Slashdot Mirror
Building Prisons Without Walls Using GPS Devices
Hugh Pickens writes "Graeme Wood writes in the Atlantic that increasingly GPS devices are looking like an appealing alternative to conventional incarceration, as it becomes ever clearer that traditional prison has become more or less synonymous with failed prison. 'By almost any metric, our practice of locking large numbers of people behind bars has proved at best ineffective and at worst a national disgrace,' writes Wood. But new devices such as ExacuTrack suggest a revolutionary possibility: that we might do away with the current, expensive array of guards and cells and fences, in favor of a regimen of close, constant surveillance on the outside and swift, certain punishment for any deviations from an established, legally unobjectionable routine. 'The potential upside is enormous. Not only might such a system save billions of dollars annually, it could theoretically produce far better outcomes, training convicts to become law-abiders rather than more-ruthless lawbreakers,' adds Wood. 'The ultimate result could be lower crime rates, at a reduced cost, and with considerably less inhumanity in the bargain.'"
But the bad news is that it has no basic impact on crime, on re-offending, with many criminals comitting crimes while tagged.
In the future, everyone will have to carry a GPS, not just "prisoners," and you won't be allowed in Beverly Hills without an appointment.
...I can imagine there is plenty that could go wrong here, but at the same time there is plenty that can go right. I think it would take a good bit of time to really do a list comparison to weigh the full pros and cons of such a move.
I'm sensing a certain disconnect from reality present in this article. They do realize that ankle monitors are already routinely used, but yet are often useless? And fat chance with getting severe penalties put in place in our modern American society. We didn't even have the testicular fortitude to kill Charles Manson and others!
That way if they do something wrong it will be easier to prove and the "incarceration" can be switched on remotely. Add an integrated taser and you've got the ultimate means of population control.
Maybe the problem is the laws are fucked up??? Maybe their incarcerating for things that should be a summary offense? Maybe there are too many laws?
The people in 1984 had it easy.
Instead of making holes in the walls you just need holes in the tracking systems. Which could be much easier.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
What about using prison labour to provide cheap goods and services? If we're going to have criminals live on the outside with an attached GPS, they're going to be earning minimum wage wherever they work. They won't be earning pennies an hour slaving away providing us with cheap goods.
Any thoughts? (I'm against slave labour by the way.)
you have to wear two bracelets? This isn't doing away with prisons, its just keeping them for the worse criminals or repeat offenders. So its not about doing away with prisons completely, surely?
While the prison system is definately a failure, GPS devices can also not reach all goals the prisons were intended to serve. Of the tree common goals of punishment (deterrence, protection of citizens, re-education), the current prison system fails (hard) at re-education. GPS will fail at protection (and probably at deterrance).
In order for this to work properly, the surveillance must keep an eye on the prisoners. But humans are group animals - prisoners outside a prison will have contact with innocent citizens. So, logically, surveillance will be forced to keep an eye on everybody.
Checking whether they show up at work at the right time, and leave at the right time can be automated.
But how to check what a "prisoner" does in its free time? How to make sure they don't engage in other illegal activities? You must keep an eye on the surroundings, and all the people who are in contact with the convict.
I conclude that this plan has the potential to be the biggest privacy failure in history.
The prisoners win, the system wins, but the innocent bystanders who never do something wrong will have to fear that the nation-wide surveillance will be massively extended. (But hey, they got nothing to hide, right?)
But everybody will break the law at some point... and with such a huge surveillance, soon the government will own everybody. Ok, ok, I might exaggerate a bit... but this is no development to applaud for.
An image came to my mind: everyone is GPS-tracked and implanted with a remote electrocution kit and the batteries.
Also, iirc the effective precision of GPS is sometimes limited? What happens when someone's not trying to flee but the system think he is?
Oh, I see they have it in a sort of "geek gadget" shop too...
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
has never been mugged, burgled, or had a loved one raped or murdered. GPS won't stop Homie da Gangsta from jacking up my car or gang-raping your sister, but barbed wire and bars will. There is no cure for the near-100% recidivism of violent felons except death or life imprisonment.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
But it was cool watching their heads blow up. That is what we're talking about, right?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Roughly 25% of people in prison are there for non-violent drug offenses.
We could implement this GPS plan and fund a nice chunk of corporate socialism for the industry around it.
Or we could get the stick out of our ass, end the war on drugs and start making our deeds better match our words about being the most free country on the planet and in the process shave 25% of the taxpayers' prison bill - maybe even more considering how much violent crime is derivative of the drug trade.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
But rather the notion that putting people in prison for "crimes" such as smoking pot is a good idea. A national disgrace indeed.
Jesus had a UNIX beard.
Prison is both a deterrant and a way of stopping people from activly doing bad things.
But if I'm dealing drugs (for example), tracking me won't make much of a difference, I'll still be able to do my thing.
Similarly, nothing's there to stop me stealing from shops or whatever.
Also where's the punishment in this?
... often far safer than "open time" in the quad, and yes, I write from experience.
In Liberty, Rene
From the article (for those who cannot read):
... convicts who might once have been in prison now walk among us unrecognized--like pod people, or Canadians.
Though that could be changed if we required Canadians to identify themselves by having promiscuously placed tattoos. Otherwise one could come across a Canadian without ever realizing it. Many look and sound like normal people.
...aren't the law-abiding citizens going to feel cheated? We already have corporations acting unhindered by the law because their fines are a small fraction of their illegal gains and we can't put corporations behind bars. Do we really want to extend that to people? Are the cops going to be on site quickly enough to stop a violent criminal from claiming another victim when he deviates from an "established, legally unobjectionable routine"? The possibility of hacking the bracelet or faking the GPS signal aren't even my primary concerns. This is a bad idea even if the system works perfectly.
Everyone breaks some laws in modern life. It can be as simple as speeding to not filling a form out correctly.
This makes "jail" cheap enough for everyone. Also I suspect over time it would evolve into something like what released sex offenders have to deal with. At least prisoners get food and medical care.
Just put a collar on some one, tell them they are not allowed to go anywhere over 5 miles away. And not to a list of prohibited places and let them go... Who will hire them?
How will they eat. What about places where GPS does not work...
Soon everyone who does not have money for a lawyer would have a tracker attached.
While GPS technology has come a long way and the low SNR performance of newer GPS modules is amazing operation indoors remains patchy at best. My single level weatherboard house is not so bad normally, but even there I get some inability to acquire indoors depending on satellite geometry at the time. I think with long-term monitoring they'd have to be some threshold where they simply treated no acquisition of a signal as a normal event. I guess they could install re-radiating antennas inside a prisoner's home but in some locations they would have to treat loss of position as a normal event. For anyone slightly tech-savvy at that point they could shield the antenna and have a certain amount of time to go elsewhere.
While far from trivial there is also the possibility of using a GPS pseudolite to give a false location. Last time I looked GPS signal simulators for use in developing and testing new GPS systems cost in the order of $50K but that was quite a few years ago. Minus the considerable development effort I don't see while something like an FPGA / microcontroller combo linked to a low-power transmitter couldn't do the same for a few hundred in hardware costs.
I have an even better, cheaper and quicker method. It involves a wall, a big crate of ammo, and an M2 ("500 solutions to crime a minute").
(Posted AC because I am appalled (and chuffed) by how flagrantly non-PC this post is by modern standards.)
Having done 5 years federal time myself, I know something about this. I was busted in 1992, did 5 years, got out and havn't been in trouble since, except for too many speeding tickets. I think I'm the exception. Most go back. They call it life on the installment plan. The thing is, once you get used to being inside you loose skills needed to function in society, and the problem just becomes worse. I don't know what the number is now, but when I was inside, there were over 1 million people behind bars. That's not "on parole", that's the number behind bars. That's one out of every 300 people in the united states. I don't know what the cost is now, but when I was inside, it cost 30,000 per year to keep someone locked up. I think that for sex offenders and violent people like rapists, killers, and child molesters, the prison is the best solution. If you would only lock up THESE people, instead of non violent drug offenders, you would reduce the prison population tremendously. I bet if you look at the cost of the drug war and the cost of keeping these people locked up, including the lost taxes because they are not productive members of society, the cost would be far more than we've spent on the war in Iraq. There may even be enough money there to turn the economy around :)
What you must do is connect the device with an other prisoner, but in such a way that they do not know who the oter one is and if they are too far from each other, the device will explode
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
http://jeanettes-celebrity-corner.com/wp-content/photos/lindsay_lohan_bikini_al_mo_br.jpg
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Prisons have two main purposes: Protecting the public by keeping dangerous people locked up, and punishment by restricting the prisoner's freedom and privacy.
Using freedom restriction och privacy with GPS tracking and other technical measures seems like a good punishment to me. It is cheap, there can be several degrees to the punishment, you don't expose people to other criminals and it's possible for criminals to keep their job.
For example (swedish examples):
Crime: Assault
Old punishment: 3 months in prison, pay damages.
New punishment: Pay damages. No travel abroad or drinking alcohol for 2 years. Must check in with police station 3 times/week for 1 year, every day the first 2 months. Must carry GPS transmitter, and GPS position will be given to the victim of the crime. Must be home or in hotel between 00:00 - 05:00 for 1 year. Failure to comply will extend time, and strong disobidience will result in prison lock-up.
When surveillance and privacy restriction is a punishment, it will be made clear that it is a punishment and nothing that should be imposed on citizens in general.
Tracking ever larger numbers of citizens is not the solution.
The solution is to drastically reduce the number of "crimes" for which people are jailed. The Economist has a really good recent article on this: "Rough justice in America
Too many laws, too many prisoners": http://www.economist.com/node/16636027?story_id=16636027
Sounds like an iPhone...
There have been numerous reports of how our GPS-tracked parolees have violated parole and their overburdened parole officers have simply not been able to pursue the matter. While I'm not necessarily a fan of prisons and throwing people in one for every little infraction, it seems like replacing one failed strategy with another that we can reasonably predict will also fail is just foolish.
Perhaps we need to figure out a way to make the GPS solution work before we start to use it.
Or perhaps we need to figure out whether or not prison is the appropriate punishment for all these crimes?
Go ahead, this won't deter me from crimes like ripping MP3s....
Also, this just in.
In Sweden non violent criminals can sometimes get a part of their punishment (or all of it in some cases) converted to GPS tracking. While you are on GPS tracking you are only allowed to travel to and from work and to pre-approved stops (like grocery store) and you must stay in your home at all other times. The police/parole officer also have legal access to your home at any time of their choice. If you break the rules of this limited parole you get sent back to prison. And it is always voluntary. It can also be combined with things like mandatory AA-meetings and Alco-locks for their cars.
The City of Fresno built a park downtown, and installed power outlets for people to plug their laptops into, etc.
Turns out these shady-looking guys started meeting there every day. Some people started noticing, and then noticed they had their ankle bracelets plugged into the outlets. Who were they? A bunch of child molesters.
The city turned off the outlets soon after that.
But where did these guys go, then? They needed to charge their anklets, after all.
The very helpful Fresno PD threw a long extension cable out of a third-story window. So they now hang out next to the police building, plugging in. Looks pretty ghetto, but at least the po-po can keep an eye on them.
TFA claims that prisons have failed. I don't entirely agree. The way I see it, prisons have three roles: one is reeducation, when we release someone from prison, they should come out as better citizens, not better criminals. In that respect, you could say that prisons have failed.
The second role of prisons however is punishment: prison SHOULD be an unpleasant experience for someone who has committed a crime. It should be a deterrent, something they will never want to experience again. Also, if you're a victim of a crime, you want to know that the criminal actually gets punished and doesn't get off with just a slap on the wrist.
Finally, the third role of prisons is protecting society, taking dangerous individuals out of the loop for a considerable amount of time so that they can't do any harm.
It seems to me that while GPS tracking devices may help somewhat with role 1, they don't do anything for role 2 and 3. So in my opinion, they shouldn't be a replacement for a prison system, but an addition to it, for instance in combination with the parole system.
Why go to all that effort of targeting criminals? You could do like what the UK has done, install CCTV EVERYWHERE and make the entire country a virtual prison.
Speaking from my experience, it feels nice to get out of the UK on holiday. However, due to the number of cameras and them being everywhere everywhere, the UK really does feel like one large open prison when you return. So much for being a free country.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Crime does not pay.
Here's a notion. Why not try to figure out what is wrong with your society that causes so much crime and then deal with it. Then you won't have to put so many people in prison. The U.S. is the land of the free, yet it has the highest incarceration rate on the planet. Surely someone must be asking, "Hey, why is that?"
Bibo Ergo Sum.
Until they go under some trees or inside a building.
I care not for your karma and your mod points.
Be aware that there's now a 50% chance they could be a convict thwarting GPS instead of a nutcase thwarting the government.
Rolls eyes.
This wont work. Its silly... and sounds more like a company hoping for a nationwide government contract, or atleast a state contract from someone dumb enough to try it.
What could possibly go wrong?
You set a curfew. Either they are at work (at the times they are supposed to be working) or they are at home (at the other times). If they are not at home, the GPS system will detect that and alert the cops that they have broken the curfew (and may be committing a crime).
Although you are right that its hard to monitor what the prisoner does when they are at home (and who they have contact with). Which is why they can use the GPS monitoring solution for crimes where the offender cant re-offend without leaving the house. If you limit their access to telephones and the internet, the list of crimes they can commit from inside their house gets even smaller. People who are either A.A risk to the community (e.g. violent offenders) or B.Likely to commit more crimes from inside their house whilst on detention would get locked up in a proper jail.
Of course there are a whole pile of crimes that shouldn't require incarceration at all.
It is a sad fact that the ONLY rehabilitation that works on criminals is a bullet through the brain. Not a single other system has any noticable effect. The industry beats its chest when it achieves a 1% different on a recidivism rate of 70%+
Imagine if you went to a doctor and 70% of the time the treatment did absolutely nothing but cost a lot of money. How long before you sue? But that is exactly what is going on with both prisons and rehab. It don't make a difference if you lock them up in the worsed pound them in the ass jail or coddle them till even a ragdoll cat gets fed up. Criminals re-offend.
It gets even funnier if you realize that recidivism figures measure ONLY those cons who have been CONVICTED of commiting another crime, and then ONLY if someone happens to notice the connection.
Example, 15yr old rapes. This is NOT marked permanent on his record. If he rapes again at 20, NOBODY links the two. IF of course he is even caught AND convicted the second time. So the bleeding heart who listened to his sob story at 15 beats himself on the chest on how he saved this kid. WRONG!
There fundementally isn't a simple solution. Some criminals belong in the most secure lockup you can image, some people just can't be saved. Others should have been caught and put back on track LONG before BUT that requires lots of money and yes, invasion of privacy. Me looking in YOUR house to see if you kid might be at risk. Don't like it? The alternative is only catching those kids when it is far to late.
There is a solution, but it involves a lot of money and having lots of answers to all the various problems. Prevention, removal of incentive, intervention with gateway crimes (this includes speeding you speed freaks), harsh punishment for those who refuse to change, providing openings for those willing to change.
But that don't fit on a signpost. No slogan can be made out of it. So it won't happen.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
In other words, an embedded C-4 change :)
This is incipient tyranny, no more, no less. Just wait - if this isn't stopped, in five years these devices will be used routinely in High Schools (probably as a condition for participation in Athletics and other after School activities), and in ten years as a condition for employment in certain kinds of jobs.
You sound very confident, do you have a source for that "near-100%" statistic?
I'm asking because in my opinion this "sex offenders / serious violent offenders always do it again" myth has been debunked quite thoroughly. Rape and homicide especially are not repeated very often -- recidivism percentages are in the 1-10% bracket for the typical 3-5 year data period. Harris&Hanson calculated that in 15 years 3 out of 4 sex offenders have not been rearrested -- this is a very good figure compared to just about any other form of crime. See "Predicting Relapse" by Hanson and Bussiere (collects data from 61 international studies), or the half a dozen DoJ studies on recidivism for starters. There are some sub-types of sexual offences that seem to be more prone to repeating (and I wouldn't be surprised if the same was true for homicide) but that wasn't your point, was it?
Another widely popular myth is visible in your "Homie da Gangsta gang-rape" idea. Most sexual assaults (80-90%) are committed by someone known to the victim (you can find this in DoJ statistics as well, can't remember the exact ref).
The problem with the current system is that they keep letting them back out.
Re introduce oubliette dungeons.
Without governments accepting the expertise they employed and where Portugal has demonstrated that the decriminalization of drugs actually works, then this type of tracking system will only ever work when there is a root and branch reform of the criminal system.
This really is a bandaid.
The problem here is that there are people in prison because they need therapy for drug addiction. Cannabis is less destructive than Alcohol.
I know this is a rant about drugs, but prohibition, really comes with massive social costs and to lock away people that actually need therapy is wrong.
Just don't forget the exploding neck collars if they go outside the perimeter.
"War on Drugs" anyone? They eventually backed down from prohibition of alcohol, so why not other substances? There is a lot of stuff that should be legal and no point in going into a discussion about it. We have even more laws that need repealing as well such as those associated with prostitution and other activities. These aren't "nice" things to do and I probably wouldn't engage in any of them, but I don't think they should be illegal either. People are going to trash their lives no matter what laws are written. The impact on society that turning them into felons has is fewer voters and a lot more bus boys and career criminals. (No one will hire a felon for a good job. Not ever.)
Fix the laws, there will be fewer criminals.
See this military demo about Active Denial System. Maybe this with conjunction of a GPS system could somehow provide alternative prisons without *actual* walls? But it sure would cost a lot more.
gets to spew on the nyt's. what a surprise? the guy, who along with big dick cheney, wrote the apocalypse scenario (nwo) we are now following into hell on earth. motives please?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/opinion/31wolfowitz.html?_r=1&hp
meanwhile (looks like it'll be a while 'till these foulcurrs evaporate into bad history); the corepirate nazi illuminati is always hunting that patch of red on almost everyones' neck. if they cannot find yours (greed, fear ego etc...) then you can go starve. that's their (slippery/slimy) 'platform' now. see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorder
never a better time to consult with/trust in our creators. the lights are coming up rapidly all over now. see you there?
greed, fear & ego (in any order) are unprecedented evile's primary weapons. those, along with deception & coercion, helps most of us remain (unwittingly?) dependent on its' life0cidal hired goons' agenda. most of our dwindling resources are being squandered on the 'wars', & continuation of the billionerrors stock markup FraUD/pyramid schemes. nobody ever mentions the real long term costs of those debacles in both life & any notion of prosperity for us, or our children. not to mention the abuse of the consciences of those of us who still have one, & the terminal damage to our atmosphere (see also: manufactured 'weather', hot etc...). see you on the other side of it? the lights are coming up all over now. the fairytail is winding down now. let your conscience be your guide. you can be more helpful than you might have imagined. we now have some choices. meanwhile; don't forget to get a little more oxygen on your brain, & look up in the sky from time to time, starting early in the day. there's lots going on up there.
"The current rate of extinction is around 10 to 100 times the usual background level, and has been elevated above the background level since the Pleistocene. The current extinction rate is more rapid than in any other extinction event in earth history, and 50% of species could be extinct by the end of this century. While the role of humans is unclear in the longer-term extinction pattern, it is clear that factors such as deforestation, habitat destruction, hunting, the introduction of non-native species, pollution and climate change have reduced biodiversity profoundly.' (wiki)
"I think the bottom line is, what kind of a world do you want to leave for your children," Andrew Smith, a professor in the Arizona State University School of Life Sciences, said in a telephone interview. "How impoverished we would be if we lost 25 percent of the world's mammals," said Smith, one of more than 100 co-authors of the report. "Within our lifetime hundreds of species could be lost as a result of our own actions, a frightening sign of what is happening to the ecosystems where they live," added Julia Marton-Lefevre, IUCN director general. "We must now set clear targets for the future to reverse this trend to ensure that our enduring legacy is not to wipe out many of our closest relatives."--
"The wealth of the universe is for me. Every thing is explicable and practical for me .... I am defeated all the time; yet to victory I am born." --emerson
no need to confuse 'religion' with being a spiritual being. our soul purpose here is to care for one another. failing that, we're simply passing through (excess baggage) being distracted/consumed by the guaranteed to fail illusionary trappings of man'kind'. & recently (about 10,000 years ago) it was determined that hoarding & excess by a few, resulted in negative consequences for all.
consult with/trust in your creators. providing more than enough of everything for everyone (without any distracting/spiritdead personal gain motives), whilst badtolling unprecedented evile, using an unlimited supply of newclear power, since/until forever. see you there?
"If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face,
Personally I would prefer they sub-contract prisoners to do manual labor which nowadays is outsourced to other countries and pay them the same (so that companies are attracted).
And then, charge prisoners some rent from their hard earn cash.
That way tax payers do not have to pay to maintain those bastards.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3036450.stm
But maybe something is also wrong with the societies, who 'need' to lock up so many people and have so many reoffenders. Guess if I was at the bottom of a cold-hearted society, where noone cares about me, chances were also higher that I'd become a criminal or reoffender ...
Exploding heads?
Even better example :D
There already exist GPS test transmitters.
http://www.meguro.co.jp/english/product/category/category_01/msg2051a_eng.html for example.
These units broadcast a false GPS position.
Speaking as an electronics engineer, it is a complex process to design a decent GPS simulator that will allow you to simulate arbitrary movements accurately.
It is not however impossible.
If there was a market for it - which might be as small as one person approaching a skilled engineer and offering 50K so they can go and ... while having an alibi - then creating one that slips on top of the existing antenna is quite possible.
And what news is this? In Finland there are open prisons. Prisoners work among normal people, they just need to report to officers few times a day. They have GPS's in their leg and they are not allowed to move away from specific area. Of course the prison is on the island but it works very well. But this does not mean that anyone can get to open prison, only a well behaved mates. You can not even notice who is civilian and who is a prisoner. And they do have a holidays and other stuff normal way.
The GPS is just such technology what does not work for those who really want to get out and can get help from outsiders. You can jam any signal to somepoint and the GPS signal can brake up so at least there is no way to have a explosives tied to it. We still need "walls" (or secured area like island) and guards. People need to take care of other people. We can not push a button and say it works.
...It doesn't work with dogs, it certainly wont work with murders. Who thinks this crap up? Put them away where they can't harm INNOCENT PEOPLE. I couldn't give a fuck about them
Drugs such as opium and heroin WERE legal but they caused so much misery and strife that they were banned in almost all nations. People who thing legalising drugs will somehow make addicts and the problems they cause vanish are living in a dream world. Perhaps you might like to check out the number of deaths either through violence , drunk driving or liver disease from alcohol - that well known legal drug.
You set a curfew. Either they are at work (at the times they are supposed to be working) or they are at home (at the other times). If they are not at home, the GPS system will detect that and alert the cops that they have broken the curfew (and may be committing a crime).
Too simplistic, doesn't work. People also need to eat, go to the dentist, go to the emergency room, go to the doctor, apply for work at a better job, go to the pharmacy, get their interview suit from the drycleaners, work unanticipated mandatory overtime, AA meetings "often" intentionally scheduled during prime drinking time, etc. And if the criminal either has kids living in their house or even just has kids at all, its pretty much free range as long as there is a tenuous connection to "its for the children".
I speak from experience given my neighbor has nearly double digit drunk driving convictions, and on his latest work-release / probation / house arrest / whatever the heck its called, he pretty much got around MORE than I did.
From discussion, since its virtually impossible to live outside prison under house arrest, no one does, and it simply means the parole officer bullies folks she/he doesn't like as an individual or as a (protected minority) group. Being a married with children white semi-educated good ole boy sorta-middle class sportsfan, coincidentally pretty much identical to his parole officer with the exception of adding a serious drinking problem, he had few hassles, but I'm told minorities tend to have a very rough time of it.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Are you seriously thinking that folks 'branded' with unremovable GPS collars will be able to move freely and participate openly in the community?
Where will they live once society figures out you can limit the places they can live (as with regitered sex offenders, who have to live so far away from schools, playgrounds, etc.)?
Where will they work? People without criminal records can't find jobs, and parolees have an even harder time, despite the wide-held notions of 'having paid their debt to society' and the ideal of giving someone a second chance. Active prisoners would not benefit from the view of having 'paid their debt', and would be rendered unemployable, placing the burden for their sustainence on the social welfare system instead of the prison system.
It sounds nice, but this idea seems to ignore reality and is focusing on a technical solution to a social problem, ignoring all the related issues.
Ken
swift, certain punishment for any deviations from an established, legally unobjectionable routine
won't work in many cases unless the "swift, certain punishment" is lethal, or damn near. Like small explosive charges...
Well, gee, no wonder. You know, even so much as 50 years ago, when you got sent to prison, that was a punishment. The food was terrible, there was pretty much nothing to do but read or do forced work, and the living conditions were almost non-existent. Now? Hell, lawyers call it cruel and unusual punishment if each prisoner doesn't have access to cable TV in their cell! You have people that actually GAIN WEIGHT in prison. This, combined with the fact that there are corrupt correctional officers at almost every prison (which allows money, drugs, and contraband like cell phones to flow into prisons) means there is little incentive to not get sent to prison. It is high time being sent to prison became a punishment again, instead of the tax payer-funded all-inclusive resort it's become.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
So the police with know the exactly GPS coordinates of where I get mugged? That's awesome!
shave 25% of the taxpayers' prison bill - maybe even more considering how much violent crime is derivative of the drug trade
What's in that for government?
Drug prohibition is a billion-dollar business. There is simply no way the elite at the top of the pyramid are going to give that up, especially considering how prohibition is a self-sustaining source of endless revenue. The more violence on the street (a direct result of prohibition), the more money needed to "fix" the problem, the greater the level of prohibition, and (surprise) the more violence on the street. It's a perfect self-sustaining money-making machine, and when you're in a position to control that flow of cash, you are in a position to exploit it for personal gain.
Did I just imply that morality, safety, and indecency are merely the smokescreens of drug prohibition, and the real goal is merely cold hard cash? You're damn right I did.
1. Install auto navigation unit into prison barge.
2. Set GPS coordinates to 51 26 11.58 N, 179 10 47.14 E (WGS)
3. Put convicts on prison barge.
4. Remove convicts when the barge gets there.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
This is the way to lose your individual freedom. First it will be just prisoners, then it will be those convicted of lesser crimes without a jail-term, then it will be those out on bail or accused. Later it will be old people and children for "their own safety". Finally, it will be everyone for "lifesaving medical response" or some other noble cause. This is not sci-fi or conspiracy theory. This is the natural progression of these types of actions. So when you spend the final days of your life with the local and federal government monitoring literally every step you take and directly charging your bank account for walking on the grass at a federal building or for crossing a street at other than an intersection, do NOT say you didn't know this would happen.
People called those against the Social Security numbers tin-foil hat wearers and conspiracy theorists. They said that the SSN would NEVER, by law, be used for anything but the dispersement of SS benefits. The government lied and they continue to lie on a daily basis. The federal income tax was ONLY to pay for the civil war. They said they would NEVER make it permanent. GPS tracking will ONLY be used to track prisoners? yeah, right.
Fence off some square states and toss em all in there. It'd make for some great TV and income.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
I am so going to get -5 Troll for writing this, but I don't care. Chasing carma is not my sport, at least not by means of hypocrisy called "political correctness".
'The ultimate result could be lower crime rates, at a reduced cost'
Where is the evidence to this? As I already mentioned in a previous post on similar topic, gang leaders already successfully continue with their business even while incarcerated, and this retarded measure will only make their job even easier. Once again, the law-abiding citizens will end up looking as fools and criminals will be laughing in the face of their victims and the society as whole.
'and with considerably less inhumanity in the bargain.'
Why should humane treatment even be an issue, especially when we are talking about most ruthless and unrepentant criminals, such as rapists, gang leaders and assassins? When will the society finally realize and admit that certain individuals can only be stopped from committing further crimes by means of physical elimination?
'The ultimate result could be lower crime rates, at a reduced cost'
Where is the evidence to this? As I already mentioned in a previous post on similar topic, gang leaders already successfully continue with their business even while incarcerated, and this retarded measure will only make their job even easier. Once again, the law-abiding citizens will end up looking as fools and criminals will be laughing in the face of their victims and the society as whole.
The counter argument is that by getting the non violent and petty criminals out of prison, you reduce prison populations and make them easier to control. I'd rather see smaller prisons with more intense scrutiny than large prisons that maximize economy.
One is confined as punishment. The confinement keeps one from many things, including but not limited to one's home, job, car, friends, and family. This GPS thing is not confinement. It is restriction from certain locations.
I think I'd still rather see murders, rapists and child molesters locked up anyway.
we have made too many things illegal and have not updated "felony" dollar levels in decades.
Given a few years more inflation, stealing a candy bar will be a felony.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
www.imdb.com/title/tt0091069/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106950/
is the right one
Really?
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_tot_cri_percap-crime-total-crimes-per-capita
# 8 United States: 80.0645 per 1,000 people
# 11 Germany: 75.9996 per 1,000 people
# 19 Italy: 37.9633 per 1,000 people
# 31 Russia: 20.5855 per 1,000 people
# 34 Japan: 19.177 per 1,000 people
Looks to me like the U.S. is better at catching, convicting, and incarcerating criminals than the other countries you listed.
Sounds like this type of prison can scale up pretty easy. Good to have if one want to inprison more people or mayby one could use the technique in the work place. Also very neat to use when building a major outdoor concentration camp - that does not need to be so concentrated. ... Really would not be so bad to be in prison or a camp, liek beeing on a very long picknick. We could definitely have more people in camps without rasing objections.
So the proposal is to put more criminals under house arrest? Really?
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
I say do it and make them all examples. It would only take a few before
word gets out. I would make it apply to politicians also, stay on the job
24/7/365 or die! They would work so much harder.
Naturally, passing any law that exempts politicians from the law, would be treason.
FTW
If they gave half the money to the prisoner, that it costs to keep someone locked up, then they would save money on the transaction. Currently about £8,000 per month ...
We already sent our lobbyists to everybody to prevent that from happening.
The Concrete Industry
The U.S. government is EXTREMELY corrupt. The U.S. imprisons about 6 times the percentage of its citizens as European countries. Google it for details.
Anything for votes. Anything for the prison contractors.
What a nitwit.
Half the reason for those walls is to KEEP people and what they'd bring into the prison OUT.
Without prisons, the punishment for violating the rules will be that you have to wear two GPS trackers.
Unfortunately, that isn't how this has worked out historically. Non-violent offenders are not generally housed today with violent offenders anyway, so this would have no effect. What is highly likely is that problem prisoners that are difficult to manage within a prison environment get pushed out the door with monitoring so they are no longer a problem.
The immediate effect is that we are once again pushing mentally disturbed folks out on the street. In the 1970s we closed the hospitals and pushed the people that were confined there out. They were supposed to go to halfway houses and residential treatment centers. But in large measure they walked away from those and became the first wave of homeless. A lot of them ended up in prison, where today they get little or no treatment and are very difficult to manage in a prison environment.
This would be an absolutely wonderful outcome for all of those prison wardens who wake up every day wondering what they are going to do. They do not have the staff to control these people and they don't have the tools to do it either. So of course you have all sorts of unmanageable behavior - everything from inmates peeing in the hallway to attacking each other. Yes, wonderful idea to push them back out onto the streets with some tracking so they can easily be found. Home? Well, that might be a problem as these folks don't have homes. Or a family that can manage them.
The mistake was dumping these people out of the hospitals where they had the staff and tools to manage these people. It was viewed as cruel and inhumane to keep them locked up. A bunch of made-for-TV movies exploited the concept of nice people locked away for no reason at all. There was this small side effect - the state hospitals cost a fortune to run and by closing them the states saved all this money. Of course it was an attractive idea to release these people and probably as many as 50% of them did OK.
We are still reeling from the impact of the other 50%. And it continues on today.
Let's say you have a brother that is "developmentally challenged" and has violent temper tantrums. A six year-old in a man's body with all of the self-control and judgement of a six year-old. You might try caring for him in your house but after a few violent incidents it quickly becomes either a lifelong committment without including the rest of the family or pushing the brother into a home of some sort. Unfortunately, unless you are willing to foot the bill (which is pretty darn high) almost nobody will take someone like that. There are no more treatment facilities. There are no more hospitals or "sanitariums". What exactly do you do?
For far too many of these types of people there is the "Fourth and Main" approach which is only slightly different than letting the undesired and unwanted dog out on at the rest stop and driving away. It quickly becomes someone else's problem and the only folks around with any ability to do anything are the police. Trust me, they don't want it. But all it takes is one violent outburst in public and the police have little choice in the matter. As does the judge. So it becomes a Department of Corrections problem. And this is where a good part of the problem in prisons can be pointed at.
So of course they want to push the problem somewhere else - back on the street. Just like in the 1970s.
If you let your government have that much control over known criminals, it will soon demand that much control over the unknown criminals ( ie the rest of you ) and mandate that you are all monitored just in case you do something naughty. No, wait, they already do that to Muslims and Tea Partiers :-)
If it's based on positioning with cell phone towers then anywhere with no cellphone signal is good.
Oh my god, the criminals could be anywhere in the entire US!
(Sorry :p)
quietly making a deal with the cellphone companies to get the positions of their phones would be almost as effective
If whoever gets that power gets it through the punishment, I'd prefer if the rulebook said so. If they have that power already, why aren't they using it to catch criminals and enforce restraining orders?
Your idea seems to suggest either violating rule-of-law principles, or a government-on-citizen spying program that would make Orwell turn over in his grave, or a government inept at grabbing for more power.
oh, having more crime is now "better"?
the fact that the US is over 6 times larger and have over 6 times the population of any given European country would *Obviously* have *nothing* to do with that.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
The real problem is that prisons are more like hotels these days. Don't give them food better than I can buy in the cafeteria at work, and don't give them a cell bigger than the cubicle I spend most of my day in. Give them bare necessities. A mattress to lie down, water on tap, and a toilet. Feed them what is needed, but keep in mind that it should be punishment, not gourmet food. They should be kept in the cells far more than they actually are. Prisons should not be nice enough to the point that there exist people who are OK with spending their life there. It should be a miserable place.
No, there is no "-1 I'LL NEVER ADMIT BEING WRONG!!!" mod.
'The ultimate result could be lower crime rates, at a reduced cost, and with considerably less inhumanity in the bargain.'
Ohhh, that's right, lets care about the inhumanity committed against the criminals and ignore the inhumanity these criminals inflict upon law abiding citizens. Good Job.
you are a retard... look up the definition of percentage some time.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Do you know what the word "percentage" means?
It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
Arrest as many people as possible until nearly everyone is forced to wear one of these. Given estimates that the average person unknowingly commits several technical federal crimes a day, it shouldn't be long.
when we are talking about most ruthless and unrepentant criminals
You're the only one talking about them. Everyone else figures they'll let the guys who "did inhale" out while the rapists and murderers are left in prison.
Everyone misses the point in why the death penalty should be abolished: because government WILL kill innocent people (and likely already has). The fact that even one death-row prisoner was later found to be innocent is enough to justify abolishing the death penalty. The fact that government makes mistakes at all is enough to justify abolishing the death penalty. Retractions on death sentences are not uncommon, yet they still trumpet the death penalty as if gambling on somebody's life has any place whatsoever in a free society.
If you advocate the death penalty, then surely you must believe that government is incapable of making mistakes. If you recognize that government makes mistakes, yet still support the death penalty, then logically, you place more value on centralized power than human life.
Death is irreversible. You can't undo it. If you make the "mistake" of killing an innocent -- no matter what the rationale or law says -- then there is only one word to describe you: murderer. The death penalty doesn't "accidentally" kill innocents, as in the case of manslaughter. They make a conscious decision to do it. If the prisoner is actually guilty, then you are in the moral right. If the prisoner is innocent, then I wish you luck on your judgement day (not).
Tracking criminals by GPS! My god, why didn't someone think of this before? It's flawless! It's impossible to corrupt and will never cause prison support staff to let their faith get pushed into passive observation techniques causing any one who switches a GPS device with someone else, or attaching it to a dog or a car or something. I can see the really cool cop chase scene with the General Lee now! Wooooooo hooooo!
brain skipped over the %. i'd still like some documentation, not a sweeping 'google it' argument. its not my responsibility to back up your arguments, its yours.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
1) Right. So somebody knocks on your door and says, "Hello, my name is Mike and I live two doors down. I'm legally obligated to inform you that I've got an insatiable urge to lure children into my house and eat their brains. But don't worry, because I'm not allowed to leave your neighborhood."
2) Doesn't matter where you put those GPS devices, criminals will have them removed. You can implant them in their stomach, intestines, brain, testicles, heart...it doesn't matter. Don't bother to think about the human rights violations of doing this to a person. Don't bother to think about the underground scene of "professional" surgeons for performing these removal operations.
So what's to differentiate, in the eyes of the casual observer, between an honest, non-criminal citizen, and a criminal under.. what should we call this? An advanced form of house arrest? Also, as others have pointed out, ideas similar to this have been tried in some countries with little success, and with some criminal activity occurring while this so-called sentenence is being served. Also, while I admit I'm paranoid, wouldn't something like this just bring us closer to living in some nightmarish totalitarian regime where everyone is essentially a prisoner? Wouldn't it remove the stigma of such? No, we need prisons, we need harsh places to send criminals where their freedom is severely limited. Perhaps these places need to evolve, but they're necessary.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
The U.S. is rapidly becoming a two-tier society in terms of civil rights because of our desire to lock everyone up and the reality of being unable to do so (most of this is driven by the war and drugs and the secondary lawlessness caused by drugs).
First-tier citizens are those who have never been convicted of a felony.
Second-tier citizens are those who have been convicted of a felony and are either on long-term probation or parole or have served a long sentence. In most cases, these people lose most of their civil rights and cannot reclaim them without a difficult appeal process or a pardon.
I don't have a problem with convicted felons, serving their sentence in a prison or on parole losing their civil rights. Depending on the crime, some long-term probationary convicts, such as violent criminals, should probably have some of their rights curtailed (eg, buying a weapon) for the duration of their probationary period.
The problem is, though, that we're convicting these people on 10+ year sentences, often for violent crimes, and then after 18 months, we're letting them out on probation or parole and treating them like second class citizens forever. And then we wonder why unemployment is so high and why people don't feel part of the society as a whole.
Is to simply make fewer laws? Has it occurred to anyone that perhaps much of the people who get locked up are there for reasons that don't really warrant locking them up in the first place, and that by branding them as criminals for behavior that isn't really harming anyone is actually doing more to create crime than stop it?
Our greatest enemy is neither a single man, nor is it a nation, it is, as it has always been, our own greed.
its not my responsibility to back up your arguments, its yours.
He did. Sometimes it's better to find your own references than to rely on your opponent to cherry-pick one for you. In any case these numbers are not exactly secret, maybe something from the National Institute of Corrections would be appropriate?
You're welcome.
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
The summary says that "with swift and certain punishment" for breaking the rules. What magic wand will they use to get that?
I don't mean to be disrespectful of the police system, but I don't see how you can have any assurance of swift and certain punishment. If you assume that only very few will break the rules, maybe you can have relatively quick follow up. But its like having 1 babysitter for 100 toddlers. Once one of them runs off and doesn't get punished, ALL of them will go do what they want.
I have to assume that people who do the crimes to get put in jail are either:
a) bad at evaluating future consequences, and so, will likely not worry about whatever punishment you think will stop them
b) willing to accept the consequences (maybe they think revenge is worth it, etc)
c) don't think the punishment is too bad. maybe it's all gang bravado but people joke about doing time. doesn't sound like they are detered by it. why would they be even a little scared of a punishment that lets them do what they want?
So, I have to assume vague threats of "we will punish you" aren't going to work.
I have to say that I'm a bit torn on this. On the one hand it would be nice to keep non-violent offenders out of our penal system, which only seems to make "criminals" worse. But on the other hand, I think the only thing keeping our "criminal" population at its current level is the fact that our "justice" system can't physically & financially incarcerate any more people. Our current system of jail/prison/parole is at about 3.2% of the US population, I easily see that becoming 10% if judges/legislatures don't have to worry about building more prisons. I suppose on the upside it may wake people up to the fact that our criminal justice system more about PR/Making some people very wealthy than with the public good.
Prison is not about turning the criminals into good people. If they've made it into adulthood without learning the difference between right and wrong, you are never going to fix them. Prison is for setting an example for other assholes who would commit the same crime. It's because of stupid shit like this idiotic idea that our prisons are ineffective. Bring back beatings and hangings, and you'll see a lot less crime.
It might have something to do with the the fact that the US has virtually no restriction on movement or where you can live. This brings people with little motivation in close proximity with highly motivated people that are successful. In a lot of other places in the world there are severe restrictions on this kind of mixing, either legally or simply done through social customs.
The end result is in the US there are a lot of people that would like to have a nice car, nice house, fine clothes and such but simply can't drag themselves to do more than the bare minimum at a job where they don't have to think. Envy is the first result and the second is thinking that these people with all the stuff they want aren't really any different, just luckier. They got all the good breaks in life.
Obviously, the right think to do then is either take some of the good stuff that they clearly deserve - if only these other people hadn't gotten there first, or to engage in some risky scheme because obviously the only difference is luck.
This kind of thinking is extremely common but seems to really take root in the US more than other places.
So you have people responding to the Nigerian scams because who knows, it might be true. You have people seeing the lifestyle of drug dealers and decide since the guy they knew didn't get busted they probably won't either. Or that it is OK to go down the street and rob someone's house because they don't deserve all that stuff anymore than they themselves do. Of course, the end result is predictable.
In New Orleans, there have been several murders by people under "house arrest" using the same technology while wearing the device. I believe that there a large reason for the failure of the devices in these instances was purely poor oversight, but the fact remains that there are plenty of reasons to remove offenders from society for their own punishment. I could see it work for non-violent offenders, but that is only because they were not a threat in the first place. I don't believe "guards" will have the same vigilance as they would in a walled jail because there isn't the obvious danger they are faced with daily.
Mod me down, I shall become more off-topic than you could possibly imagine.
some people use Prison to get health care if they can't get it as a free man.
I'm 99% sure that the Internet is actually an advanced form of house arrest designed to keep criminal minds occupied so they don't actually hurt anyone.
Look at how many "socially awkward" people spend their entire day in a basement or bedroom, voluntarily I might add, on the Internet.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, ---except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted---, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Why wait until an offender is caught and convicted? Think of what the world would be like if everyone were required to wear a tracker? We'd never have a lost child or an Alzheimer's patient wander off. Locks on buildings would become redundant -- the system would know who would be allowed on the premises and at what times. Just think -- you could leave your back door open on those intolerably hot evenings, secure in the knowledge that the police would immediately be notified if an intruder entered. A shop owner would not have to install a security system or even lock his doors -- if someone entered the premises after store hours, the police would know.
Wow... finally, a way to really enforce "keep off the grass". The possibilities are limitless.
I can't wait.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
GPS tracking is just part of the technical solution. The other part is the tamper proof exploding collar.
My first thought after reading "in favor of a regimen of close, constant surveillance on the outside and swift, certain punishment for any deviations from an established, legally unobjectionable routine" was 1993's Demolition Man (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106697/).
You call this a signature?
The fundamental problem is not the how-prisons-work part. The real problem is the putting-people-in-the-system part.
Reducing the cost of removing people's freedom will not solve the problem, it will incentivize it and increase it. Just like (a) computers didn't create paperless offices, and (b) increased efficiency didn't lead to reduced work hours, and (c) tasers didn't lead to a reduction police abuse, and (d) helmets don't reduce motorcycle accident rates, and (e) unmanned killer drones don't reduce the length of our wars.
Instead, I propose: re-writing drug laws and incarcerating a fraction of the people we do now.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
A computer and electronics whiz with the appropriate time and equipment can hack nearly any electrical/computer device from miles away.
No amount of computer power can remotely crack a foot-thick concrete wall topped with razor wire though.
I don't get what WGS means here, but those coordinates are near the tip of the Aleutian Islands chain
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
And then hey...its working so well tracking criminals, why don't we just track all the citizens? You never know when you'll need to prove a yet-to-be-established criminal commits a crime....
Some convicts can not be controlled even in maximum security prisons. Others can be controlled some of the time but tend to act out from time to time. Others will find a way to commit crimes while wearing a device. A few will honestly seek to live a better life.
What is the financial cost of trying to separate the various types of criminals? How accurate are the predicted behaviors? Who pays the victims after they are crippled, maimed, killed or bankrupted by these criminals. Really, if we can't afford to keep them in prisons a bullet only costs fifty cents or so. A chopping block and an axe are even cheaper.
Where it works this may be good in the short run, but I see a couple of potential (and sinister) downsides:
1) It makes punishment much more acceptable. I'm not so worried about the deterrent value, but the fact that you might get put under surveillance for unpaid library fines, downloading the wrong file, etc. This yet another slippery slide into a police state.
2) It makes surveillance much more acceptable, and helps fine tune the technology for it. If it turns out that criminals who do not misbehave live perfectly happy lives under the system, and if it is demonstrated that crime goes down when more people are under such surveillance, the "nanny state" types might be pushing for more people to be tagged like this. The typical "if you're doing nothing wrong, why wouldn't want this?" "think of the children" "terrorism, etc." arguments might be advanced by some and swallowed whole by the increasingly surveillance-desensitized public.
2.5) It may make law enforcement lazy, causing them to push for more of this technology (cheaper, more effective, etc). You can draw an analogy with the convenience of warrant-less wiretapping
I'm not sure what the full answer is, but more surveillance (even if it's just for the criminals -- for now --) gives me a very uneasy feeling....
Millions Spent On GPS Tracking Devices For Parolees Wasted As State Of California Is Unable To Keep Up With Generated Alerts – 10s Of Thousands Sex Offender Alerts Ignored
http://ourtaxdollarsatwork.wordpress.com/2010/06/17/millions-spent-on-gps-tracking-devices-for-parolees-wasted-as-state-of-california-is-unable-
to-keep-up-with-generated-alerts-10s-of-thousands-sex-offender-alerts-ignored/
To sum a few threads posted above with a merging of riffs from Chris Rock: What we need is the tossed salad man "Toss his salad? Nooooooo!!!! I'ma gonna learn, I'ma gonna read, I'ma gonna get a job!"
When all of your wishes have been granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed - Marilyn Manson
Prison walls were never built from GPS devices in the first place, so how is not using GPS devices in your prison walls an idea? That's like "Building Cars Without Wheels Made of Dynamite".
Also, whoosh in advance.
The Milgram experiment did NOT show that "people in power will often abuse their authority unless they will get caught". The operators in the Milgram subject zapped people because the experimenter told them to, and they were extremely uncomfortable doing it. What the experiment showed was that normal people could be induced to follow orders despite their own inhibitions if the person giving the orders appeared sufficiently authoritative. The authority giving the orders was one of the experimenters, not the subjects.
That doesn't necessarily imply corruption. It may just be absence of a welfare state plus a puritan understanding of justice.
Many of the European policies towards criminal offenses simply wouldn't fly in the US. They may be rational and effective in reducing crime and prison population, but they run counter to what the people want. They run counter to what the people want even in Europe.
Yeah, I actually knew that already. However two things factor in here. The first and by far the most important is the illegal immigration issue. No other country has so many illegal immigrants per capita and illegal immigrants are more likely to commit crimes. Nevermind the fact that they are commiting a crime just by coming into the country illegally.
The second is the drug war. The citizens are to blame here as they keep USING. If the demand fell, the problem would subside. However the problem extends into South America and most recently Mexico with most of the people involved in the trafficing of illegal drugs never seeing the inside of a jail cell. This is a failure of their goverment and police and not a reflection of any magical rehabilitation program they have. By the way, all drug users should be rehabilitated and then have to check in FOR LIFE. Addiction is hard to kick and we should recognize that.
Murder rates were much higher in medieval England, for instance:
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/23/us/historical-study-of-homicide-and-cities-surprises-the-experts.html
So relax! We have it pretty good today.
But don't forget one of the purposes of prison is to protect the innocent from the further stupidity of the guilty. They currently do that with a very high success rate. Those complaining about high incarceration rates and too many laws have forgotten that laws exist to restrict the over-aggressive and protect the innocent.
That's definitely one plausible explanation. Or it could be a combination of factors that don't entirely fit what you have already decided is true.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
So, the author watches too many TV shows and movies and believes the crap he sees, hmm? The device figures out its location using GPS, it transmits its location using some other means, like 3G data.
1 in 32 people have been 'touched' by the justice system in the US of A.
The US of A has around 25% of the worlds population in lockup.
All a GPS system would do is lower the bar and raise enforcement IE laws that cover the piracy of music because the $30,000 or so a year to keep you locked up becomes YOUR expense rather then the shared expense of the State.
Your explanations are just excuses, and are incorrect.
http://www.jta.org/news/article/2010/08/08/2740388/russian-history-textbook-calculates-jewish-politicians
You should look into it. Particularly, Vladimir announced that for the largely 70-year reign of the Soviet
Union was the oppression of native Russians at the hands of a predominantly large Jewish nation that used
Communism as it's weapon. I don't think the book was written by Vladimir, but he did cite much of it as
necessary because the former-Free countries all are jumping on the Hollocaust "wagon" to fine anyone that
says anything bad about Jews. One aspect that Vladimir pushed was the fact that all Communism was created
by Jews: Lenin, Trotsky, even Stalin were all practicing jews that pushed Communism onto Russia. Despite
what anyone says about Hitler being 1/4 jewish with two secret-wives under his belt, Joseph Stalin was 1/2 jewish with three wives and it was Stalin that murdered over 60 million peaceful non-communist Russians just
for their mere heritage and political standing. Similar relations proved that a non-Jewish Mao Tse Dung hailed
the Communist republic onto China by killing over 70 million non-communist Chinese just for the same heritage and political reasons as did Stalin. Of'course it is often written that Mao Tse Dung wansn't particularly Jewish,
but Mao did attent the same school as the founders of the Skull And Bones Society over in America. Adolf Hitler
at-least had no relations, and it is only DEBATABLE whether or not he tried to give a year warning to jews to leave Germany through The Madagascar Plan or back onto Canaan, but one fact is certain and that is that two neighboring countries were trolled by these two men in a pretended dispute of political ideaology. Hitler got over 40 million Germans to die in combat rather than culled; led by over 50,000 practicing jewish Commanding-officers installed by Hitler's pre-dominantly jewish Catholic cabinet (with exception to Herman Goering, a protestant that was excommunicated by the pre-dominantly Catholic jewish cabinet).
As you can see, Jews are everywhere, and Vladimir Putin of Russia is proving himself to be a great leader
in enduring the possible political foulness as by many earlier American patriots that spoke against International-jews and Illuminati Freemasons.
The people should know that what keeps a family together is one's willingness for the good will
onto their family that they are leisurely at one another's help. To compel someone to do something
by state-enforced legislated law only proves that the people are not seeing an issue eye-to-eye as
lawmakers. Someone is earning money in defaulting the people and fining them for this alleged social
negligence. Where does law begind and where doese law end in terms of limited liability clauses of
the State-legislature?
Communism, Socialism, Capitalism, Totalitarianism...they all fail when their premises over-lap onto
the people when imposed as an "ism," because originally none of them are competitive and malicious
towards eachother; these idealogies are just imposed onto problems they never were meant to correct.
Eventually the people need to man-up to take care of theirselves, push the State and land-management
out of the way to farm food to feed eachother in charity, and push the Teachers out of the way in favor
of Libraries to unlearn the assumptions and failures that the public School system has impelled onto
everyone since (laugh) children had been forced away from their libraries by the Social Services
to babysit them in "classrooms" rather than develop their family-trade heritage and business.
The only thing the State has ever done is force the disclosure of family trade-secrets to be bought by a
corporation that then exports the intelectual property and resources to a neighboring Slave country like
communist China that then floods the market with slave-made goods that to reduce the free man to an
individual dependent on State agencies to maintain his livelyhood which slowly displaces him from his former
habitation rather than make a living locally.
The same could be said of the post to which I replied.
Here's how it works in the US. Parent smacks, spanks, or slaps kid. Or perhaps doesn't. Kid calls/contacts social services, claims to have been "abused."
Parents are now on a free, no-exit, hugely expensive, massively time-consuming joyride with lawyers and social services. They face potential loss of their children, even jail time is possible. Regular visits by invasive, opinionated people are a certainty.
Next time the kid needs a whack, do you think they'll get it, after one such experience, or the report of one from a neighbor? Generally, the answer is no.
Unfortunately, some parents are abusive, and its reasonable to think their kids need protection.
But the end result or the present method has been the inability to safely use reasonable physical discipline as a parent, and even worse than that, the provision of an enormously powerful lever the kids can use without the presence of any physical discipline at all.
I really don't think it's working out very well, long term, either. Yes, a few kids are saved from actual abuse. But unfortunately, a huge number of them don't get their hand smacked when they need it, and it's turning out very unpleasant people by the boatload. One of those very nasty social conundrums.
Just my opinion as an old guy (50's.) I'm *really* glad my kids are grown up and that I didn't have to deal with this.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Aw, we can't punish the poor criminals... they're just misunderstood.
BS.
And prisons are extremely effective at keeping the wacko jealous boyfriend from tracking down his ex-girlfriend and chopping out her liver to have with some fava beans and a nice chiante. The GPS is best, in this case, for summoning the coronor.
Exactly! Just as the failed alcohol prohibition in the 1920s would have succeeded, if not for those meddling citizen users!
Yes, you heard that right: your argument makes as much sense as the Scooby Do villains. C'mon dude, there's a demand that will never go away. Restricting the supply simply increases the price. Economics 101? Oh, right, you're stuck in cartoon land.
By the way, all oxygen users should be rehabilitated and then have to check in FOR LIFE. Elemental addiction is hard to kick and we should recognize that, even if it suits our agenda and we cannot think of any possible way that our agenda can be turned against us...
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Virtual fences have worked well on our southern border; now let's shield society from all the murderers, rapists, and child molesters using virtual prison cells! Sounds like typical liberal dumbassery.
Anyone remember how this turned out?
>No other country has so many illegal immigrants per capita
This is almost certainly false (it's difficult to count illegal immigrants, so I can't say with 100% certainty, and neither can you). The highest estimate I've seen for the US is 20 million (the conventional estimate is ~12 million), making them less than 7% of the total population. Greece has about the same percentage (that was just the first country I bothered to check, based on an educated guess). In South Africa, estimates place the percentage at over 10%.
>illegal immigrants are more likely to commit crimes
Ignoring the crime of entering the country illegally (which would make your statement merely a tautology), this also does not seem to be borne out by evidence. If you look at the FBI crime statistics by city, you'll find that there is a distinct overlap between safe cities and those with large immigrant (and illegal immigrant) populations. Take a look at this chart. For both violent and property crime, San Jose, Los Angeles, San Diego, and El Paso(!), all with large immigrant populations, have relatively low crime rates. Whereas the most dangerous cities -- St. Louis, Buffalo, DC, Detroit, Baltimore -- all have relatively low immigrant populations.
It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
"The ultimate result could be lower crime rates, at a reduced cost, and with considerably less inhumanity in the bargain." The less humanity, the less likely our government will want to do it. They like being draconian and keeping people fearful of horrible prison. I'd much rather have this GPS system, but knowing how the government stands on many issues such as marijuana, I can't see them actually doing something humane like this for convicts.
Spoken like a true addict!
Refutation number one comes from the same Wikipedia article you sent me. It seems you are selectivly reading it. Try again. This time read the whole thing. Then this page explains why crime reporting rates are lower among illegal aliens. http://www.usillegalaliens.com/impacts_of_illegal_immigration_crime.html
>Then this page explains why crime reporting rates are lower among illegal aliens
You claimed that illegal immigration is the major contributor to our high imprisonment rate. But unreported crimes, by definition, don't affect the prison population at all! Care to try again?
It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
Because when you commit one crime and get away with it your balls swell to the size of huge watermelons and you think you are invincible. Then you commit even more heinous crimes and usually violent ones at that. Then these violent criminals get locked up for LONG PERIODS OF TIME. LIKE DECADES in most instances.
liberals have pushed hard that people aren't at fault, but everything is at fault around them.
There's been no shortage of studies in the last 150 years showing that criminality is opportunity based.
So .... in one breath, you say crime is a person's fault but in another you say a lion's share of people will commit crimes if allowed the opportunity to do so.
Perhaps we're just working with different definitions of the word "blame" here? Is it easier to create legal systems, penal systems and business ecosystems with checks and balances that remove opportunities to commit crime without being caught, or is it easier to "fix" 70% of the population by magically transforming them into saintly creatures?
Oh right. This is the part where you hand out the pamphlets.
People willing to trade their freedom of expression for temporary entertainment deserve neither and will lose both.
Your ad hominem attack failed.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
>Because when you commit one crime and get away with it ... you commit even more heinous crimes and usually violent ones at that
Let me repeat: Cities with large illegal immigrant populations have *lower* rates of reported crime. Unreported crime cannot, by definition, influence the size of the prison population. You have presented nothing but prejudices and intuition; while I have presented facts and logic. Your earlier stated opinion is demonstrably wrong, and I hope that by this point you have come to realize that. If not, I genuinely feel sorry for you.
It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
Look at violent crime. And your lower reported crime rate comes from Wikipedia. How about you show me the actual source?
Obviously, you haven't bothered to actually look at the numbers because 1) the violent crime stats for cities with large illegal immigrant populations compare even *better* than general crime stats versus the norm, and 2) the Wikipedia page includes a link to the data in Excel format from fbi.gov (and I said earlier, when I posted the link, that it was data from the FBI, so you really have no excuse on this one).
It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
Ok, now you are just wasting my time. I had to go back and calculate the percentages and per capita there is way more violent crime in El Paso then Chicago and Chicago is a fucking hell hole.
>I had to go back and calculate the percentages and per capita
The stats are clearly listed as rate per 100k people. Per capita, Chicago's violent crime rate is almost 3 times El Paso's, you fucking moron.
It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
Like checking for gas leaks with a match, this theory has already exploded. Only days ago, we read of another dangerous sex offender who simply cut off his GPS ankle bracelet, left the prescribed location, and went on another violent interstate crime spree before being caught. Tampering with your GPS tether is supposed to get you arrested immediately, but, too often, it doesn't happen. Now that's for the small percentage of people locked up today who we really need to lock up, or lock up for the long times people spend in jail awaiting trial, much less being punished afterward. I've done criminal law, and been the victim of armed robberies--one led by someone already on parole from two successive life sentences for armed robbery--and other serious state and federal crimes, and there are some people who never should get out of prison but will, but we're kidding ourselves and wasting a fortune on a lot of incarceration. In my bitter personal and professioanl experirence, a huge number of the worst criminals will never be reported becuase the victims are too frustrated with the system, won't get caught, won't be investigated and prosecuted vigorously, etc. We're using jails and prisons to house a lot of mentally ill people who would not pose problems, much less danger, if properly treated--and the evidence is clear that most mentally ill people are no more dangerous than other people. As for substance abuse, which also figures in a lot of incarceration, there is something irrational, crazy, when the first thing the inmate does upon supervised release is get drunk or high again. Now when somebody comes up with a reasonably priced, effective, and accurate real-time monitor that includes not only GPS but substance abuse, which figures in an awful lot of other crime as well, that can be incorporated into all cars and also used for specific people for GPS etcl, the left would scream but we could save some lives.