AmeriKKKa

[Brian Peacock]

Louisiana Supreme Court upholds Black man's life sentence for stealing hedge clippers more than 20 years ago

He was given life under Clinton's three strikes policy. His first strike was for being in possession of thick lips and curly hair, and his second was for wearing a loud tie in a built up area.

[laklak]

Angola.
Just sayin.

[Sean Hayden]

It's crazy. You used to see older black guys facing serious time for trivial amounts of crack i.e. what they could scrape from a pipe, because of priors. --15+ years ...less than a gram...There may have even been a draconian law in place for awhile to take advantage of this, I don't remember the specifics... I do remember hearing that same story, a lot.

[laklak]

3 strike laws don't recognize much nuance.

[Brian Peacock]

I think that was kind of the point wasn't it(?) The public were whipped into a state of #OUTRAGE at judges handing out sentences commensurate with the scope and circumstances of a crime and not taking into account that any criminal is a darn wrongun of obvious low moral character.

[Sean Hayden]

It's messy. A lot of the issues seem to stem from a desire to give the state an overwhelming advantage when investigating/prosecuting specific kinds of cases and problem areas eg war on drugs.

[Scot Dutchy]

We've got to be tough on crime.

20 years for petty theft is far excessive, let alone life... I know arsonists who get away with less than 12 years, and they usually get out at less than 10.

Once again the goody goodies of this world crawl out of the woodwork. Crime is the failure society. Start from there and the picture looks completely different.

[Brian Peacock]

It's messy. A lot of the issues seem to stem from a desire to give the state an overwhelming advantage when investigating/prosecuting specific kinds of cases and problem areas eg war on drugs.

It sure is a mess, not least because there is such variation between states.

The prohibition of all but a short, authorised list of intoxicants will inevitable scoop up the harmless herbalists and weekend pill poppers along with desperate, sick, mentally unstable habitual users and addicts. It doesn't really serve society to prosecute the harmless users or incarcerate those who really need help with the stuff that's led them into psychological/biological dependency. I also think there's more than a bit of confusion in our justice systems, and among the public, as to whether the law is supposed to criminalise the activity or the person.

I'm not playing the 'society is to blame' joker though, nor saying that there aren't some people in the intoxicant economy that society needs proper protection from. There's definitely more than a few nasty bastards and socio/psychopaths that need to be contained - probably an increasing number as you go up the financial food chain. But I reckon that the majority of people who get snagged by the fuzz for participating in the drugs economy are of the less problematic or harmless variety, people who are mainly just harming themselves, if at all, and at most probably need more protection from themselves than we need from them.

[laklak]

It's those goddamn Democrats, Clinton and Biden started this 3 Strike shit. Need to vote those fucking racist assholes out of office. I mean, look at their record:

Started the Confederacy? Democrats
Fought for slavery? Democrats
Jim Crow? Democrats
KKK? Democrats
Japanese Internment? Democrats.
WWI? Democrats.
WWII? Democrats.
Korean War? Democrats
Vietnam? Democrats
Ruby Ridge? Democrats
Waco? Democrats

Don't be sucked in by their propaganda!

[Sean Hayden]

It's messy. A lot of the issues seem to stem from a desire to give the state an overwhelming advantage when investigating/prosecuting specific kinds of cases and problem areas eg war on drugs.

It sure is a mess, not least because there is such variation between states.

The prohibition of all but a short, authorised list of intoxicants will inevitable scoop up the harmless herbalists and weekend pill poppers along with desperate, sick, mentally unstable habitual users and addicts. It doesn't really serve society to prosecute the harmless users or incarcerate those who really need help with the stuff that's led them into psychological/biological dependency. I also think there's more than a bit of confusion in our justice systems, and among the public, as to whether the law is supposed to criminalise the activity or the person.

I'm not playing the 'society is to blame' joker though, nor saying that there aren't some people in the intoxicant economy that society needs proper protection from. There's definitely more than a few nasty bastards and socio/psychopaths that need to be contained - probably an increasing number as you go up the financial food chain. But I reckon that the majority of people who get snagged by the fuzz for participating in the drugs economy are of the less problematic or harmless variety, people who are mainly just harming themselves, if at all, and at most probably need more protection from themselves than we need from them.

--variation between states, within states, counties and cities...what a mess

We may not want to blame society, but I think a significant amount of activism may be wasted effort if it's ultimately only treating the symptoms of a failure to provide universal healthcare and welfare. If we had that security first, then 10-20 years out we may have a completely different set of issues to deal with.

[Brian Peacock]

Aye. During past economic downturns the use and misuse of drugs has risen. There's been a lot of research on it since the 80s and unsurprisingly the numbers map directly onto the general level of economic participation and particularly the level of economic deprivation in an area. In the mid-to-late 90s the UK's Tory government addressed this with the slogan: "Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime." Of course, they only increased resource for the first part of that and left the second stitch its own trousers.

The moral approbation of the criminalised is an easy argument for the right-leaning political chancer to forward. The more crime there is the greater the opportunity to extol the virtues of toucher, longer, more punitive sentencing, harsher prison regimes and tougher conditions on parole, the withdrawal of social support, the degradation of the basic human rights of 'the criminal' etc. Being tough on crime is a no-brainer - don't we all want to live in a more secure, less criminally-minded society? Being tough on the causes of crime however encompasses a far more complex set of long-term, resource-intensive objectives that don't really play into short-term electoral cycles. I have no idea how we might even begin to address this properly with the way things are at the moment socially, economically, and/or politically, but the studies on the relationship between economic deprivation and crime surely give us a clue about where we can start(?)

[Scot Dutchy]

That is exactly what happens here and why our prisons are emptying.

[laklak]

Bring back public executions! That'll learn 'em.....

[Scot Dutchy]

How about lynch mobs. "Just string 'em up high". Save the cost of a trial.

[laklak]

There is that.