Criminals

Community Introductions & Off Topic
1

Ok this is something I do not agree with about the law in the U.K.

As in many establishments around the world, here in the U.k much emphasis is placed on rehabilitation. If someone commits a crime, they make them do time and then rehabilitate them. Even when someone is convicted with ‘Life’ they are still released and rehabilitated.

Now, crime in the Uk is a problem; as it is in most countries. With no signs of improvement.. surely the sytem is not really working. People offend..are imprisoned…releasead…re-offend…are imprisoned etc…

Now I am not against rehabilitation don’t get me wrong, i think that everyone deserves the opportunity to change their lives around.

In my opinion people who offend and are then rehabilitated should be made aware that if they do it again they will not be given that chance again. I think that there needs to be some form of deterant which will make people scared to commiting crimes.

This is not an attack on the system, because I know how difficult it is to please everybody, but I seem to be hearing too many news stories about re-offenders.

Society seems to be declining..I was wondering what your views are on this ..
Are you happy with the system in your country?
What do you feel might improve the system?
etc..

2

Rehabilitation is important but when we are talking about serious crimes such as killing,sexual predators and so on so forth were do you really draw the line. Rehab is something for people with addiction problems and last time i knew comiting a crime such as killing is not an addiction. The problem here in the US is that the prison system is overcrowded and inadequate.People are being released early for good conduct…I think if someone commited a crime let that person serve the full sentence..they didnt have any pity or remorse for comiting a crime so why should the prison system have any for them. My thought is let the punishment fit the crime…and put the offender in some kind of rehab program while serving time but dont let them go early because theyve had good conduct. As far as a form of deterrant for people not to commit crime a good example is the country of Singapore where they will cut your hand if you steal or whip you if you so much pain a car or spit gum on the sidewalk.Not saying it should be done but that country is one of the lowest when it comes to crime…hmmm makes me wonder why

3

Society has declined already its not it is declining it has declined and the question is when is it going to hit absolute rock bottom.
I personally like Sweden’s idea. They have prisons set up like apartments and work mainly on rehabilitation and for serious crimes work towards rehabilitation but with no possibility of release. They tend to allow the criminal a sense of humanity still while imprisoning them. The basic punishment is the loss of freedom (even though I personally do not think that we are truely free, but for all extensive purposes it works here). This is what the main tennant of a prison is “the loss of our so called freedom”. While they are inside let them better them selves for if we do not allow someone the opportunity to better themself we are no better than the common criminal.
Like Manny was saying prisons in the US are over crowded. but this is do to our countries zero tolerance drug policy. This policy is a complete load. Mandatory sentencing for drug infractions is stupid. That is where our space has gone to drug dealers and users. That is the reason California has built more prisons than colleges in the past 40 years (10/1 or some crazy odd like that I dont remember). If we cut down and got rid of the drug infractions the prisons would have room. With the extra room the prisoners inside could actually gain a sense of humanity again (as the prisons in the US strip that away), and with the sense of humanity could they could work on bettering themselves and do something constructive with there life when they get out.
Crime is a normal part of all societies with out it there would be a serious problem with that society and it would not function correctly. In fact we need crime to survive if we didnt have it we would live in utopia and no one really wants a perfect society it would be boring/mundane.
It appears as I have gotten away from what I was saying. Prisoners should be treated as human beings and allowed to better themselves and be rehabilated (for lack of a better word). if they were treated as such there would not be such a huge recidivism rate (at least in the US). When we take away a persons humanity of course they are going to act like monsters, its only logical. I think prisons world wide should be more like Swedens. To me they have the right idea.

4

Has anyone heard of Supermax Prisons, one being in Colorado. The following is an excerpt from http://www.spunk.org/texts/prison/sp001611.txt

It describes what a supermax is…

"Supermax prisoners are locked into small cells
for approximately 23 hours a day. They have almost no contact
with other human beings.
There are no group activities: no work, no educational
opportunities, no eating together, no sports, no getting together
with other people for religious services, and no attempts at
rehabilitation.
There are no contact visits: prisoners sit behind a
plexiglass window. Phone calls and visitation privileges are
strictly limited. Books and magazines may be denied and pens
restricted. TV and radios may be prohibited or, if allowed, are
controlled by guards.

So the question is this…for dangerous criminals should we let them live in apartment complexes?:yikes: Or perhaps its better to lock them up for 23 hours a day? Read the above link and give your thoughts

5

Im familar with what a supermax prison does and is. That is the place where Mossaoui (im sure I butchered his name) is going. I would say that those are a form of torture. We as human beings are people that need to socialize in order to function correctly. The hermits that live alone often end up having some kind of mental breakdown (Ted Kazinski for example.) I dont feel that should be denied the ability to socialize again this isnt helping them its not even justice its tortue that turns them into mindless animals. When I say apartments I say this as an exaggeration. There cells are nicer and classier than what is in the US but at the end of the day they are still cells and have obtained there objective of denying freedom (again for lack of a better word) of the individual in them. The main issue is that the people in supermax prisons will never get out so why deny them the thing that allows them to be human.
dangerous criminals should have the opportunity to socialize (yes I know this is how drugs are moved, breakouts are planned etc). But man was not designed to live in a cage dangerous criminal or not. Lock up for 23/24 hours a day is wrong. That is what drives a person crazy. I agree with lockup but let them move around give them things to better themselves to do so they dont go crazy. Cause either way they are a burden of the state and well if they are going to be they might as well as do something useful. Some companies have gotten in on this by using prisoners to make there goods with the prisoners almost being slaves (rather than outsourcing jobs they just move them into prisons its terrible really for the working of America but this is another topic altogether)
I hope this makes sense as it is late and I’m tired

6

Another story on the news today..

A child sex offender who was given a 3 year sentence was released after a year having gone through a program of rehabilitation… re-offended another child upon release..

What is that about.. That for me suggests the system is not working.

How scary is it knowing that people like this are released back into the community so soon after offending..becuse they have ‘responded well to rehabilitation’… :yikes:

You try and tell the family of those childeren that the system is working..

7

My response to that would be that the family didnt receive justice the first time he was sentenced. 3 years for molesting a child is not right. you can get more than 3 years for drugs. The sentence needs to fit the crimes (and during the sentence work on rehabiliation). The sentences for sex offenders (at least things that I have heard recently) are outrageous, one guy got 3 months for molesting an 8 year old girl (again I cant remember the age but the 3 months is right) because the judge said he had a disease. Is there any credibility to this statement I dont think so but then again is it a bi product of our society today.
This does raise a question for me though. Why is it commonplace to almost every day to read in the paper or hear on the news about someone abusing children. This I’m sure happened a long time ago but was never so commonplace and out in the open all the time. I feel that it is due to society allowing sex to run rampant and unchecked, and that girls/women of age are not appealing to these predators because they are flaunted all the time as sex objects.
Im not saying im right on this, Its just a thought what do you guys think

8

I agree but I don’t think you can blame this increase in the inreased sexuality of society. Anyone who has such behaviour within them are a danger.

It turns out that this specific case we are talking about..the guy could be released in 5 years!

Surely they must have learned that such a short sentence did not work last time… and he re-offended upon release after 3 years… So why let him out AGAIN after another 5 years..

Clearly this is a dangerous man who cannot be apart of a community.

I have an issue with the term ‘Life Sentence’.. Life..should be life not 5 years..thats a joke!

9

Ok, this topic certainly peaked my interested. Now, before I start, let me give you a little of my background, as it certainly shapes my views. I had been a law enforcement officer for several years, than became a probation office working closely with both adult and juvenile corrections. Trust me, the news doesn?t show people a tenth of what I?ve seen in person.

First to mandatory minimums for drug offenses:
Lots of people harp about how mandatory minimums for drug offenses are a crock. Yet all those who I have personally seen assaulted or burglarized by said drug offenders, never once asked me if ?that poor fellow was going to get the help that he needs?. Most wanted to know if we had caught them, and if so, how long will he be locked up for? all of them alluding to the point that whatever it was, it wasn?t long enough.

Treatment can work, but… treatment can only work if the person is willing to accept the help. In general, a vast majority of drug offenders will happily take the ?treatment? option simply to avoid a long prison stretch. Think about it… if you were facing a 5-10 year stretch in state prison, and some social worker offered you a 10 month rehab program, plus a little probation… wouldn?t you play along?

Now to Super Max, or SHU (secure housing units):
Locking up a person for 23 hours a day may very well be torture? but that would only be if the person incarcerated could be considered human.
I have several friends and even family who work in the SHU units out here in California. I?ve dealt with some prisoners who?ve been in SHU. Trust me, to be sent to the SHU, is to have proven yourself a complete waste of human life.
These are prisoners who have attacked and sometimes murdered other prisoners, prison staff, police officers. Some are major heads of known drug cartels and street gangs; others are terrorist or have committed terrorist acts. The list goes on. Just imagine the very worst of humanity, and these folks will probably try to go one better.
Torture is a human concept. These people are only human in a biological sense.

Society as a whole is corroding. We are taught to accept the unacceptable. We are taught to empathize and accept someone?s poor behavior; and sometimes even lambasted as cruel or barbaric if we do not understand the poor unfortunates ?plight? as the cause of said behavior.
Today it is wrong to simply say, ?That is wrong or illegal? stop it!? To do so means that we are judging others, hence we must have some sort of bigotry, phobia, or ulterior agenda.

[FONT=‘Times New Roman’]Today is no more winning… only degrees of losing.[/FONT]

10

Very interesting points there.. I just have strong feelings for this. I hate the fact in society you are constantly on edge. It has become way to acceptable to dis-obey rules… ‘What can i do now to prove how much i don’t care..??’

I work with kids teaching arts and crafts as my part time job…and in the 3 years I have done this I have noticed a decline in behaviour as a whole.

What do you think is causing this.. parents, media, society..

P.S
Don’t get me wrong I am not over looking the portion of society that are decent and repectable people.

11

I think that the media and society as a whole plays a role on how kids are behaving these days but ultimately every human being wants to do what they want to do without regards to higher authority. It is called dominance and evry human being wants to dominate or conquer something.

12

Media role models are not helping.. More and more we see swearing, sex and violence in the media, being seemingly promoted. Entertainers putting down lyrics about guns and killing. (Don’t get me wrong I actually like rap) but there has to be some kind of responcibility taken by these guys.. because there are people out there who are influenced in a big way by the way these guys act…

As I said in a previous post…it is too popular now to do wrong. Respect is at a low..and the problem is going to escalate..

13

As a sociology major in college Fuzzy your idea that the people incarceted in super max facitlities are not human just biologically human intrigues me. Please go on with this as I would like to hear what else you have to say on this before commenting on it.

I think that it is unfair to blame how are kids act today on the media alone (and I hate the biased media that runs rampant in this country). singing about guns etc. doesnt make people act a certain way. Music and the artists involved are scapegoats for the bigger larger picture. Music is an artform and is to be appriciated as such. The attitudes of kids are shaped more by the physical surrondings that they live in and the people in their personal lives (while I will admit that musicians and actors are role models and kids will emulate them, the emulation is from the person not what they do or in there medium) The bigger picture is that society has devolved (if that is a word) and gone back to a state of barbarism (and I know that barbarism can be intrepretuted in a bunch of ways)

14

If you guys want to blame someone about how kids act today, I blame it on the lack of parental supervision. In toiday’s society, both the mother and father are working and that leaves kids in a situation where they have to learn things, both good and bad from other places such as television, movies, and music.

I know that parents who are very involved in their children’s lives, the children are more well-behaved and know the difference between right and wrong and reality and fiction.

15

It is quite interesting this.. Since I have began this thread a week ago, the british governement have raised this as a serious issue. Today on the news there were arguments between our two main parties about sentences and the justice system as a whole. Some people have been blaming the judges for not being tough enough and some are blaming the system. Our Prime Minister has made it clear that changes are going to made sooner to prevent early release for serious offences. For once it seems the government are actually taking not of what is happening in our country.

This issue has also raised awareness of crowding in prisons..which I agree should not be happening.. But they did an interview with a few prisoners… This one guy was like “We don’t get any freedom, no enternainment, some of us are stuck inside for 22 hours a day” I couldn’t help but shout out serves you right! Prison is not supposed to be a holiday camp. It should be a punishment.

It is quite interesting watching this all develop in the news…

16

Howdy

See the thing is we are a helpless race (while we have our mode of thinking anyway). The law has a mode of thinking: “if it is a money crime then it is worse than a child sex offender/murderer” etc. Hmmmm where is the logic and justice in that?

Chris M

17

This is a very interesting topic…

I’ve lived in two different countries, in terms of violence. Portugal in Europe and Brazil in South America.

Portugal is like a “small village”, if someone kills someone, it will be in all newspapers and TV news. In Brazil, for some of you who doesn’t know, the violence in the big cities like Rio de Janeiro (where I lived for 11 years) and São Paulo is just beyond everything you can imagine. Unfortunately, those aren’t always things that happen “to the other guy”, it happened to friends, family and close ones. Examples:

  1. The mother of my best childhood friend had an argument with a neighbor who claimed she owed him money (something like THREE dollars). She said she didn’t. What did he do? He shot her 6 times in the face. By night my friend came home to find his mother lying on the street with a bloody sheet covering and some candles to avoid insects to approach.

  2. A friend of the family who worked as a bus driver was doing his job. A guy who claimed to be a policemen but not wearing his uniform refused to pay. My friend came over (he was just making company to the other bus driver) told him “calm down, sir, I can’t let you ride without paying the ticket and not wearing the police uniform”. The answer? “Do you think I don’t have 1$ to pay for this?”. He takes a gun out of his back and kills him.

There are crimes that are beyond anything moral, that are commited by animals like these:

  1. a 12 year old girl was taking photos of her friends. Two adult men approach and tried to take her camera. She couldn’t let go because it was attached to her wrist. What did they do? they shot her in the face.

  2. 4 guys assaulted a car with a mother, her sister and her 2 children inside the car. They told everyone to leave the car. They all did, but the kid was hold by the security belt. They close the car door and they took off. They drove for several miles and the kid was hanging on the outside, hitting the wheel and the pavement. It was seen by everyone, including his mother, because it was daylight and in a busy avenue. The result? The kid was no more than a puddle of bloody meat.

  3. Gang members to show their discontent against the arrest of their leader started various terrorist attacks. They made buses stop, throw ****tail molotovs inside, didn’t allow anyone to come out. The ones who tried to pull out where shot. They burn to death.

  4. This one is just ridiculous, happened near my grandmother’s house: The criminal pointed a gun to a policeman who was riding a bike. The police tried to run away but the guy shot him on his bike. Then he run after the policemen who fell a little up the street. The criminal comes over, takes the helmet of the policeman, shots him in the face and robs his bike. FROM A POLICEMAN!!! It was DAYLIGHT and in a busy street!

This are the recent ones I remember… There are so many more you can’t imagine.

When those guys are arrested, they go into maximum security prisons but they find a way to get cell phones and they still give orders on “who to kill”, “what to do”, etc.

The criminal in Rio are so well armed, that they have weapons better than those of the military. They come from Colombia and some are dealt with corrupted policemen. It’s all about drugs. This is what you see everyday in Rio:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=z4-v8znE5Pw

http://youtube.com/watch?v=HUcyQ1_zisg

You can’t blame some policemen for being corrupt. If those guys here
http://youtube.com/watch?v=7QmpiE1E6Pg
are not, they make only 300 dollars a month. That’s not enough when you risk your life against better armed criminals.

This will never end because they decide to build bigger prisons but they don’t build new schools. The children don’t even have a nice meal at school, and their only way is to join the crime or go to a normal life to earn 200 dollars a month and work 12 hours a day every day of the week.

Brazilian people are the most friendly and warm in the world, but when it comes to criminal, all think the same: “Kill them all”. I do think like this too. Life has made us think like this. If they caught a criminal, don’t even take him to the prison, just shoot him in the head (some do have this fate). If he goes to prison, he will just become a better criminal, won’t learn anything, eat at our expenses and come even more dangerous to the society.

It’s a shame that the death penalty is not used in Brazil…

18

I think as long as someone doesn’t commit a crime that causes physical harm to another belong outside of bars no matter what the crime is. They should be punished in some way…just not locked in a cell.

People who commit murder (minus extenuating circumstances) or people who assist the crime before during and after the fact deserve to be locked up for the rest of their lives.

My views on serial killers and sexual crimes are much more Draconian. I feel when proof is tendered beyond a shadow of a doubt, these “people’s” lives should be forfeit the moment due process has taken its course.

Our prisons are overcrowded with people who don’t belong there for example… drug posession, simple thefts, white collar crime etc.

Its a shame that that reflects the morals of our society. Hurt someone and you’re out in a day, cost money and you rot in jail!