Why can't we trust judges to judge each case individually instead of handcuffing them with mandatory minimum sentencing. Sometimes, alot of the time, prison is not the solution. Sometimes prison makes things worse.

[dino_bobba_renno]

jason700 jason700:

Criminals plead guilty all the time. Why can't we trust judges to judge each case individually instead of handcuffing them with mandatory minimum sentencing. Sometimes, alot of the time, prison is not the solution. Sometimes prison makes things worse.

Umm, I think we just finished trying that approach for the last however many years. It wasn't working and that's why the conditions were brought in.

[DerbyX]

dino_bobba_renno dino_bobba_renno:

jason700 jason700:

Criminals plead guilty all the time. Why can't we trust judges to judge each case individually instead of handcuffing them with mandatory minimum sentencing. Sometimes, alot of the time, prison is not the solution. Sometimes prison makes things worse.

Umm, I think we just finished trying that approach for the last however many ever years. It wasn't working and that's why the conditions were brought in.

Actually conditional sentences are rather recent being introduced in 1995.

Seems to me that if they were so awful we should be seeing am increase in crime but we aren't. Crime was decreasing in 2007 and I don't think its any worse today.

Do most people even know the legal aspects of conditional sentences?

Assuming the $50000 savings per inmate per year and using data collected between sept 96 - sept 99 (42941 sentences) we get a savings of 2.147 billion dollars over a 3 year period.

It seems that when crime is concerned the right screams stick everyone in jail as loudly as the left screams gun control but neither has been shown to work.

[Canadian_Mind]

Jail isn't hard enough. Make it so that repeat offenders don't want to go back.

[DerbyX]

If that actually worked we would never have progressed from the inhumane system we had just a few generations ago to the system we have now. US jails and the US system is far less hospitable then ours yet their crime rates don't reflect that ideology.

Crime still exists to large decrees even in countries where the penalties are often death or dismemberment.

A system that tries to convince criminals they don't ever want to go to jail doesn't actually encourage criminals not to commit crimes (they don't think they will get caught or else they are desperate) but it does encourage them to act as men with nothing to lose when they are caught in the act and that often results in great tragedy.

[OnTheIce]

Having a friend of mine who's turned his life around spend some time in the can, he used to tell me stories about how friendly everyting was in jail. Most criminal see other criminal friends in jail and really, it's not much of a big deal anyways.

Prision shouldn't be something that's "not so bad". It should be the bare minimum of everything.

Crime prevention has a lot of factors. Sentencing plays a small role.

[Canadian_Mind]

I still like my idea of having them work in the north. Give them 3 square meals a day, a bed warm enough to keep them alive, a roof over their head and a wall beside em to keep the wind and rain out.