Now they target customers at the counter

There is a book I have, "Jungle Warfare" by J. P. Cross (if you don't know who he is... google him.) In his book he said the ONLY area you could walk down safely at night was the one controlled by the ROK (Republic of Korea) Army.

Why?

Cause the ROK's go a hold of a VC and cut him up into chunks and distributed him to all the villages for the population to see (page 139.)

See, quick and severe punishment can alter habits!

Deaf
 
FM, I didn't say I think it should take any specific amount of time. What I said is that ensuring the rights of the accused takes time. Have you ever seen a case go from arrest to conviction to sentencing? I have, and it doesn't happen quickly because of all the things involved. The example you gave has the accused admitting guilt, but you don't specify at what point in the process he admits guilt. Is it at the beginning, when the initial plea is entered, which, at that point wouldn't involve bail because bail isn't granted to people who plead guilty at their first hearing (which almost NEVER happens because plea deals take time to negotiate).

Do you have any idea of how backed up criminal courts are? The court dates in the case I posted about took weeks and even months in between, because of how backed up the court is in this county, and the probation department, which had to provide pre and post sentencing reports. That's just the reality of our justice system, and this was a case in which a plea deal was negotiated. Had it gone to trial, it would have easily been another 3-6 months.

Justice isn't a fast process in this country, and it's because the accused have rights. They have the right to bail. They have the right to competent representation, even if they can't afford to pay for it. They have the right to negotiate the terms of plea deals, if they choose to plead guilty. They have the right to challenge each and every piece of evidence against them, how it was collected, how it was handled. Things like DNA tests, processing evidence, hiring expert witnesses, etc., etc. all take time. As I've already posted, all these rights exist because our system is based on the premise of innocence until proven guilty, even when there are nine witnesses, surveillance footage, incriminating statements by the accused, and rock solid physical evidence. All the things you mention are reasons for the accused to accept a plea deal to avoid losing at trial and getting more time in prison, not reasons to deny the accused due process.
 
Some old behaviorist analyses of prison and punishment as behavior changes indicated that unless punishment was applied very quickly after the offense it had no effect in preventing future actions. A shorter and less severe punishment that was applied quickly was better than a more severe but delayed punishment.
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This is consistent with the works of B.F. Skinner and others on learning and memory. Pay attention tot he underlined and bold portion. The consider this portion of what James K mentioned:

Tell him that if he is caught robbing a store on Tuesday he can forget about that hot date on Friday night
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Now I have taken this somewhat out of context because he advocated for fairly harsh punishment but I think the point is valid. The punishment needs to be sudden and, as much as it pains me to mention it, if it is not tremendously severe and can be readily appealed or overturned the risks to innocents is lessened. Arrest me for a crime I did not commit, let me out on bail, and then let me spend the next several months or years preparing for my defense and you have cost me the enjoyment of that time. Arrest me for a crime I did not commit and jail me for a week or so and give me a speedy trial you have cost me the entirety of that week but I can enjoy the next several months or years after being exonerated. So there might be a cost to society - pay me well for that week you kept me wrongly jailed while I awaited trial and I will get over it :).
 
James K said:
I have long advocated the shortest possible time between arrest and prison time.
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On March 30, 1981, John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan (the President of the United States), Thomas Delahanty, Timothy McCarthy, and James Brady in front of a mass of witnesses and recording equipment. He was apprehended immediately.

On April 27, 1982, more than a year after the fact, jury selection began.



On October 6, 1981, Anwar Sadat (the President of Egypt) and 11 others were assassinated, plus over two dozen were wounded.

On April 15, 1982, the assassins of Anwar Sadat were publicly executed in Cairo.



Although Sadat was shot 190 days after Reagan, his assassins were tried, convicted, sentenced, and executed, 15 days before Hinckley even came to trial.
 
As Deaf Smith said, "I doubt they ponder the consequences beforehand".

How many of you really believe that someone thinking about murdering a stranger in a store will perform even the most rudimentary cost benefit-analysis first?

Or consider for even the briefest moment the possibility of being caught, much less punished?

In 18th century England, punishment was swift and sure, and very severe. There were a couple of hundred offenses for which the penalty was death by hanging. One of them was the picking of pockets.

Did it deter crime? Well, one of the most likely places at which to get one's pocket picked was at a hanging.

Confinement can serve to sequester, but I wouldn't put too much stock in the value of punishment as a deterrent.
 
In the 1970s I worked for about 5 years in the information technology area of the North Carolina Correctional System.

My office was in front of Central Prison.

One project I did during my tenure there was to design a system to automate inmate classifications so that they could be sent to the proper penal institution throughout the state.

Part of that was a period of about 3 months where I sat in on the manual process of officials deciding which institution the prisoners coming in from county courts were to be spending their time.

During that time several hundred inmates were interviewed by officials. Not once did an inmate admit their guilt in any manner. One inmate was caught jumping up and down on his victims head after he had stabbed the victim over 30 times. The head was unrecognizable as a human head. All of the inmates were brought in with hands and feet shackled and by heavily armed guards.

I learned that those people were totally different mentally than normal people. They just did not process information that same way as functional citizens. Some had genius IQs, some were classified as idiots. None felt any remorse or guilt for their crimes. They were different.

There are many out on the streets who are like that and who have not been caught yet or are out after serving their time or who have not stepped into their criminal potential.
 
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Confinement can serve to sequester, but I wouldn't put too much stock in the value of punishment as a deterrent.
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But there is always the Prison of no Parole. As in dead. That tends to stop the recidivism 100 percent.

Deaf
 
Pretty hard to know how many people were deterred from committing a crime when we focus only on those that were not. Kind of a poorly designed study when we use only those that were not deterred as our sample
 
In the 1970s I worked for about 5 years in the information technology area of the North Carolina Correctional System.

My office was in front of Central Prison.

One project I did during my tenure there was to design a system to automate inmate classifications so that they could be sent to the proper penal institution throughout the state.

Part of that was a period of about 3 months where I sat in on the manual process of officials deciding which institution the prisoners coming in from county courts were to be spending their time.

During that time several hundred inmates were interviewed by officials. Not once did an inmate admit their guilt in any manner. One inmate was caught jumping up and down on his victims head after he had stabbed the victim over 30 times. The head was unrecognizable as a human head. All of the inmates were brought in with hands and feet shackled and by heavily armed guards.

I learned that those people were totally different mentally than normal people. They just did not process information that same way as functional citizens. Some had genius IQs, some were classified as idiots. None felt any remorse or guilt for their crimes. They were different.

There are many out on the streets who are like that and who have not been caught yet or are out after serving their time or who have not stepped into their criminal potential.
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There are some really scary sociopathic types out there. The ones that really send shivers up the collective spines of the public are those who cannot understand or realize why harming or killing people is wrong. There was a jailhouse interview conducted by an ABC reporter with Charles Manson about whether he ever considered remorse or guilt about the Tate-LaBianca murders, or if he cared at all. His reply was "Care? What the **** does that mean, care?" That interview was in the 90s I think.

It is this type of thing that caused the entire world's newspapers to go ablaze when Manson was reported to have died after being admitted to a hospital in Cali. It is also why movies like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre still remains a cult favorite and people still flock to "Kosciusko" in Texas because that is where, allegedly, the legend of Leatherface started. And speaking of those who have not stepped into their full criminal potential, the streets, are, unfortunately, FILLED with them. Work enough late night trucking shifts or retail and you will see them sure enough. Many people think it is funny and entertaining when Marilyn Manson bit off the head of a live bat on stage or GG Allen defecated on stage then rubbed himself in his own feces and threw it into the crowd, but we are truly lucky these guys didn't choose an alternate path of living out their bizarre fantasies. GG Allen once said that he planned to exit this world in a final concert where he would bring in a .45 and kill as many people in the audience as possible. Unfortunately for him, and fortunately for the rest of the world, that creep OD'ed on heroin in Brooklyn shortly after his final concert in 1993.
 
As others have pointed out, criminals don't THINK. They act, often out of raw emotion. They didn't and don't have good plans in life, hence their current situations. Most of us plan our lives out, Vocational training, College, small buisness, careers, Trades, 401K plans, Pensions, insurance, property, vacations, familys, etc. We PLAN to not only sustain, but for our future, and that of our offspring. We have goals, long and short term. Criminals goals consist of the "Big Score", and the next "High". They live expecting entitlements. They rarely use their minds, at least for pro social objectives. They don't THINK, either due to chemical dependency, cognitive limitations, lack of maturity or a combination of the aforementioned. They are indeed different... very different. Poor planning in life can lead to desperation. Desperate people do desperate things. We, as law abiding members of society can only accept this as reality and plan accordingly.
 
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I think we are making a major logical error in this discussion.

The question being asked at this point seems to be if the deterrent effect of our criminal justice system is effective particularly in regards to violent crime.

We are proposing as our only evidence the cases in which it was not effective. This obviously leads us to the conclusion it is not effective.

We are not including those individuals who considered committing a violent crime, were deterred by the criminal justice system, and chose to not commit the violent crime.

We are creating our own card-stacking argument by not using a representative sample of the entire population but instead only using a segment that, by it's very definition, are likely to skew our answers.

We need to know not just if violet criminals were deterred (they obviously were not) but if those who would have been criminals but were not were (they were).
 
The question being asked at this point seems to be if the deterrent effect of our criminal justice system is effective particularly in regards to violent crime.
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That is one question.

We are proposing as our only evidence the cases in which it was not effective. This obviously leads us to the conclusion it is not effective.
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Not sure what you are getting at. There is a system of detection, apprehension, trial, and punishment. And there is a lot of violent crime.

The system is, therefore, obviously much less effective than we would like it to be.

We are not including those individuals who considered committing a violent crime, were deterred by the criminal justice system, and chose to not commit the violent crime.
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What do you mean? We do have a pretty good idea about the number of people who do not commit crime, or at least of those who are not charged. What good would it do for us to know, or guess, how many of those people might have considered committing crimes, or why they elected to not do so?

We need to know not just if violet criminals were deterred (they obviously were not) but if those who would have been criminals but were not were (they were).
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Why?
 
Let's assume that 90% of the population would commit violent crimes if not for the deterrent effect of the criminal justice system.

Let's assume about 10% do and are found guilty (I don't know the actual number though it could probably be found). Of course there is a number who are guilty and not tried / convicted / caught.

Our discussion seems to be concentrating on the 10%. If we only sample the 10% and do not consider the 80% it looks much worse and ineffective than it is. If we have an 80% deterrent rate we are doing pretty good. Of course better would be nice but perfect is impossible too.
 
Let me rephrase. Accepting that 100% deterrence is impossible what is a good rate? My point is on this conversation if we concentrate only on failed deterrence and do not consider effective deterrence by only considering the sample from the failed side we don't even know what we are discussing.
 
Accepting that 100% deterrence is impossible what is a good rate?
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No one cares about the success rate of deterrence. What is important is the crime rate, and the public decides what is acceptable.

My point is on this conversation if we concentrate only on failed deterrence and do not consider effective deterrence by only considering the sample from the failed side we don't even know what we are discussing.
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Of course we do.

Why would you suggest spending time evaluating the reasons why the people who do not commit crimes do not do so? What would you learn from that? What would you do with that information?

That a system of punishment is not a very effective deterrent can be deadly determined by assessing the crime rate.

But there is more to be determined.

is it ineffective because the miscreants do not believe that they will be caught?

It is ineffective because of the length of time between act and consequence? Patting a bird dog on thread at the end of a season will not reinforce good performance.

Is it because sentences are too light?

Suppose we find that there are some people who will not be deterred no matter what the potential consequences. What would we do with that information?

I any case, all of that information can be gleaned from criminals, and there is no reason to study the millions and millions of people who do not commit crimes and to ask them to speculate on what effect the possibility of punishment might have on their behavior.
 
I any case, all of that information can be gleaned from criminals, and there is no reason to study the millions and millions of people who do not commit crimes and to ask them to speculate on what effect the possibility of punishment might have on their behavior.
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Sure it does. What if a large majority say the possibility of punishment had no impact on their decision? Then we need to discuss what does have the greatest impact and how to implement it into society.
 
What if a large majority [of those who do not commit crimes] say the possibility of punishment had no impact on their decision? Then we need to discuss what does have the greatest impact and how to implement it into society.
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I am certain that that is what the majority would say.

What next?

Suppose we "discuss" that happiness, for example, has the "greatest impact". How on Earth would we "implement it into society"?

On the other hand, if we assess why criminals were not deterred by the possibility by punishment, we may be able to come up with a more effective system of punishment.

And we may find ourselves relying more on sequestration and less on deterrence.
 
OldMarksman I'm not sure happiness is the answer, but figuring out how to stop the cycle that creates criminals and violence is. We have more people incarcerated per capita in this country than any developed nation on earth. That ain't working.

I don't think we can discuss the issues that contribute to the prevailing violence in our nation here. The socioeconomic factors at play are not going to be solved on a firearms website. I will say I am always surprised by the 'lock em up and throw away the key' philosophy that many like to spew in regard to offenders of all kinds. While I agree there are some crimes that are so egregious that those who commit them should never be allowed to interact with free people, disposing of folks who may just need some help is not conducive to a free society, and it has never worked for any government long-term.
 
Wow! Criminals are getting more brazen or stupid whichever. Things seem to be getting out of hand in SE Alabama and West Georgia too
 
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