Scotty

Given the quality and expense of senior care in this country people are being pretty short-sighted, then. Seniors who have kids to help look after them fare one hell of a lot better than seniors who have nobody there but the state.

Not to cause thread drift, but it's kind of the same thing with health care. People who grew up expecting to walk into an ER and be seen within minutes are angry at the thought they now must wait eight to ten hours even for a serious injury. But younger people take that as a matter of course, as routine, and so there's no outrage among them for it.

The ones who don't get caught are the ones who stop doing it. The ones who go to prison are the ones who don't stop doing it. Eventually, you see, if you keep breaking the law, you will be caught. So you are very obviously reading these "stats" ass backwards in terms of cause and effect. No, in fact, it has skyrocketed. When the boomers were growing up it was extremely low compared to today. And the police-reported crime stats can be called into question by stats can victims surveys which continue to show fewer and fewer people are bothering to even report crime to police.

I'm not sure what gives you the idea that this hasn't already been done, but I think we can safely assume it has, else we wouldn't be building new prisons. You seem to be helplessly confused here. Prison overcrowding is the ONLY reason you build new prisons. Some of that prison overcrowding has been around for a long time. Some of it is anticipated in light of the government stiffening sentencing. So the need to build prisons is self-evident. What you're really whining about is the crackdown on crime. You don't believe criminals should be put away for a long time for some reason. Maybe you ARE a criminal. Maybe you have criminals who are relatives. Maybe you just utterly lack empathy for victims and have no idea of the damages crime does. I don't know. But you're lost on this weird red herring about prison building. And again, what has this utterly irrelevant whining got to do with the number of people in prisons? If you tell me crime fell by 99% last month, and I believe it, that still is not going to make me want to go easy on the people who commit crimes and hurt people.

Yeah, sure, cause there's no crime and everyone is perfectly safe. Anthony Bennett is the poster boy for the need for tougher laws - both criminal and immigration. He's been a crack addict since he got off a boat from the Caribbean, and now has 46 separate convictions for theft. There's nothing this person will ever do in his life other than steal from others. Why shouldn't he be locked up permanently? It'd be less expensive to society, especially given we already pay for his food, clothing and shelter through welfare. And I recall reading of the acquittal of the shopkeeper who arrested him, where his lawyer pointed out that there were three separate thefts from that store just the previous day. A certain kind of 'person' feels perfectly at ease stealing anything and everything they can when they know there's such lax sentencing. Send them up north to a coal mine or something. Make them break rocks or starve. Maybe they'll come back and decide theft, burglary, mugging, or whatever, isn't worth the risk.

Another frenzied, mindless drooling rant against the right. You know, I seem to recall you used to have a brain. What happened to it? Too much pot kill too many brain cells?

I think I've stated, with some clarity, both the desire for justice against those who break laws, and the economic justification for keeping career criminals behind bars longer. There's no real emotion to it. Clearly, the majority of Canadians disagree with your 'satisfaction' at the system. Canadians have long been unhappy with the injustice and lax sentencing, and wanted something done. I recall, years ago, seeing an item where the RCMP in the west weren't even willing to bother with investigating most fraud cases simply because the sentences were so slack it wasn't worth the time and effort invested. Fraud is all around us now, and growing. You can't hire a tradesman or a mechanic without getting a recommendation because too many of them are crooks. Theft costs us tens of billions every year. You might be content with that but others are not. So you actually don't know anything about it, but you think some 'modest upgrades' will do the work. Nice, logical approach there.

What do you imagine we do now to 'reintegrate' people into society? I really don't get what you're asking. You seem to be suggesting that if we keep a career criminal behind bars for a longer period of time, he'll have more difficulty getting back to a normal life than if we only kept him in prison for a short time. But he's a career criminal! His normal life is crime! There are a lot of people we ought to do that to, to be honest. If you've established that you're nothing but a criminal, and that you have no real interest in changing, why should we ever let you out?

I think you'll be hard pressed to find people with children who don't consider it a more than fair trade. Kids are actually a lot of fun, you know. And when you're sitting alone staring at your senior years approaching, you'll wonder what your life was for, and what to do with yourself.

That still puts me considerably further ahead than you. You say that as if you believe that has some meaning. I wonder why. A criminal is a criminal. If you break the law, you have failed your parole. The dumb ones might think that, but given the slack sentences Canada's judges hand out you can easily get sent to a provincial pen for vicious, brutal assaults, including sexual assaults, weapons offenses, armed robbery, etc.. But that isn't really the point. You might not consider burglary or fraud or arson to be particularly dangerous, but they represent an enormous burden of cost to Canadians. Even shoplifting, particularly by professionals, represents a huge loss of money to retail outlets which in turn causes hikes in prices to the rest of us. As I said earlier, that cost is estimated at $57 billion per year. Repeat offenders are a particularly expensive part of that, and locking them up for longer is both economically sensible and just. As an example, I would assign a burglar on his first conviction to community service. Second conviction, six months in prison. Third conviction, one year. Fourth conviction, two years. Fifth conviction, five years. Sixth conviction, ten years. Seventh, twenty years... That's the sort of escalation we should see with all criminal sentencing, because once a criminal has established that this is, in effect, their job, they represent a continuing danger and should be locked away to safeguard the public, forever, if necessary. They still need to serve a sentence which is in keeping with the severity of their crime. A man who kills his children probably isn't in much danger to re-offend. By your way of thinking he should get a weaker sentence, then. Have I got that right? It's not that, it's just that I'm smarter than you. I don't take much pride in that, however. I think most people could make the same claim.

I didn't advocate execution for drug dealers. I said, actually, if you go back and read, that a war doesn't work if there are half measures. If you're going to win a war, you go all out, and in light of that, yes, executing drug dealers and smugglers would be a very good idea - nor would I really cry over that given the nature of what kind of people we're speaking of. I didn't actually say I was in favour of the 'war on drugs'. For the most part, my philosophy is that it's your own responsibility if you get addicted to something. I don't blame beer commercials because someone became an alcoholic any more than I blame McDonalds for someone getting fat. I blame the individual himself. Most people can drink responsibly without ever being poorly influenced. How many people can snort crack responsibly without their lives being turned to shit?

Now if only you could learn from my example. To begin with, your belief that their self-admitted 25% failure rate is "low" is not shared by everyone. Add in that they admit right in that cite that they're only talking about those returned to federal custody. They don't count those arrested and then sentenced to less than 2 years in prison. Which is what the Vancouver Sun said. Most of the rest of us would say that if you're arrested and convicted for a crime then you've failed your parole. Add in that, as I said several posts ago, this whole line of discussion is really beside the point. What Canadians want is for criminals to be kept in prison as long as they're a danger to the citizenry at large. Clearly that means some assessment of their likelihood to re-offend, and not all criminals do. But those who do re-offend will continue to do so, likely for a long period of time. Canadians want such people kept in prison longer. Clearly, you don't, but then, you're clearly not too bright. And in addition to that, of course, Canadians want just punishment for a given offense. They don't like the idea of people committing a great deal of damage, be it massive fraud or violence, and getting a slap on the wrist. And telling them the statistics about crime rates or recidivism is really rather pointless. Incidentally, Canadians' collective interest in fairness in sentencing also would not be made happy by heavy-handed punishments which are seen as undeserved. The fact no one seems to be worried much about such things happening (except for potheads) seems to me to be an indication that virtually no one (except the potheads) thinks existing punishment is too harsh.

People who act 'under the influence' have an entirely different problem. They don't necessarily need rehabilitation. They need treatment for their addiction, and believe me, I'm all in favour of them getting it.

Do you expect me to explain the workings of bureaucracy, and why the Tories haven't smashed heads at CSC? You think I have Harper's ear or something? When I read that and try to picture someone actually saying it out loud, I get the image of some guy with bulging eyes and a high pitched voice, waving his hands wildly as his voice rise and falls like someone on crack who keeps touching a live electrical wire. What the hell are you trying say anyway?

Those who actually understand they made a mistake, and regret what they did don't NEED rehabilitation. Those who have a long string of convictions are not going to be rehabilitated by anything you can think of. If you want to discourage them from doing what they're doing you have to punish them more severely until they finally decide it's not worth it.

You don't actually understand English very well, do you?

I wasn't aware Singapore executed bartenders. You are never going to eliminate demand. And you don't know what 'my way' is.

People are forever starving and dying by the trainload in Africa. The entire continent is a hopeless basket case which has not only seen no improvement in fifty years but has actually gotten worse. Nobody has any ideas about how to improve anything or solve anything or help those people.

Wars that are fought with half measures are generally losing efforts. If you really wanted to get rid of drugs you'd simply shoot all the dealers and smugglers like they do in Singapore. Which, as far as I'm concerned, wouldn't be a bad idea as long we had absolute proof.

Done with your rant? Wipe the drool off your chin and light up some more weed. You'll feel better then.

Are you seriously acting like a buffoon over my suggestion a government department will fudge its definitions and terms in order to make itself look better? Stop posting dead links and maybe I'll read them. What kind of an argument is that from a guy who just brayed like an ass over the suggestion correction Canada would post misleading figures? At least my link was actually readable, and the information it contained was straight from CSC. Dead link. You have no argument. You can leave now.

You can assume I don't believe there is such a thing as government rehabilitation. What does it consist of? Have you ever seen it in action? People steal because it's easier to steal than to get an education. It's easier to steal than to learn a trade or look for a job. It's easier to defraud people than do an honest day's work. It's easier to rape someone than to get their consent. It's easier to kill someone than to work out your problems. Crime is easy. People who do it aren't going to be 'rehabilitated' as long as they see their criminal behavior as viable. And the only way I know of to teach them it's NOT is long prison terms. But maybe you think that if you hold their hands, and talk gently to them, and inform them of all the harm they cause others they'll get an attack of conscience and go get a job. Fine, you try that with the next criminal we house next door to you.

Cool. Contact Corrections Canada and ask them to fill your street with paroled criminals. I'm sure you'll do a great job helping them "reintegrate" into society.

Let's take your average burglar. Now, he breaks into houses and robs people. This causes people enormous distress, not to mention the cost of damaged doors and windows and lost property. He does this again and again and again. Let's say he breaks into thirty or forty houses over the course of several months. Eventually he is caught for one (the solution rate for burglaries is very low). He is immediately released on bail, whereupon he goes right back and burglarizes more houses, or he is kept in jail, accumulating, under the old system, 2 or 3 for one credit for time served. After anywhere from 3 months to a year and a half, depending on whether he actually goes to trial (unlikely) or pleads out, he is sentenced to about six months. Minimum time served being 2 months. If he's been kept in jail to that point he's immediately released. If he's been out on bail robbing people, he has to serve two months or so in jail. He gets out, and immediately starts burglarizing houses again. After three or four or six months, and God knows how many burglaries, he gets caught again, and the whole process repeats, and repeats, and repeats. He probably winds up being convicted of about 10% of his actual crimes, and serves very little time. This, to your mind, is not a problem because, after all, the police-reported rate of crime is falling...

I'm not sure what recidivism rates have to do with things. Your link will not work, but since its apprently coming from corrections Canada I can pretty much guess what it says. It says the parole system works wonderfully, and virtually no one re-offends. Am I close? The problem is that Corrections Canada is not one of our more honest agencies. Michael Harris exposed their dishonesty many years ago in a series of articles and then a book. More recently, the Vancouver Sun pointed out just how CSC had arrived at their supposed recidivism rate. Recividism Rate Four Times Higher than Reported Basically they decided only federal prisoners count, and so anyone arrested who served time of less than two years didn't count. Also, they didn't count people who re-offended - that is, were actually caught and convicted of an offense - more than two years after release. To keep society safe.