If Hillary wins, they better expand Gitmo

[F34R]

my advice is not to bother interacting with him. the mods let him run rampant around here for some reason.

You know how r3v works, grow some thicker skin...

This Politics and religion sud-section is for people that just want to argue lol

[marshallnoise]

You know how r3v works, grow some thicker skin...

This Politics and religion sud-section is for people that just want to argue lol

You misunderstand! That is his argumentative tactic.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

[The Dark Side of Will]

in fact, we [criminologists] know a lot about what does work but lobbyists prevent sound legislation from passing that would do a lot toward reducing violence and crime in this country

Please enlighten us about what "does work"

[smooth]

Please enlighten us about what "does work"

the most effective way to reduce adult criminality is to minimize child abuse and neglect. longitudinal studies on the impact of home visits by para-professionals to at-risk mothers, multi-systemic treatments for at-risk youth, and follow-up programs through their adolescence (think like a beefed up big brother system), demonstrate lower rates of crime over their lifetimes as well as less violent crimes for the few that do end up committing crimes. an additional bonus is that these programs tend to make money over time. adults from those studies went on to return money back into the system at roughly 10:1 ratios when comparing taxes to expenditures for early childhood programs vs. those who had not gone through the same programs.

for adults, the best responses we've been able to come up with have been multi-systemic treatments but by then we're just doing damage mitigation and responding to crime that's occurred rather than preventing it from happening in the first place, which is a losing proposition for victims, criminals, and taxpayers alike.

[ParsedOut]

the most effective way to reduce adult criminality is to minimize child abuse and neglect. longitudinal studies on the impact of home visits by para-professionals to at-risk mothers, multi-systemic treatments for at-risk youth, and follow-up programs through their adolescence (think like a beefed up big brother system), demonstrate lower rates of crime over their lifetimes as well as less violent crimes for the few that do end up committing crimes. an additional bonus is that these programs tend to make money over time. adults from those studies went on to return money back into the system at roughly 10:1 ratios when comparing taxes to expenditures for early childhood programs vs. those who had not gone through the same programs.

for adults, the best responses we've been able to come up with have been multi-systemic treatments but by then we're just doing damage mitigation and responding to crime that's occurred rather than preventing it from happening in the first place, which is a losing proposition for victims, criminals, and taxpayers alike.

Just imagine the positive impact that 50 million of Bloomberg's dollars would have on these programs.

[The Dark Side of Will]

the most effective way to reduce adult criminality is to minimize child abuse and neglect. longitudinal studies on the impact of home visits by para-professionals to at-risk mothers, multi-systemic treatments for at-risk youth, and follow-up programs through their adolescence (think like a beefed up big brother system), demonstrate lower rates of crime over their lifetimes as well as less violent crimes for the few that do end up committing crimes. an additional bonus is that these programs tend to make money over time. adults from those studies went on to return money back into the system at roughly 10:1 ratios when comparing taxes to expenditures for early childhood programs vs. those who had not gone through the same programs.

for adults, the best responses we've been able to come up with have been multi-systemic treatments but by then we're just doing damage mitigation and responding to crime that's occurred rather than preventing it from happening in the first place, which is a losing proposition for victims, criminals, and taxpayers alike.

Sounds great. Thank you for taking the adult approach and explaining your views.

I echo that it would be fantastic if billionaires interested in bettering society (Buffet & Gates, for example, not just Bloomberg) would substantially support programs like this.
My opinion is that the don't because the government is running these programs (they literally can't give to support government run programs).
I strongly suspect that the giving back would be much more pronounced if these intervention programs were run by non-profits.

After all, people don't "give" taxes (and I think that calling tax revenue "giving back" is pretty... arrogant? Not even sure what to call it other than objectionable)

Soooo... Why the focus on gun rights restrictions?

[marshallnoise]

the most effective way to reduce adult criminality is to minimize child abuse and neglect. longitudinal studies on the impact of home visits by para-professionals to at-risk mothers, multi-systemic treatments for at-risk youth, and follow-up programs through their adolescence (think like a beefed up big brother system), demonstrate lower rates of crime over their lifetimes as well as less violent crimes for the few that do end up committing crimes. an additional bonus is that these programs tend to make money over time. adults from those studies went on to return money back into the system at roughly 10:1 ratios when comparing taxes to expenditures for early childhood programs vs. those who had not gone through the same programs.

This sounds great, but also seems like CPS and there is an opportunity for abuse by the system. Would have to be carefully implemented.

for adults, the best responses we've been able to come up with have been multi-systemic treatments but by then we're just doing damage mitigation and responding to crime that's occurred rather than preventing it from happening in the first place, which is a losing proposition for victims, criminals, and taxpayers alike.

So, damaged goods do exist. If I read that correctly, it is admitted that preventing crime should be the goal as opposed to reacting to it. Unfortunately, our justice system is based upon application of the law. Prevention can only work by the severity of the punishment for the committing of the crime. If the criminal justice system works and is implemented as intended, prevention can be attained to a larger degree.

Anecdotal evidence here, but it is very real to me. I worked at a bank as a teller fresh out of high school. That summer there was a bank robber working his way down the coast in North County San Diego and I was the 13th hit the guy made and the 2nd that day. Got caught parking illegally down at UTC (mall for those who don't know) while trying to get his 14th bank on the same day. The Feds prosecuted him on 13 counts of bank robbery and one attempted. He spent 6 years in jail which should have been 130 years (at 10 years per bank). He got out and moved to Arizona and did it again, hitting another 7. Our judicial system has no teeth. If it did, crime prevention can occur.

But it will never stop those people who have nothing to lose. And for that, a robust economy will create prosperity for even the lower classes making them a stakeholder in the system. What you can't win with people via morality, you can win with economics.

[ParsedOut]

Soooo... Why the focus on gun rights restrictions?

Not speaking for smooth, but it's part of the protectionist mindset of the left. Take away all dangerous things because the gobment will take care of you, you're not responsible enough to take care of yourself.

Also, they think they can "stop the bleeding" by plugging one hole and ignoring the rest. Forget about avoiding the holes in the first place, the American public doesn't get warm fuzzies about telling them how to raise their children, however they do feel good about themselves if they pass laws that on the surface will fix the problem...unfortunately, it's all smoke and mirrors at this point.

[marshallnoise]

Sounds great. Thank you for taking the adult approach and explaining your views.

I echo that it would be fantastic if billionaires interested in bettering society (Buffet & Gates, for example, not just Bloomberg) would substantially support programs like this.
My opinion is that the don't because the government is running these programs (they literally can't give to support government run programs).
I strongly suspect that the giving back would be much more pronounced if these intervention programs were run by non-profits.

After all, people don't "give" taxes (and I think that calling tax revenue "giving back" is pretty... arrogant? Not even sure what to call it other than objectionable)

Soooo... Why the focus on gun rights restrictions?

Frederic Bastiat would call taking from one person and giving to another "Legal Plunder."

As for the focus on gun rights restrictions, the answer is obvious: Two birds, one stone. If you can disarm the public as well as give the imagery that criminals have less access, why not?

I realize you weren't asking me.

[marshallnoise]

Not speaking for smooth, but it's part of the protectionist mindset of the left. Take away all dangerous things because the gobment will take care of you, you're not responsible enough to take care of yourself.

I'll go you one better:

Phony Altruism
Bastiat also saw through the phony "philanthropy" of the socialists who constantly proposed helping this or that person or group by plundering the wealth of other innocent members of society through the aegis of the state. All such schemes are based on "legal plunder, organized injustice."

Like today's neo-conservatives, nineteenth-century socialists branded classical liberals with the name "individualist," implying that classical liberals are opposed to fraternity, community, and association. But, as Bastiat astutely pointed out, he (like other classical liberals) was only opposed to forced associations, and was an advocate of genuine, voluntary communities and associations. "[E]very time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists [mistakenly] conclude that we object to its being done at all."

[gtdragon980]

You should be ok with background checks because they're not a very invasive way to determine how safe it is for you to own a gun, not because you have nothing to hide.

Should I allow someone to go through my underwear drawer because I have nothing to hide, how about all my financial records? Perhaps you did not mean it as I took it, but far too many infringements of privacy are taking place because the people enacting them are of the belief that if you have nothing to hide, it's reasonable.

Good point, I didn't think of it that way when I posted that.

[smooth]

Sounds great. Thank you for taking the adult approach and explaining your views.

I echo that it would be fantastic if billionaires interested in bettering society (Buffet & Gates, for example, not just Bloomberg) would substantially support programs like this.
My opinion is that the don't because the government is running these programs (they literally can't give to support government run programs).
I strongly suspect that the giving back would be much more pronounced if these intervention programs were run by non-profits.

After all, people don't "give" taxes (and I think that calling tax revenue "giving back" is pretty... arrogant? Not even sure what to call it other than objectionable)

Soooo... Why the focus on gun rights restrictions?

I'm not sure if your comment regarding "giving back" is in response to the point I made about individuals returning money back into the system so I'll clarify that point.

It's calculated that each murder costs the state about 1 million dollars.

It's also calculated that building a prison costs about $100,000 dollars per cell and then $30,000 dollars per year to house each prisoner.

After incarceration, it costs additional tens of thousands of dollars per year to supervise previously incarcerated people.

Of the previously incarcerated people who can manage to find jobs once they're out, they end up in lower paying jobs than they would have had if they didn't have a criminal record.

Because of these reasons a prisoner only uses resources and inputs very little, if any, both during and after incarceration.

It's difficult to calculate the cost of crime to individual persons, but regardless of monetary amount street crime is an exorbitant toll on each person impacted, both directly and indirectly. Street crime costs society a fraction as much as white collar crime and corporate malfeasance but that's for a different thread.

So those are the rough costs of crime.


If we spend $2,000 dollars per child per year on pre-natal care, home visitation, and occasional check-ups for the severely at-risk youth while they're going through K-12, we not only spend an awfully lot less than we would end up spending sending them to juvi and/or adult prison but it turns out we don't have to do it for very long for most kids. Evidence indicates that we only have to do it for a few years and then those kids go on to become law abiding citizens that pay their taxes and don't draw on the system. The ratio is calculate that for every dollar we spend on them in the early stages of life society "gets back" $10 dollars. Some in taxes but also by reducing those other costs I listed. Now you can get agitated by the idea that we would be concerned about getting any tax money back, but if we spend $2,000 dollars per year in public money on a kid I'm hard pressed to see how one can claim it's "objectionable" to get at least that amount back into the system.

Also, most of the funding for these projects comes from private dollars. The thing that you suspect, that people don't want to support public programs, is not accurate. There are a myriad of reasons why certain politicians don't want to support these kinds of programs but the biggest factor is because people believe, as marhsallnoise erroneously posted above, that severity of punishment is the key to reducing crime and (also as he erroneously posted) that the main reason for our crime problem is due to leniency.

If you'd like to read where deterrence theory comes from it starts with Beccaria and rational choice theory. If you look him up read what he says about severity vs. certainty in terms of effectiveness of punishment. In fact, he has a lot to say about over-punishment and the negative impacts it can have on the law's legitimacy. You can also think back to your childhood and evaluate whether you were concerned how hard your dad was going to spank you or whether he was going to find out whether you did something wrong.

Keep in mind, the main tenet of deterrence theory is that people are rational thinkers. Over 60% of our prison population are suffering from diagnosed severe mental illness. Over three quarters of them are in prison for drugs and/or drug related offenses. Murders, the hot topic in these current threads, are only very rarely calculated offenses. Most of them, in fact almost all of them, are spur of the moment or heat of passion offenses. Murderers are not worried about whether they are going to be sentenced to death or not--most of them are worried about being killed themselves. Other violent criminals aren't worried about how harsh the sentence for their crime might be because only one-tenth of their crimes will be reported and only one-tenth of those reported crimes will be arrested. Once they get arrested, though, chances are they're going to do time in this country.

Our systems so-called "leniency" is a myth. We punish more people for more different crimes than other countries and we put them in prison longer than other countries. We have both the highest incarceration rate *and* the highest levels of violent crime. Research also shows that when we put someone in prison under harsher conditions, and we put them in for longer periods of time, they come out the other end both committing crimes more often than their cohorts who weren't incarcerated *and* they commit more violent crimes than they did before they went in. Our system, as it currently operates, is a double failure. It doesn't do what it's supposed to do and it tends to make the problems it's supposed to resolving worse. You couldn't build a worse system if you tried.

Suffice to say that very few people come out of prison and go on to earn their doctorates in anything, much less criminal justice (about three and a half years for a non-violent drug offense if you didn't catch that) ;) One of the reasons the mod's admonishment to "grow some thicker skin" was amusing. So when I talk to many of the people in here hypothesizing about the value of carrying guns in public for self-defense I do so as someone who has been around guns and violence in the streets, lived among people who were caught for using guns for violence in the streets, and also as an expert on the stats about using guns for violence and self-defense in the streets.

So when I make a comment about not wanting to waste my time with rude comments about me or whatever it's because I literally am one of a few dozen people in the world in human history who can speak about these issues from all those angles at the same time. It's not about being in an ivory tower but more about recognizing that for some people actually interested in these topics it's a rare opportunity for that person to get to pick my brain for the cost of reading a forum thread.

Anyway, back to why these things don't get implemented and tend to get dismantled when they do start to succeed. The main problem is that being perceived as too "soft" on crime is a political career killer. Being "tough" on crime is a political win. You'll also notice that these kinds of solutions are long-term solutions. Things that don't show dividends for decades. Which politicians are going to stick their neck out for programs that are only going to work twenty years from their election? Yeah, pretty much zero. Even then you'd have to contend with the sizable portion of the population that have zero regard for science and research. Witness how my earlier posts citing published research on this topic was received and how that quickly turned into a general disdain for academics. So you can only imagine how little these kinds of studies impact Congressional decision making once they leave the Congressional commissions about crime and move out onto the floor.

[ParsedOut]

^ Interesting read, thank you. I still think you're a bit too full of yourself, not an attractive quality (non-homo).

[The Dark Side of Will]

I'm not sure if your comment regarding "giving back" is in response to the point I made about individuals returning money back into the system so I'll clarify that point.

It's calculated that each murder costs the state about 1 million dollars.

It's also calculated that building a prison costs about $100,000 dollars per cell and then $30,000 dollars per year to house each prisoner.

After incarceration, it costs additional tens of thousands of dollars per year to supervise previously incarcerated people.

Of the previously incarcerated people who can manage to find jobs once they're out, they end up in lower paying jobs than they would have had if they didn't have a criminal record.

Because of these reasons a prisoner only uses resources and inputs very little, if any, both during and after incarceration.

It's difficult to calculate the cost of crime to individual persons, but regardless of monetary amount street crime is an exorbitant toll on each person impacted, both directly and indirectly. Street crime costs society a fraction as much as white collar crime and corporate malfeasance but that's for a different thread.

So those are the rough costs of crime.

Thanks very much! I'll read the rest when I have more time.

I was wondering if you were talking about increased tax revenue from a more productive member of society as "giving back", but you were actually talking about cost reductions in the prison system.

[smooth]

Precisely. And given that we spend a little over 200 million per year on corrections we could conceivably reduce taxes once we get our prison population down to a manageable level.