Serious topic: how would you reduce violent crime?

[Stormbringer]

You're never going to sell anybody on an alternative to the gang lifestyle when it's possible to live comfortably as a small-time dealer, and become fantastically wealthy as just a middling player.

And as likely, wind them up in a body bag. The fatality rate for "ganstas" is enourmous. Most wind up dead before they're twenty five.

Yeah, they can get wealthy but at a price. More needs to be done to show them more than the bling-bling of drug wealth. Like the caps likely to wind up in their ass.

Worse, inner city culture glorifies the gangster life as the only way for blacks to succede in a world where whitey has stacked the deck against them (I'll add here that the disproportionate sentences for minority drug users and dealers when compared to whites hasn't helped dispel this idea). The only way you're going to destroy that lifestyle as an alternative to real productive work is to destroy the black market in drugs, and that means legalization no matter how little you like the idea. [/quote

A far better method is to simply stop giving credence to Jesse Jackson & Co and the Gangsta rap crowd. That'll go far more towards pushing young minority kids than legalizing drugs would. The problem is rooted in cutlure at it's most basic levels. They're told that "Whitey's keeping them down" so much that no bothers to question it.

Were drugs anolgous to alochol in prohibition then your suggestion might work. But they aren't. They're a problem that's part of a much, much larger whole. They're told from the start they have no hope in the legitimate system so most don't try. If it weren't drugs it'd be some other crime, carjacking, petty theft, or whatever.

Frankly, much of the damage has already been done--it's going to take generations to change the general attitude among poor urban African Americans that being successful at anything other than entertainment or defying the establishment is tantamount to being a race traitor, but at least we can put the pushers and distributers who are commiting the murders out of business, and the users who are committing the burgularies and robberies to pay for their habits now can get their fix with just their welfare check.

Again, changing the cultural message will go much farther towards ending crime than will legalization. All putting the dealer out of business would do is force them to look for an alternate occupation and it's not likely to be any more legal than drugs are now.

What needs to be done is get them to believe in a real future, not the false hope of drugs or new crimes.

As for putting money into schools, that's absolutely necessary, but declining property tax revenues in a number of cities make that increasingly difficult.

It's going to have to come from somewhere. Federal money would help, if nothing else get rid of sheer pork projects. The rest will simply have to come from the states.

The threat of hard prison time isn't a deterrent.

I agree. Most criminals don't believe they'll be caught so deterent won't work for most. The object of prison is to remove criminals from society until they no longer represent a threat to said society.

What needs to be done is make sure they don't want to return and give them away to break the cycle. What needs to be done is rehabilitate criminals, at least in the long run. Plain old punishment ought to be secondary.

And much as I hate to seem like I'm beating a point to death, a large factor in the revolving door problem is the sheer number of drug offenders that the justice system is forced to accomidate. In 1999, they represented 32% of all offenders in New Jersey state prisons, and that's not counting the ones taking up space in county jails or juvenile facilities.

There's a price to actually enforcing the rules. Nothing says it'll be easy.

Fixing the cities will be a massive, society-wide multi-generational undertaking that frankly I doubt this society would ever be willing to undertake. Ending drug prohibition, however, will at least make some of the crime go away, which is the point of this thread.

Blanket legalization is a slight of hand thing. Sure it'll reduce crime, for now. But in the long run with out addressing the problems that cause it you'll simply bump them to some new trade.

And of course pile up a huge useless population of drug addicts that'll most likely continue to contribute to the crime rate.

[Glocksman]

Glocksman, I fail to see the significance of your figures. Of course there's going to be more crimes where there are more people. As for your assertion that there is no correlation between guns and crime, you must be on crack.

We chose Maine because it bordered New Brunswick and both areas (at least according to the Canadian who came up with the suggestion) are very similar in population, culture, and ethnic makeup.

If you don't understand the importance of using 2 areas that are similar except for the gun laws when looking at the difference gun laws make, I suggest you go back to school and pay attention this time around.

The numbers I posted were the crime rates per 100,000 people, not the total number of crimes. Those figures prove that people in large cities in the US kill each other at a rate three times that of people in small cities. If one were to use the same simplistic post hoc reasoning with this data that you use with your C-51 comparison, we could eliminate most crime in the US by nuking every large city.

Not that I'd be too sorry to see LA disappear.


Oh, and you left out the US's total murder rate. The US total homicide rate in 1991 was 10.41 (26,254).

Source: US CDC's WISQARS database.

In other words, almost half of the murders in the US weren't committed with a handgun. Strip away all the handguns, and the US still has a higher murder rate than most industrialized countries. And if you think that a person who is motivated enough to commit murder won't do it because he can't get a handgun, you're underestimating the inventiveness of the average criminal.

Shit, if I wanted to murder someone, a gun would be among the last weapons that I'd choose. Too noisy and I'd have to be in the area. Time bombs made with gasoline are much more lethal and easy to build by anyone who can splice 2 wires together. Knives are silent. Poison also works wonders.


The interesting thing that's in your table on C-51 is that while the rate of handgun murders did drop somewhat, the rate of murders with other weapons rose. Looks like some Canadian killers chose other weapons.


And if you want to compare crime rates before and after gun laws, compare the Washington DC crime rates before and after the DC handgun ban back in 1976.

Preban DC was safer than postban DC.
Of course the fact that after the ban was passed, DC had a crackhead for mayor and developed one of the most corrupt police departments in the nation has more to do with it than any gun law.


Consider this handgun supply chart. 1967 was the first year in which handgun murders were tracked separately. That's why there is no separate handgun homicide data until then.
chart

Notice the lack of relationship between handgun supply and homicides between 1973 and 1997.

And as far as being selective in my dataset goes, 2000 was simply the year for which easily obtainable data was available for both NB and Maine.

BTW, choosing the peak crime years of the 90's was being more than a little selective.

Let's look at 1999's rate of 6.14 or 1998's rate of 6.55 to put the earlier data in perspective. Murder rates fell througout the 90's to end out at 6.06 in 2000.

The only valid point you make is that inequality of income might be a factor. It's also one that I tend to agree with.

Addressing that problem requires more than social programs, it involves bringing back the jobs that built the middle class in the first place rather than exporting them to fucking China in the name of 'free trade'.

[Darth Wong]

A far better method is to simply stop giving credence to Jesse Jackson & Co and the Gangsta rap crowd. That'll go far more towards pushing young minority kids than legalizing drugs would.

And precisely how does one go about doing that? The government could legalize drugs; they do not, however, have the power to suddenly remove the credibility of public figures or change the way people view things.

[Xisiqomelir]

Were drugs anolgous to alochol in prohibition then your suggestion might work. But they aren't.

I must disagree with you here. The situation is practically identical.

In both cases you have substances which were legal, then criminalized for very little real reason. After which criminals (who else) begin dealing in the above, maintaining their own organizations for import, manufacture and distribution; fighting battles over "turf" and corrupting law enforcement officials. You even have similar structure of the gangs.

And in both cases you have examples of other societies with no prohibition and much less of a problem with crime (England then, The Netherlands now).

[Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi]

I'd say improving education is a must, as well as improving conditions in inner-city slums. Just don't ask me how to do that.

And I'd say reducing penalities for drug posession might free up prison space for worse criminals.

[Hobot]

We chose Maine because it bordered New Brunswick and both areas (at least according to the Canadian who came up with the suggestion) are very similar in population, culture, and ethnic makeup.

If you don't understand the importance of using 2 areas that are similar except for the gun laws when looking at the difference gun laws make, I suggest you go back to school and pay attention this time around.

I understand what you were attempting to do, but your comparison doesn't say much. First of all, we don't know how gun ownership in Main compares to the rest of the states or even New Brunswick. Secondly, this comparison doesn't prove guns don't correlate to crime, it just proves that guns aren't the only factor that affects the crime rate which nobody tried argue in the first place.

The numbers I posted were the crime rates per 100,000 people, not the total number of crimes. Those figures prove that people in large cities in the US kill each other at a rate three times that of people in small cities.

I figured it was something like that but you didn't specify what those figures meant in your original post.

If one were to use the same simplistic post hoc reasoning with this data that you use with your C-51 comparison, we could eliminate most crime in the US by nuking every large city.

I'm sorry, I don't understand the correlation. My reasoning in the C-51 comparison was that harsher gun laws lead to less gun homicides and less crime overall.

Oh, and you left out the US's total murder rate. The US total homicide rate in 1991 was 10.41 (26,254).

Source: US CDC's WISQARS database.

In other words, almost half of the murders in the US weren't committed with a handgun. Strip away all the handguns, and the US still has a higher murder rate than most industrialized countries. And if you think that a person who is motivated enough to commit murder won't do it because he can't get a handgun, you're underestimating the inventiveness of the average criminal.

Again, my point wasn't that guns are the sole reason why the US has such high crime levels, but that they do contribute significantly to the relatively large violent crime rate. I'm sorry that I wasn't more clear.

The interesting thing that's in your table on C-51 is that while the rate of handgun murders did drop somewhat, the rate of murders with other weapons rose. Looks like some Canadian killers chose other weapons.

Yes, obviously tougher gun restrictions aren't going to prevent all crimes but it did make a significant impact. Once again, I do not believe guns are the sole reason for violent crimes but they do help them along. You will notice that the harsher gun restrictions did lead to a lower overall murder rate.

Code: Select all

Averages:
74-78    2.91     1.3     1.6
79-87    2.61     0.9     1.7 

And if you want to compare crime rates before and after gun laws, compare the Washington DC crime rates before and after the DC handgun ban back in 1976.

Preban DC was safer than postban DC.
Of course the fact that after the ban was passed, DC had a crackhead for mayor and developed one of the most corrupt police departments in the nation has more to do with it than any gun law.

Do you have a reference for that, or is that your opinion?

Consider this handgun supply chart. 1967 was the first year in which handgun murders were tracked separately. That's why there is no separate handgun homicide data until then.
chart

Notice the lack of relationship between handgun supply and homicides between 1973 and 1997.

Who did this survey?

Addressing that problem requires more than social programs, it involves bringing back the jobs that built the middle class in the first place rather than exporting them to fucking China in the name of 'free trade'.

I agree it'll take much more than just social programs, but they would help a lot to restore equality if only because it will appeal to peoples' sense of fairness and justice.

[HemlockGrey]

Yeah, they can get wealthy but at a price. More needs to be done to show them more than the bling-bling of drug wealth. Like the caps likely to wind up in their ass.

Like what? Government-sponsered TV ads? Like those anti-drug ads that have been oh so successful?

-snip stuff about changing the cultural message-

To quote the Russians, 'impossible'. The government can't openly manipulate the 'cultural message'- they can't ban rap, censor BET and Jackson, they can't intervene in popular culture at all.

Actually, they probably could, but then the cure would be worse than the disease.

The only way to make the gangsta lifestyle unattractive is to destroy what makes it successful. Inner-city gangs run on drugs. Carjacking, petty theft, whatever, none of it has the promise of quick and easy returns that drug dealing does. Legalizing drugs is the worst thing that could possibly happen to the dealers because it chops their market right out from under them.

With drug-dealing no longer a viable business, the gangsta lifestyle would look much less attractive, simply because it would be exceedingly difficult to turn a profit. That's the only way to change the cultural message- change the reality of things.

It's been mentioned before, but this would free up massive amounts of money and prison space for real criminals, as well.

[Glocksman]

Quote:
And if you want to compare crime rates before and after gun laws, compare the Washington DC crime rates before and after the DC handgun ban back in 1976.

Preban DC was safer than postban DC.
Of course the fact that after the ban was passed, DC had a crackhead for mayor and developed one of the most corrupt police departments in the nation has more to do with it than any gun law.


Do you have a reference for that, or is that your opinion?

Washington DC crime rates from 1960-2000

DC homicide rates started climbing into the stratosphere back in the mid 1960's and the handgun ban doesn't appear to have made a dent at all.

In 1976 when the ban was enacted, DC had a 26.8 murder rate. The peak murder rate was 80.6 in 1991. That rate has since declined to 41.8 in the year 2000.

Quote:
Consider this handgun supply chart. 1967 was the first year in which handgun murders were tracked separately. That's why there is no separate handgun homicide data until then.
chart

Notice the lack of relationship between handgun supply and homicides between 1973 and 1997.


Who did this survey?

guncite.com made the chart using data from Gary Kleck's Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control and FBI Uniform Crime Reports

They also link to more recent ATF gun supply data if you care to look up more recent numbers. To look up homicide rates at a glance, I recommend the CDC's WISQARS database.

You will notice that the harsher gun restrictions did lead to a lower overall murder rate.

That's still post hoc reasoning. There are other factors that determine crime rates. What were the political and economic conditions in Canada like then as compared to now?

Interestingly enough, I came across this article in which the author claims that overall Canadian violent crime rates have risen since the gun law was passed.


He also notes that the US drop in homicide rates has been more dramatic despite the easy access to firearms most US citizens enjoy when compared to Canadians.

If gun control is supposed to reduce violent crime, then eventually this must be demonstrated to be true, or gun control is no more than a hollow promise. However, most criminologists admit (albeit reluctantly) that there is very little empirical support for the claim that laws designed to reduce general access to firearms actually reduce criminal violence (e.g., Kleck, 1997). Frequently, assertions that gun laws do work turn out to be bogus. In Canada, the government uses the falling homicide rate as support for its claim that gun control laws are working. Unfortunately for this argument, the homicide rate has been falling even faster in the United States.

The drop in the criminal violence is much more dramatic in the US than it is in Canada (Gannon, 2001). Over the past decade, the Canadian homicide rate has declined about 25 percent, but the violent crime rate has not changed. In the US during the same period, both the homicide and the violent crime rates have plummeted by more than 40 percent. We can’t credit gun laws entirely with this success. In both countries, the aging population has helped bring down crime rates, and, in the US, long jail sentences for violent criminals have also been effective.

I agree it'll take much more than just social programs, but they would help a lot to restore equality if only because it will appeal to peoples' sense of fairness and justice.

Properly implemented social programs would be a start, but rebuilding the economic base that created the middle class to begin with is a must.

I understand what you were attempting to do, but your comparison doesn't say much. First of all, we don't know how gun ownership in Main compares to the rest of the states or even New Brunswick. Secondly, this comparison doesn't prove guns don't correlate to crime, it just proves that guns aren't the only factor that affects the crime rate which nobody tried argue in the first place.

It was an off the cuff comparison that occured originally on another BBS (the ars technica forums if you're interested) a year or so ago. I didn't claim it to be scientific.

I don't know the firearm ownership rates for both areas, but I can hazard an educated guess about handgun ownership based on the fact that legal handguns are hard to get in Canada when compared to Maine and NB doesn't issue permits to carry concealed weapons like Maine does. I googled the subject and every article I've seen mentioned Maine as having one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the US.

Here's another article on Canadian firearms ownership and crime rates. The author sums up my feeling on the US/Canada comparison WRT gun laws; "It would appear that the difference in homicide rates is determined more by the sociology of the major urban centres in Canada and the U.S., than by firearms legislation or by the availability of firearms."

[RedImperator]

You're never going to sell anybody on an alternative to the gang lifestyle when it's possible to live comfortably as a small-time dealer, and become fantastically wealthy as just a middling player.

And as likely, wind them up in a body bag. The fatality rate for "ganstas" is enourmous. Most wind up dead before they're twenty five.

Yeah, they can get wealthy but at a price. More needs to be done to show them more than the bling-bling of drug wealth. Like the caps likely to wind up in their ass.

Look at it from their perspective. They're poor, young, and they've got no prospects, because the white man who's running everything is never going to let them succeed. They can try to play professional sports or become a rap star, but in the meantime there's a fortune to be made dealing. Hell, even little kids can make pocket cash as lookouts. Yeah, they might eat a bullet, but how's that worse than spending your whole life rotting in the ghetto? And besides, you know how teenagers are--they all have immortality complexes.

And when there's that much money to be had, people will happily risk their lives for a chance at it. Drug prohibition has made the entire recreational drug industry a giant get rich quick scheme that acually works.

A far better method is to simply stop giving credence to Jesse Jackson & Co and the Gangsta rap crowd. That'll go far more towards pushing young minority kids than legalizing drugs would. The problem is rooted in cutlure at it's most basic levels. They're told that "Whitey's keeping them down" so much that no bothers to question it.

I eagerly await your plan to make THEM stop giving credence to Jesse Jackson's race hustlers and P. Diddy. You do realize that any government initiative will be seen as something whitey is doing, and therefore, calculated to worsen their plight, right? Historically, top-down efforts to change a culture have failed dismally unless they're accompanied by the complete destruction of the old society. We did it in Japan, but I don't think you're proposing firebombing Northwest Philadelphia with B-29s, even though that would constitute an improvement in the neighborhood.

You're right that that would improve the plight of the inner cities far more than legalization would, though. Too bad it's effectively impossible for the government to do.

Were drugs anolgous to alochol in prohibition then your suggestion might work. But they aren't. They're a problem that's part of a much, much larger whole. They're told from the start they have no hope in the legitimate system so most don't try. If it weren't drugs it'd be some other crime, carjacking, petty theft, or whatever.

The vast majority of property crime at this point is related to drugs, mostly users trying to afford their habit. Legalization would end most of this because cheaply prouced, widely available drugs like crack-cocaine would cost about the same as cheap booze.

Again, changing the cultural message will go much farther towards ending crime than will legalization. All putting the dealer out of business would do is force them to look for an alternate occupation and it's not likely to be any more legal than drugs are now.

You still haven't said how you're going to change the culture. And you're completely ignoring the fact they're dealing drugs because there's a fortune to be made doing it. The reward to risk ratio is staggering.

And by the way, while living the gangster life is a high risk proposition, just being a small time DEALER isn't. I know people who sell pot, who sell pills, who sell coke who have been doing it for years, and they're making a lot more money than I am with little risk of getting caught or shot.

What needs to be done is get them to believe in a real future, not the false hope of drugs or new crimes.

While we're at it, we'll teach them to fly by flapping their arms really fast.

It's going to have to come from somewhere. Federal money would help, if nothing else get rid of sheer pork projects. The rest will simply have to come from the states.

I'd be willing to take a chainsaw to state level pork projects to pay for schools. Hell, you might even have a reasonable chance of doing it if you get enough of a popular ground swell.

I agree. Most criminals don't believe they'll be caught so deterent won't work for most. The object of prison is to remove criminals from society until they no longer represent a threat to said society.

Unless you're executing everyone or giving them sentences so long that they're old men by the time they're out, that's not going to work. Hard time ought to discourage recidivism, but it doesn't. Prevention, ultimately, is a much more effective strategy--though real criminals, like rapists and murderers, ought to be locked away until the day they die.

What needs to be done is make sure they don't want to return and give them away to break the cycle. What needs to be done is rehabilitate criminals, at least in the long run. Plain old punishment ought to be secondary.

That's been the philosophy since the 19th century, and it's the only way anybody knows of to prevent recidivism. But making the prisons harder hasn't done anything--not even so-called "supermaxes", with 23-hour lockdown and solitary confinement for the length of the prisoner's term, or utter shitholes like East Jersey (only someone who's never heard of it would call East Jersey easy time) do nothing to disourage repeat criminals. For that matter, 19th century dungeons like Eastern State Penitentary, where the prisoners had no human contact whatsoever for the length of their sentence had no real effect on career criminals.

There's a price to actually enforcing the rules. Nothing says it'll be easy.

So your solution to the problem of drug offenders (not counting those guilty of property crimes to pay for habits, or violent crimes committed by those in the drug business) consuming nearly 1/3 of the prison space in the state of New Jersey is.....a trite phrase.

At some point, enforcing the rules becomes so costly that it's no longer worth it. If you'd like a list of the litany of evils caused by prohibition, I'd be happy to provide.

Blanket legalization is a slight of hand thing. Sure it'll reduce crime, for now. But in the long run with out addressing the problems that cause it you'll simply bump them to some new trade.

Drug prohibition IS a cause, and blanket legalization WILL address one of the problems causing inner city crime. The deeper cultural problems can't be addressed by government--you've got to collapse gangster culture by removing its primary source of income first.

And of course pile up a huge useless population of drug addicts that'll most likely continue to contribute to the crime rate.

We've already got a huge pile of useless addicts who are commiting crime to finance their habit because prohibition has ballooned the price of their habit far beyond the cost of production. They might indeed still commit crime to support their habit, but it will be petty larceny, not burgulary and grand theft auto.

[Perinquus]

A far better method is to simply stop giving credence to Jesse Jackson & Co and the Gangsta rap crowd. That'll go far more towards pushing young minority kids than legalizing drugs would.

And precisely how does one go about doing that? The government could legalize drugs; they do not, however, have the power to suddenly remove the credibility of public figures or change the way people view things.

That's one of our biggest problems.

Certain aspects of our crime rate we have it in our power to address relatively easily. Here are some things we could do that would have postive effects that would be seen fairly quickly.

1) Toughen sentencing for violent offenses. Historically, every time this happens the crime rates drop, both because of deterrent effect, and because a greater number of violent offenders are off the streets and in jail cells.

2) Make the prisons tougher. I'm not talking about a return to medieval style conditions, but certainly take away cable televisions; weight rooms (where inmates can make themselves stronger and better able able to fight law enforcement when they get out); build more prisons to reduce overcrowding, which contributes to a lot of the friction and assaults in prison; make the food nourishing, but plain, and just sufficient to meet prisoners' nutritional requirements; bring back hard labor for serious offenses, and work their fucking asses off, so that when they get back home they have no energy to do more than get a shower and fall into bed; isolate known gang members from other prisoners, and from each other. Basically, prisons should be humane, but tough. It should be a very unpleasant place, and criminals should not want to go there ever again. Right now, our prisons have little deterrent effect, and function as crime academies, where inmates learn more criminal behavior from other inmates.

3) Repeal draconian gun laws in places like LA, Chicago, D.C., etc. They don't work. Replace the with sensible gun restrictions designed to regulate firearms instead of ban them, and keep them out of the hands of people with criminal records, and those with diagnosed mental conditions. Allow guns to be owned and even carried by law abiding citizens with good records. In every state where a shall-issue policy was adopted and law abiding citizens were allowed to carry concealed handguns, violent crime rates dropped sharply.

4) Concurrent with number 3, impose severe penalties for the use of a firearm during any crime.

5) Stop pandering to the Hispanic voting bloc and start enforcing the goddamn immigration laws. We have around 8 million illegal aliens in this country, and they need to be gone. A lot of crime is perpetrated by illegal aliens, and by the people who run smuggling operations to get them here. We also have a serious gang problem among illegals, and one of our most dangerous gangs, MS XIII (Mara Salvatrucha), is composed largely of El Salvadoran and Honduran immigrants, and many, if not most of them are illegals. There is an excellent bill in congress right now to cut off federal highway funds to any state (like California, New Mexico, and Nevada) which makes it legal for illegal immigrants to obtain a driver's license. This bill needs to be passed. There are also localities which have flatly refused to cooperate with federal authorities in enforcing immigration laws, and these localities need to feel the squeeze in some way as well.

6) Criminalize membership in certain gangs. Right now it is not illegal to belong to any gang. Certain of them, like the aforementioned MS XIII need to be criminalized.

There are probably other measures I can think of that will help, but this is a start.

The problem is, these things would help, but by themselves, they are not going to solve the problem, though they may ameliorate it somewhat. A big part of our crime rate is a social problem. There are certain poisonous, self destructive trends in our society that need to be reversed. How this may be made to happen I wish I knew.

The gangsta culture of American inner cities needs to stop being glorified. Black "leaders" need to stop working so damn hard to maintain a sense of grievance among blacks. It's a self destructive trend. As I've said before, when you spend decades telling black kids that whitey's keeping 'em down, that whitey's got the system rigged against them, etc. of course they're not going to work hard at school, of course they're going to drop out, of course they're not going to go work at low-paying, entry level jobs, etc.. Doing all that would be playing whitey's game, and if it's a rigged game, they'd be chumps to play it. The sad thing is, I'm convinced people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are not really all that interested in improving conditions for blacks. Because if conditions did improve, what need would they then have for "leaders" like Jackson and Sharpton? It may sound cynical, but I'm convinced that Jackson, Sharpton, and some others are are corrupt demagogues who have gotten their hands on power, and who have developed a liking for it. They'll now do what it takes to maintain their power and influence in the black community, and any other considerations, even helping improve the lot of blacks in America are purely secondary.

Another problem is multiculturalism. It is possible to celebrate one's heritage without being a multiculturalist. Too many people act today as if, when we ask people to assimilate into American society, we are somehow unfairly asking them to reject their heritage. How this perception came to be I'm not sure, but we have it now. Now multiculturalism, a cause dear to the heart of the political left, is encouraging people to hang on to their cultures of origin to such a degree that they are no longer assimilating into American society. This is hurting this country. This country used to be a melting pot, where people came from all over the world to become Americans. Now they come here to become hyphenated Americans, with the emphasis on the nationality of origin before American. Here's an excerpt from a recent article that shows what I mean very well:

While Mexican immigrants come to America no more or less poor, no more or less uneducated than previous waves of immigrants, they are far more resistant to assimilating into American culture. Hanson notes that, of the millions of Mexican immigrants legally admitted to this country since 1982, only 20 percent had bothered to become citizens by 1997.

A resistance to fully assimilating into American society and the de-emphasis of "American" in Mexican-American, has impeded the Mexican immigrant population's upward mobility in California. That notion is borne out by data compiled by the Center for Immigration Studies, the Washington-based public policy group headed by immigration expert Mark Krikorian. Some 65 percent of Mexican immigrants in California are high school dropouts, according to the center, compared to only 7 percent of the native-born population. Some 41 percent of Mexican immigrant households are on the public welfare rolls, compared to 14 percent of natives.

The socio-economic status of Mexican immigrants barely improves over time. Nearly 55 percent of Mexican immigrants are living in or near poverty after residing here in this country more than 20 years. Some 45 percent are without health care after 20 years and 37 percent are still relying on welfare.

The reality is that second and third generation Mexican-Americans are barely better off than their forebears who immigrated to this country.

http://www.timesstar.com/Stories/0,1413 ... 55,00.html

Previous waves of immigrants came here (including my own from Ireland), they and their children learned English in order to be competitive in the job market (and no, most of the 19th century Irish didn't speak it already; they spoke Irish Gaelic), and to be able to take advantage of all available opportunities, they worked hard to get ahead, and they assimilated. The result was invariably that two or three or four generations later, they were prosperous. They usually moved on up to the middle class, and many into the upper class.

Today, immigrants who come here are being positively encouraged not to assimilate. It's part of the Western self-loathing of the multiculturalists. But the result is these immigrants are not assimilating, and it's hurting them. They're not learning English, so employers don't want to hire them. They're not fitting in better, so they're not overcoming the prejudice that every wave of immigrants regrettably faced on coming here. Their continuing poverty makes conditions better in their neighborhoods for crime and for gangs.

These are problems I don't know how to solve, but something needs to be done about them if things are ever to get better.

[EmperorChrostas the Cruel]

Test criminals sentanced to more than 5 years for education level.
Make having a high school diploma, or it's equivalent a requirement of release, in ADDITION to job training.
Your sentance would then be, "5 to graduation". Five years minimum, and you complete he GED course. The 5 years being the minimum, and you can go then if you have already met the standard.
This would turn the "unrepentant, unwilling to change, fuck you I'll do my time and you can't fucking keep me in here forever" types into life sentances
When you are willing to change, and AFTER you have done the work, you can be released. If you don't do the work, you never get out.

I'll bet education, now linked to getting out, will take a whole new priority with the inmates.
Some will find out they like using their brains, and many "worthless" will become productive, and prideful citizens.

Learning disabled will be vocationaly trained, and if they are not smart enough to feed themselves by their own effort, they leave prison and go to the "Tardo" house. Or a "halfway house," if the poor dummy wants to be good, but just isn't smart enough.
If you can't support yourself, and you have comitted crimes, you stay in an institution forever.
I'm not sure if this will pass the smell test of constitutionality though.

This is just an idea though. Linking release to education.

[Darth Wong]

Certain aspects of our crime rate we have it in our power to address relatively easily. Here are some things we could do that would have postive effects that would be seen fairly quickly.

1) Toughen sentencing for violent offenses. Historically, every time this happens the crime rates drop, both because of deterrent effect, and because a greater number of violent offenders are off the streets and in jail cells.

Wouldn't we need to build a lot of prisons to make that work, or empty out the drug offenders in order to make room? How feasible is that?

2) Make the prisons tougher ...

Having never visited an American (or even Canadian) prison, I guess I can't comment on this one. But I do understand the sentiment. The notion of coddled criminals makes peoples' blood boil.

3) Repeal draconian gun laws in places like LA, Chicago, D.C., etc. They don't work. Replace the with sensible gun restrictions designed to regulate firearms instead of ban them, and keep them out of the hands of people with criminal records, and those with diagnosed mental conditions. Allow guns to be owned and even carried by law abiding citizens with good records. In every state where a shall-issue policy was adopted and law abiding citizens were allowed to carry concealed handguns, violent crime rates dropped sharply.

What are these draconian gun laws of which you speak? I'm not too familiar with LA, Chicago, or DC's municipal laws. I didn't know cities could even set their own gun laws.

4) Concurrent with number 3, impose severe penalties for the use of a firearm during any crime.

Isn't that basically the same thing as item #1?

5) Stop pandering to the Hispanic voting bloc and start enforcing the goddamn immigration laws. We have around 8 million illegal aliens in this country, and they need to be gone.

Wait a minute- how can illegal immigrants constitute a voting bloc? Illegal immigrants are allowed to vote?

6) Criminalize membership in certain gangs. Right now it is not illegal to belong to any gang. Certain of them, like the aforementioned MS XIII need to be criminalized.

Sounds good, but wouldn't it just drive the gangs to be more secretive, and thus harder to identify in the open?

The gangsta culture of American inner cities needs to stop being glorified. Black "leaders" need to stop working so damn hard to maintain a sense of grievance among blacks. It's a self destructive trend. As I've said before, when you spend decades telling black kids that whitey's keeping 'em down, that whitey's got the system rigged against them, etc. of course they're not going to work hard at school, of course they're going to drop out, of course they're not going to go work at low-paying, entry level jobs, etc.. Doing all that would be playing whitey's game, and if it's a rigged game, they'd be chumps to play it.

It would help if the source of those feelings were mitigated somewhat. When a black guy steals $100 from a convenience store and gets brutalized by the cops and gets hard time. When a white-collar criminal (usually white) steals $100 million from the life savings of old people, he gets treated like royalty, and if he ever gets convicted of anything (which is doubtful), he will go to a country club jail where they have spas and tennis courts. That sort of thing doesn't exactly help dispel these widespread perceptions you refer to.

The sad thing is, I'm convinced people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are not really all that interested in improving conditions for blacks.

Those people are shameless opportunists. Nothing unusual for politicians, I'm afraid.

Another problem is multiculturalism. It is possible to celebrate one's heritage without being a multiculturalist. Too many people act today as if, when we ask people to assimilate into American society, we are somehow unfairly asking them to reject their heritage.

India once tried having different rules for different cultures. The result was Pakistan. And the two get along just swimmingly now ...

Previous waves of immigrants came here (including my own from Ireland), they and their children learned English in order to be competitive in the job market (and no, most of the 19th century Irish didn't speak it already; they spoke Irish Gaelic), and to be able to take advantage of all available opportunities, they worked hard to get ahead, and they assimilated. The result was invariably that two or three or four generations later, they were prosperous. They usually moved on up to the middle class, and many into the upper class.

The same is true of Asian immigrants. The problem of "black rage" is difficult to pin down in terms of causes, because the racial discrimination laws that affected them also affected other non-whites such as Asians, but without causing the same lasting malaise.

Today, immigrants who come here are being positively encouraged not to assimilate. It's part of the Western self-loathing of the multiculturalists.

It's too easy to characterize it as self-loathing. There are two world-views in existence: the classical liberal view is that it is cultural arrogance to presume that we are superior, or that we have the right to force our views down anyone else's throats. The neo-conservative view is that we are superior, but we don't have to feel bad about forcing our values down anyone's throats because we don't have to; they all want to be like us deep down anyway. Both viewpoints are somewhat in error; it is cultural arrogance to assume that we are superior, but at the same time, this doesn't mean it is impossible to condemn anything.

People shouldn't be made to assimilate, but they should be made to recognize that society is a two-way street; you can't expect something back without giving something in return.

These are problems I don't know how to solve, but something needs to be done about them if things are ever to get better.

So what do you think about the drug solution proposed by others in this thread? You didn't comment on it.

[RedImperator]

Wait a minute- how can illegal immigrants constitute a voting bloc? Illegal immigrants are allowed to vote?

They can't, of course. But any move to crack down in illegal immigration is characterized as an assault on the entire Hispanic community. Pete Wilson, governor of California before the current schmuck, destroyed his political career by cracking down on illegal immigrants and alienating the massive Latino voting bloc in SoCal.

To tell the truth, I'm not entirely sure why this is. From everything I've heard, legal Mexican immigrants and second generation Mexican-American citizens resent the illegals just as much as white citizens do. But any time someone tries to send them all back to Tiajuana, the Mexican voting bloc rediscovers racial solidarity. It's very odd. I suspect I'm missing important information here, if anyone cares to fill me in.

[Xenophobe3691]

They can't, of course. But any move to crack down in illegal immigration is characterized as an assault on the entire Hispanic community. Pete Wilson, governor of California before the current schmuck, destroyed his political career by cracking down on illegal immigrants and alienating the massive Latino voting bloc in SoCal.

To tell the truth, I'm not entirely sure why this is. From everything I've heard, legal Mexican immigrants and second generation Mexican-American citizens resent the illegals just as much as white citizens do. But any time someone tries to send them all back to Tiajuana, the Mexican voting bloc rediscovers racial solidarity. It's very odd. I suspect I'm missing important information here, if anyone cares to fill me in.

Probably more of an Us vs. Them mentality. Kind of like how small town Southerners thought of Big City NYC as a den of immorality and seedy corruption, but immediately stuck by them after 9/11

[Perinquus]

Wouldn't we need to build a lot of prisons to make that work, or empty out the drug offenders in order to make room? How feasible is that?

Yes, but I think money spent on that could be taken from a lot of the social programs that don't work. Also, along with tougher sentences, stiffer fines for some offenses could help mitigate the cost.

What are these draconian gun laws of which you speak? I'm not too familiar with LA, Chicago, or DC's municipal laws. I didn't know cities could even set their own gun laws.

Washington DC has an outright ban on all handgun possession, except for pre-1976 handguns "grandfathered" in. New York has the Sullivan law which is only slightly less restrictive. These laws make it effectively impossible for the average Joe to own a handgun in those cities. It hasn't helped in the slightest in reducing violent crime. Long guns can be owned, but only if you pay a lot of money, and jump through a lot of hoops to obtain a police permit to purchase them. LA and Chicago are not quite as restrictive, but it's still difficult. None of these cities will issue concealed weapons permits to the average citizen.

4) Concurrent with number 3, impose severe penalties for the use of a firearm during any crime.

Isn't that basically the same thing as item #1?

Not quite. These sentences are imposed over and above the sentence for the primary offense the person committed, and in fact constitute an extra charge. For example, robbery to an individual might carry a minimum sentence of five years (that it does in Virginia, where I live). So if you pull a knife on someone and rob him you get 5 or more years. Now lets say your legislature has enacted a law against "use of a firearm in commission of a felony". Charge them with that offense as well, and make it another mandatory minimum five years, and any sentence for this offense must be served consecutively, not concurrently. So now our little shitbag is looking at ten years minimum for committing a robbery with a firearm.

5) Stop pandering to the Hispanic voting bloc and start enforcing the goddamn immigration laws. We have around 8 million illegal aliens in this country, and they need to be gone.

Wait a minute- how can illegal immigrants constitute a voting bloc? Illegal immigrants are allowed to vote?

The illegals themselves do not, of course, constitute a voting bloc. But the problem is that a majority in the Hispanic community can be counted on to oppose any measures to toughen, or even enforce our existing immigration laws. So we have the legal immigrants and naturalized citizens effectively trying to make things easier for the illegals. In order to pander to this voting bloc, and win their support, you find politicians from both parties (including the current president goddammit ), supporting things like giving illegals driver's licenses, in-state tuition rates at state universities, amnesty laws for illegals already here, etc.

6) Criminalize membership in certain gangs. Right now it is not illegal to belong to any gang. Certain of them, like the aforementioned MS XIII need to be criminalized.

Sounds good, but wouldn't it just drive the gangs to be more secretive, and thus harder to identify in the open?

Perhaps, but it might also drive some members out of the gang, and reduce their ability to recruit new members.

It would help if the source of those feelings were mitigated somewhat. When a black guy steals $100 from a convenience store and gets brutalized by the cops and gets hard time. When a white-collar criminal (usually white) steals $100 million from the life savings of old people, he gets treated like royalty, and if he ever gets convicted of anything (which is doubtful), he will go to a country club jail where they have spas and tennis courts. That sort of thing doesn't exactly help dispel these widespread perceptions you refer to.

I agree. That shit needs to be curtailed as well. White collar criminals shouldn't be sent to maximum security prisons; those places are for violent and dangerous offenders after all, which white collar criminals aren't. But their sentences still need to be harsh, and the prisons need to be unpleasant places in order to maintain the deterrent effect, and to punish them for their crimes.

India once tried having different rules for different cultures. The result was Pakistan. And the two get along just swimmingly now ...

Exactly! Thank you. This is why immigrants need to assimilate into American society and become Americans. Not Mexican-Americans, not Arab-Americans, not Russian-Americans, not Chinese-Americans, just Americans. As Robert A. Heinlein once said, Israel is not our country, and neither is Ireland. The problem we have today is that when we ask immigrants to become Americans, the multiculturalists among us start screaming about cultural arrogance on our part. These idiots are helping to balkanize America, but you just can't get them to see it.

The same is true of Asian immigrants. The problem of "black rage" is difficult to pin down in terms of causes, because the racial discrimination laws that affected them also affected other non-whites such as Asians, but without causing the same lasting malaise.

One reason for that (although by no means the only one) is that you did not have an organized civil rights movement in the Asian community that then grew a crop of race hustlers, who were more interested in serving themselves and maintaining the power and influence than in achieving the racial equality which they say is their goal.

So what do you think about the drug solution proposed by others in this thread? You didn't comment on it.

That's a tough one. Legalizing lesser drugs, like marijuana is something I am in favor of. And no, it's not because I want to be able to enjoy it myself. I just think it would free up a lot of law enforcement resources to go after the heavier stuff, and it would take a lot of income away from the gangs and drug dealers who sell it.

However, I do not agree with the idea of legalizing the hard drugs. I see a lot of people comparing the war on drugs to prohibition. But it's not an exact parallel. For one thing, alcohol was something which, despite the passage of the Volstead Act, which made prohibition law, most Americans wanted to enjoy. Prohibition was passed because of the powerful influence of a very vocal and well organized minority (the temperance movement) which lobbied hard for it. But hard drugs are not something which most Americans want, so while there is a demand for the stuff, it's not quite comparable for the demand for alcohol that existed in the days of prohibition. And for another thing, the really hard drugs are addictive in a way that alcohol can touch. You have alkies who can't leave the sauce alone, but most people have no problem at all controlling their drinking. Hard drugs are an entirely different matter. Some of them are one hit addictions, where you have a chemical dependency being formed. And after you've gotten well hooked, the withdrawal can actually kill you if you try to quit cold turkey. Most drug rehab programs have very limited success. Obviously, I don't know from personal experience, but I am reliably informed that the craving never really goes away, even if you manage to kick the habit. No matter how long you've been clean and sober, you always have a craving for the stuff, and most people just don't seem to have the willpower to resist it indefinitely, thats why Robert Downey keeps making the news for his drug addiction. I'm sure he'd love to kick it for good, but he can't resist the stuff.

I just don't think we can afford to legalize that sort of thing, because if it's legal, the government, and society as a whole, is seen as tacitly approving the stuff, and more people may be inclined to try it. The stuff is so addictive that that alone may get you hooked - after all, no one ever says "I think I'll become a junkie". They tell themselves they just want to try it... just to see what it's like... just once that's all... and they're hooked. I don't think a substance like that can be effectively regulated in a way that would make it safe for sale to the public.

[Hobot]

I don't suppose Mike would appreciate it if his thread turned into a debate over gun control, but check out these pages:

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-gunownership.htm
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-guncontrol.htm
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-kellermann.htm

...and I'll leave it at that

[Sea Skimmer]

Having never visited an American (or even Canadian) prison, I guess I can't comment on this one. But I do understand the sentiment. The notion of coddled criminals makes peoples' blood boil.

Even in high security prisons in the US you'll often find a color TV with cable in every individual's cell. Deleting that would be a start.

What are these draconian gun laws of which you speak? I'm not too familiar with LA, Chicago, or DC's municipal laws. I didn't know cities could even set their own gun laws.

They can to an extent, it varies from state to state. The District of Columbia is screwy since the US Congress held all legislative power over it until recently.

As for the draconian nature, Washington DC all handguns are illegal. But meanwhile the city also has the countries highest murder rate in the entire country.

[Perinquus]

I don't think a substance like that can be effectively regulated in a way that would make it safe for sale to the public.

Actually, npw that I think of it; I know it can't. Juat look at the problem we're having now with Oxycontin. It's a legal drug (a painkiller) available by prescription. It's addictive as hell, and it's becoming one of the new drugs of choice. We're starting to have a real problem with it on the street.

[Perinquus]

Goddamn typos! We need an edit button for this forum. Sometimes, like now when I'm about to go to work, I type things in a hurry, and can't fix them when I notice I fucked up.

[Dahak]

Germany has strict gun laws, strict laws considering gun usage, our prisons are not used to lock people away, but to prepare them for a time when they'll be released. Re-sozialising is the ultimate purpose of german jails. I don't see how tightening prisons will be lowering crime. You take away the possibilty of re-sozialising them, and when they come out, they don't have anything to do, besides what they were used to: crimes...

Yet our criminal rate is not very high, and we had a grand total of 243 cases of murder/manslaughter in which guns were used.

[Glocksman]

Hobot:

I don't want to derail this thread any more than I already have , so my reply to those huppi pages will be short and point out one glaring use of selective data.

When you're trying to identify a trend, you want a set of data that goes back as far as possible in order to help identify the starting point of that trend and whether or not the trend is truly a trend or merely a statistical blip.

In this case, the DC homicide comparison is distorted by the disparity in the amount of years used to compute the preban and postban figures. The author used a 7 year preban figure and compared it to a 12 year postban figure.

Let's compare the 12 year preban and 12 year postban figures:
Preban 12 year average: 25.63
Postban 12 year average: 28.70

The national MNNM average for the 12 years preceding the ban was 7.47
The national MNNM average for the 12 years after the ban was 8.8

Widen the computations out to the period from 1976 (start of the DC ban) to 2000 (last year for which data is available) and the corresponding 24 year period preceding the ban, and the numbers favor the preban era even more.

His 'excellent case study' in DC is built on smoke and mirrors and the selective use of data. Who was it that once said that figures lie and liars figure?

There's much more of the same in those pages that doesn't stand up to critical examination.

[Glocksman]

Gah, I got in too much of a hurry.

The author used an 11 year postban comparison, not a 12 year one.

Corrected figures are posted below.

11 year preban DC homicide: 26.46
11 year preban MNNM: 7.7

Sorry:

[Perinquus]

Germany has strict gun laws, strict laws considering gun usage, our prisons are not used to lock people away, but to prepare them for a time when they'll be released. Re-sozialising is the ultimate purpose of german jails. I don't see how tightening prisons will be lowering crime.

Well guess what. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it doesn't work.

Here's a little hard data to back that up:

http://www.ncpa.org/bg/bg148/bg148a.html

And some significant figures excerpted from the article:

Only after World War II did scholars begin to study the effects of deterrence. Today a large body of scholarly literature generally confirms the value of punishment in the prevention of crime.

Isaac Erhlich's 1973 study of punishment and deterrence is perhaps the most widely cited in the field. 19 Using state data for 1940, 1950 and 1960, Ehrlich found that crime varied inversely with the probability of prison and the average time served.

For each 10 percent rise in a state's prison population, University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt estimated, robberies fall 7 percent, assault and burglary shrink 4 percent each, auto theft and larceny decline 3 percent each, rape falls 2 1/2 percent and murder drops 1 1/2 percent. 20 On average, about 15 crimes are eliminated for each additional prisoner locked up, saving social costs estimated at $53,900 - well in excess of the $30,000 it costs annually to incarcerate a prisoner.

As Donald Lewis wrote in 1986 after surveying the economic literature on crime, "The bulk of evidence resulting from the competent use of theory and statistics supported the existence of a deterrent effect of both imprisonment risk and longer sentences." Lewis emphasized that a substantial body of evidence is consistent with "the existence of a deterrent effect from longer sentences." 28 V. K. Mathur reached similar conclusions after studying 1960 and 1970 data for U.S. cities of over 100,000 population.

In the United States, it was not a matter of crime's increasing so fast that the rate of imprisonment could not keep up. Rather, the rate of imprisonment began to fall first.

However, the American experience showed that it is possible for imprisonment to stop a rising crime rate and then gradually begin to push it down. The American crime rate peaked in 1980, a few years after the risk of imprisonment reached its nadir. Since then, as the risk of imprisonment has increased, with few exceptions the rates of serious crimes have retreated in fits and starts to levels of 20 or more years ago

We had a falling crime rate throughout most of the 20th century (apart from the anomaly of the Prohibition years, which saw a huge boost in organized crime), and this was at a time when the theory of punishing criminals, as opposed tp rehabilitating them, prevailed. Then, starting in the 40s and 50s, the theory of rehabilitation started to prevail. At the same time an increasing restrictions on law enforcement and judges who simply handed down far fewer convictions, and far more lenient sentences simultaneously began to reduce the certainty of punishment as well as the severity. The crime rate shot up. It climbed steadily until the 1980s, when mandatory sentencing laws began to be passed to take some of the discretion away from these over-lenient judges. We also began locking up more criminals. And whaddya know? The crime rate began falling.

You may not see how it can work, but then, you don't have to. The statistics show that it does. That's all that matters.

You take away the possibilty of re-sozialising them, and when they come out, they don't have anything to do, besides what they were used to: crimes...

Yet our criminal rate is not very high, and we had a grand total of 243 cases of murder/manslaughter in which guns were used.

And does it not occur to you that societal conditions in Germany are radically different from ours. You don't have large populations of disaffected minorities. You don't have anything even remotely like the gang problem we have to deal with over here. You never let your punishment get so lax that the crime rate boomed the way ours did. This last is the worst of it. Because the truth is, a tougher attitude that truly deterred, might have kept a lot of people from turning to crime. But if you let it go, and you have a couple of generations of people who spend their entire lives learning criminal behavior, the chances of successfully rehabilitating them is extremely small. With rare exceptions, the real hardcore, violent felons are simply unsalvageable at this point.

Here are a few other good excerpts from that same article:

Large, influential segments of the academic and legal communities advocate dealing with crime through rehabilitation of the offenders - a process culminating in his restoration to normal life. Believers in rehabilitation regard punishment as primitive or counterproductive.

In other words, the ivory tower types who almost never brush up against the real, dangerous, violent offenders (except in the safe and controlled environment of prison interview rooms - never in their "natural habitat",) theorized that rehabilitation was preferrable, and then changed the laws to put that theory into practice.

The following quote is lengthy, but it is simply so telling that I have to cite it so completely (with italics added to emphasize the most important points - and by the way, these numbers that break up that narrative are footnote numbers to credit the sources the author of this study uses to support his thesis):

This school of thought abandons the philosophy of "Let the punishment fit the crime" for "Let the treatment fit the criminal." As Robert Bidinotto wrote, "The ordinary citizen believes individuals are responsible for what they do and thus should be held accountable for harm they do to others." By contrast, those who promote rehabilitation start with the premise that the criminal has little personal responsibility because he is "shaped by a wide variety of forces - biological, psychological, or social - over which he has little volitional control." 45 Rehabilitation contemplates that psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and other trained professionals can remold a criminal's thinking and outlook on life so that he will prefer legal behavior to criminal acts. This process takes a variety of forms, including counseling, psychiatric care and education.

Yet there is little evidence that rehabilitation works. 46 Soon after rehabilitation had become a principal theory of American corrections in the 1950s, criminal activity began to increase sharply. By the late 1960s, the theory was even more suspect because crime had risen to unprecedented levels and rehabilitation was not reducing recidivism. 47

The most devastating blow to the theory was Robert Martinson's exhaustive study. Martinson examined every available report on rehabilitation techniques published in English from 1945 to 1967, drawing on 231 studies. He found that "with few and isolated exceptions, the rehabilitative efforts that have been reported so far have had no appreciable effect on recidivism." 48 Relatively little comparable research has materialized to refute Martinson's analysis, although this has not been from want of effort.

A major obstacle to the success of rehabilitation is the existence of what could be called the criminal personality. Perhaps the most important work on this subject is the three-volume study by the late Samuel Yochelson, a physician, and Stanton Samenow, a practicing psychologist. 51 After interviewing hundreds of criminals and their relatives and acquaintances, the two researchers concluded that criminals (1) have control over what they do, freely choosing evil over good, (2) have distinct personalities, described in detail as deceitful, egotistical, myopic and violent and (3) make specific errors in thinking (52 such errors are identified).

On salvaging and reforming criminals, Yochelson and Samenow assert that the criminal must resolve to change and accept responsibility for his own behavior. Their cure stresses an analogy with Alcoholics Anonymous: "Once a criminal, always a criminal." Hardened criminals can reform themselves, but Samenow estimates that only 10 percent would choose to do so. He avoids the word "rehabilitation" when describing chronic criminals: "When you think of how these people react, how their patterns go back to age 3 or 4, there isn't anything to rehabilitate.

The concluding remarks are something with which I could not agree more:

Despite continuing calls for a "better way," 65 what criminals need most is evidence that their crimes do not pay. As Robert Bidinotto says, neither criminals nor the rest of us "drive a car 100 miles an hour toward a brick wall, because we know what the consequences will be." 66 Punishment works. Among other virtues, it gives the convicted a major incentive to reform. Even career criminals often give up crime because they don't want to go back to prison. The most successful remedy, if it were economical, would impose unpleasantness on offenders every time they harmed others; predatory action invariably would produce bad consequences.

Strong evidence suggests that criminals respond predictably to incentives, whether it be coddling or harshness. The old prescription that punishment be swift, certain and severe is affirmed by modern social science.

When expected punishment plunged during the 1960s and 1970s, crime rose astronomically. When expected punishment began rising in the 1980s and 1990s, crime leveled off and began falling.

Economist Gordon Tullock's stark conclusion in his 1974 survey remains valid today: "We have an unpleasant method - deterrence - that works, and a pleasant method - rehabilitation - that (at least so far) never has worked. Under the circumstances, we have to opt either for the deterrence method or for a higher crime rate."

I think that for some first time offenders, for people who are not hardened criminals, for some juveniles, rehabilitation may work to a degree. For the real hardened repeat offenders, punishment is the only thing that seems to get the job done.

[Darth Wong]

Against criminals who may be redeemable, use rehabilitation.

Against criminals who are hardened and/or simply devoid of human decency/morality, use containment.

Against law-abiding welfare recipients, try a little basic human compassion.

[MKSheppard]

Isn't that basically the same thing as item #1?

http://www.vahv.org/Exile/

Not really. Go look up Project Exile. It's sponsored by the
NRA and run in Richmond VA as a pilot program, and our
new governor in MD wants to bring it over here.

An expedited federal prosecutive effort by the United States Attorney's Office, B.A.T.F., U.S. Marshal, and F.B.I., in coordination with the Richmond Commonwealth's Attorney's Office, Richmond Police Department, and the Virginia State Police to remove armed criminals from Richmond streets. The project has expanded into Norfolk\ Newport News, VA, and Rochester, NY.

For at least ten years, gun violence had plagued Richmond, Virginia, and the violence had grown each year, routinely placing Richmond among the five cities with the worst per capita murder rates. In 1997, 140 people were murdered, 122 of which with firearms. The drug/gun link, a greater willingness of some to carry weapons, and an increasing incidence of domestic violence, primarily caused this murder toll.

In 1997, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Richmond developed and carried out an aggressive, innovative, and creative approach to this violence called "Project Exile." Taking advantage of stiffer bond rules and sentencing guidelines in federal court, all felons with guns, guns/drug cases, and gun/domestic violence cases in Richmond are federally prosecuted, without regard to numbers or quantities. The project has fully integrated and coordinated local police, state police, federal investigators (BATF/FBI), and local and federal prosecutors, to promptly arrest, incarcerate, detain without bond, prosecute and sentence the armed criminal. An expedited reporting system developed has decreased processing time from previously several months to only several days. In court, bond is routinely and successfully opposed, and they obtain mandatory minimum sentences. The project has quickly, efficiently, and successfully prosecuted a large number of gun crimes, with significant impact on criminal behavior.

Handling these cases has been a major accomplishment in itself. The cases have required several hundred court appearances involving aggressive litigation of bond, suppression, and sentencing issues, and trials.

As part of Project Exile, the U.S. Attorney's Office has also carried out a training program for Richmond Police Department officers on federal firearms statutes and search and seizure issues. We have also worked with police management to improve case report forms. Finally, to expedite the handling of Exile cases, the police firearms office has been electronically connected to BATF to arrange immediate tracing of seized forearms.

Lastly, a major component of the project has been an innovative outreach/education effort through various media to get the message to the criminals about this crackdown, and build a community coalition directed at the problem. A coalition of business, community and church leaders, and organizations such as the Retail Merchant's Association has been assembled to promote the project. With contributions to a support foundation totalling $40,000, and substantial in-kind matching contributions of services and media time, the 1997 media efforts carrying the message "An illegal gun will get you five years in federal prison" and asking citizens to anonymously report guns on the street to the Metro Richmond Crime Stoppers telephone number included 15 billboards, a fully painted city bus, TV commercials, 15,000+ business cards with the message distributed on the street by local police, and print advertising. The outreach program has been hugely successful, increasing citizen reports about guns and energizing the community to support police efforts.

The outreach effort has continued in 1998. In addition to the methods utilized in 1997, the Foundation also began an innovative radio campaign through sponsorship of area traffic reports. To date, with the assistance of the Greater Richmond Retail Merchant's Association, the City of Richmond, and the Greater Richmond Partnership, approximately $400,000 has been raised or committed to continue and expand this effective outreach program. Area businesses have also made substantial in-kind service donations to assist the program getting out the message. Most recently, the Richmond Chamber of Commerce has committed sufficient funding to fully implement the media plan for the rest of 1998.

Through these efforts, more than 200 armed criminals have been removed from Richmond's streets, one violent gang responsible for many murders has been destroyed, and the rate of gun carrying by criminals has been cut nearly in half. Officers now report drug dealers throwing down weapons before running instead of risking being caught with the weapons and a large number of homicides have been solved with information obtained from defendants in these cases. Most importantly, these efforts appear to be stemming the tide of violence, with homicides for the period November 1997 through July 1998, running more than 65% below the same period one year ago. As a result, the citizens feel and are safer.