What Americans, USAans, yanks, beleive.

[Michaelangelica]

[QUOTE=DougF;202962
If we were not so soft on crime (spare the rod spoil the child)
is vengeance to spank your kid, or control?
and if you don't correct them then what happens?[/QUOTE]
1 You are not soft on crime. You have more people in jail than anyone. Is it helping?
2 If it is vengeance to spank a child, then you are in need of some serious medication
3. How are you "correcting" them by flicking a switch and BBQig them?
How do you 'correct' those in jail?
How do they become "un-corrected" in the first place?

Everyrone might be interested in testing their own attitudes and values to various USA issues here
Pick Your Candidate
Pity we couldn't have a hypography test
(Watch the questions they flip between + and - ; read carefully)
It is worth doing, I think, even for a non-yank

[DFINITLYDISTRUBD]

And for every criminal behind bars there are dozens more that aren't.
Child mollesters, rapists, thieves, brawlers, murderers, vandals, etc.etc.
What do you guys do with them?

Personally I think we should ditch the prison system and simply ship em all to Iraq and other nations that aren't fond of the U.S... drop em off and tell them never to return lest they be shot on sight. yeah that works.

[Racoon]

U.S. Americans believe that we need more maps, such as, therefore.. to help in places like the Iraq, and South Africa, such as...

YouTube - Miss Teen USA 2007 - South Carolina...

[DougF]

Michaelangelica
1 You are not soft on crime. You have more people in jail than anyone. Is it helping?
2 If it is vengeance to spank a child, then you are in need of some serious medication
3. How are you "correcting" them by flicking a switch and BBQig them?
How do you 'correct' those in jail?
How do they become "un-corrected" in the first place?

When 18% of violent felons on probation at the time of the crime and Nineteen percent received a probation term without incarceration.
it makes it profitable for the criminal,
our prisons are full of *repeat* afenders.


Bureau of Justice Statistics Criminal Sentencing Statistics

Summary findings
In 2004, State and Federal courts convicted a combined total of nearly 1,145,000 adults of felonies -- State courts convicted an estimated 1,079,000 adults and Federal courts convicted 66,518 adults (accounting for 6% of the national total).


In 2004, 70% of all felons convicted in State courts were sentenced to a period of confinement - 40% to State prisons and 30% to local jails. Jail sentences are for short-term confinement (usually for a year or less) in a county or city facility, while prison sentences are for long-term confinement (usually for over a year) in a State facility.


State courts sentenced 28% of convicted felons to straight probation with no jail or prison time to serve.


Prison sentences in State courts averaged almost 5 years in 2004.


The average sentence to local jail was 6 months. The average probation sentence was about 3 years.


Females accounted for a quarter of felony property offenders.


Lengths of felony sentences imposed by State courts, 2004
Mean sentence length
(in months) for felons sentenced to:

----------------------------------------------------------------------


Incarceration

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Most serious
conviction offense Total Prison Jail Probation


All offenses 37 mo 57 mo 6 mo 38 mo
Violent offenses 68 92 7 44
Property offenses 29 45 6 38
Drug offenses 31 51 6 38
Weapons offenses 32 47 7 34
Other offenses 24 41 6 38


Note: Means exclude life and death sentences.
Data on sentence length were reported for 89% of all cases.

Violent Felons in Large Urban Counties
Presents data collected from a representative sample of felony cases that resulted in a felony conviction for a violent offense in 40 of the Nation's 75 largest counties. The study tracks cases for up to 1 year from the date of filing through final disposition. Defendants convicted of murder, rape, robbery, assault or other violent felonies are described in terms of demographic characteristics (gender, race, Hispanic origin, age), prior arrests and convictions, criminal justice status at time of arrest, type of pretrial release or detention, type of adjudication, and sentence received.

Highlights include the following:

Thirty-six percent of violent felons had an active criminal justice status at the time of their arrest. This included 18% on probation, 12% on release pending disposition of a prior case, and 7% on parole.
A majority (56%) of violent felons had a prior conviction record. Thirty-eight percent had a prior felony conviction and 15% had a previous conviction for a violent felony.
Eight-one percent of violent felons were sentenced to incarceration with 50% going to prison and 31% to jail. Nineteen percent received a probation term without incarceration.

When I was growing up Our lives were governed by the Ten Commandments, good judgment, and common sense.

We were taught to know the difference between right and wrong and to stand up and take responsibility for our actions.

You never ever back talked any adult or you would get a backhand,
Kids today don't seem to have any respect (not all kids but quite a bit)

plans to introduce a bill this week that would make California the first state to make the spanking of children 4 years old and under a misdemeanor punishable by a year in jail or a fine of up to $1,000.

Proposed law against spanking toddlers in Calif. causes stir

And I don't have all of the answers,

Serial Killer Alton Coleman

By the time authorities caught up to the deadly pair on July 20, 1984, they had committed at least eight murders, seven rapes, three kidnapping and 14 armed robberies.
<-->
Coleman's appeal efforts were unsuccessful and on April 25, 2002, while reciting, "The Lord is my shepherd," Coleman was executed by lethal injection.

Serial Killers and Mass Murderers

He spent 18 years on death row. and I think that is too long.

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by DougF

,
our prisons are full of *repeat* afenders.

So what are you "correcting' or teaching in jail?

How are prisoners followed up after jail?

When I was growing up Our lives were governed by the Ten Commandments, good judgment, and common sense.

Yes see my recent post on Quirky history facts. the world is changing.
Isn't one of the Ten Commandments "You should not kill" yet you allow capital punishment.
Uzbekistan has just eliminated the use of the death penalty. You would think that would shame The USA a little.

And I don't have all of the answers,

I doubt if anyone has, but from where I sit you guys are loosing.

Over 9 million people are held in penal institutions
throughout the world, mostly as pre-trial detainees
(remand prisoners) or having been convicted
and sentenced.
Almost half of these are in the
United States (2.09m), China (1.55m plus pretrial
detainees and prisoners in ‘administrative
detention’) or Russia (0.76m).

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/rel/icps...-list-2005.pdf

The United States has the highest prison
population rate in the world, some 714 per 100,000
of the national population, followed by Belarus,
Bermuda and Russia (all 532), Palau (523), U.S.
Virgin Islands (490), Turkmenistan (489), Cuba
(487), Suriname (437), Cayman Islands (429), Belize
(420), Ukraine (417), Maldive Islands (416), St Kitts
and Nevis (415), South Africa (413) and Bahamas
(410)

.
Oz has c 117 per 100,000, Canada 116, about 6 times less than the USA.
Dow we follow the 10 commandments better than the USA or have respectful kids? I don't think so. We do have better social security systems.

In OZ most (over 50%) criminals have problems reading and writing. Except for the 10% of Corporate criminals who's skills in these areas are too good.
Teaching people to read and write seems to me to be a good start as you can't really engage in modern society without these skills.

A local prison reform group says

we witness more and more people going into prisons each year. We would like to see more than ‘different’,
we want to see alternatives, for we can see worldwide that prisons can, through their institutional structures and culture, produce crime.
They also frequently fail to reduce victimisation, or resolve long standing anti-social behaviours, address past traumas and heal the aftermath of crime.

Prison Reform Group of Western Australia
Not a bad wish list

In surveys few felt prison should be solely about retribution rather than rehabilitation.Yet we spend very little on it. Once people are locked away they are forgotten. State Government have many other more voter-popular-issues to spend their money on.

Lately we have been putting a lot of people in Jail, following your lead and admonishment if we don't, for drug offences.We have doubled the number of females in jail in the last 4-5 years mostly via drug offences.
I would like to see driug offences treated in hospitals and rehab not jails.

Like you we have put black people in jail more frequently that white.

He spent 18 years on death row. and I think that is too long.

Cruel and inhuman punishment, but good to see he was a Good Christian to the end.

Perhaps this whole Prison thing needs to be in its own thread. I am a bit like most other Australians with prison reform hardly on my radar- much to my shame.

[Racoon]

Well Micheal, you can attribute our high number of incarcerated individuals to a highly trained and effective police force!

And all the wonderful lawyers and DA's who do their job with diligence to keep our cities safe.

I'm not going to go into the Illegal Immigration debate again yet, but there's a ton of additional crime thanks to those individuals. If other countries had the same problem of unfettered access of tens of millions of illegals too, you'd probably see an increase in their prison numbers as well.

The War on Drugs is a major reason there are so many people locked away. Ridiculous sentences and bad, antiquated policies.
I agree with your rehab instead of incarceration approach, If there wasn't a violent crime or robbery attached to it..



Bureau of Justice Statistics Key Crime and Justice Facts at a Glance

I really don't think Capital Punishment is a big problem. Very few get executed anymore.
In 2007 there were only 42 death sentence that were completed.
Thats less than 1 in 7,142,850 people.

Did you really lose sleep over them?? Was your moral outrage of the execution of 42 of the most violent criminal minded Americans enough to make you spit out your tea in disgust?... To purchase a plane ticket, fly to Washington DC, and Lobby on the steps of Congress!?
In this day and age, with all the other problems in this world, are we seriously going to worry about what happens to a few convicted violent murderers? I really don't think so. Maybe for the time it takes to read a few posts and thats it...

[DFINITLYDISTRUBD]

Aie yie yie aie aie.....

Half of the problem with the modern prison system is that people seem to have forgotten the prison is punishment for misdeeds.

It's supposed to be so terrible that convicts never want to go back and therefore reform themselves.

Three meals a day, weights, cable tv, internet... sheesh! accept for the fact that I can go where I wish (if I could afford to go anywhere other than work and home) ....

In short prisons desperately need to be downgraded back to the hells they were in the good ol days. It used to be people were afriad to go to prison now there are those that commit crimes just to go back! (better than being on the streets...I guess.)

[Michaelangelica]

Seek Understanding - Mental Illness
The execution of those with mental illness or "the insane" is clearly prohibited by international law and virtually every country in the world. Despite these standards, and constitutional law, the USA continues to execute people with diagnosed schizophrenia, those that suffer from severe delusions, and others with clinically-labeled mental illnesses.

* Prevention Not Punishment: Educating the Public on the Intersection of the Death Penalty and Severe Mental Illness
* ABA Recommendation
* The Execution of Mentally Ill Offenders
* USA: Supreme Court tightens standard on 'competence' for execution, an analysis of the recent Supreme Court ruling in Panetti v. Quarterman
* Cruel and Inhumane: Executing the Mentally Ill, article from Amnesty Magazine

Learn More About State Sponsored Killing in the USA
Since 1977, over 1,000 people have been executed in the U.S.; there are currently around 3,500 men and women on death row across the country. Grassroots activists throughout the USA play an essential role in advocating against this human rights violation through monitoring cases, mobilizing around upcoming events, and lobbying for anti-death penalty legislation.

* Facts & Figures (including pending executions, executions by year, state, method)
* Fact Sheets

Abolish the Death Penalty

UN calls for halt to executions
The vote took place at the United Nations building, New York City
18 December 2007

UN calls for halt to executions | Amnesty International


racoon most police forces in the western world are highly trained, and Europe has just as big a illegal migrant 'problem'. Not many counties elect their police forces and AGs though.

If you collected some master-carpenters, some average carpenters, and some not so good carpenters, and then locked them up together for a few years in a carpentry shop wouldn't you end up with more highly trained and effective carpenters overall?

[Racoon]

1,000 people executed in the US in the past 30 years?
That doesn't sound like much of a problem to me.

That many innocent kids around the world starve evryday! Or could have been innoculated against a deadly disease. That sounds more like a problem to me.

The problem with incarceration rates is this "War on Drugs". The system needs to be overhauled or scrapped entirely.
The death penalty isn't the problem with our prison system. Its but a tiny fraction.

Thats what this American Yank believes.

[Michaelangelica]

A May 2004 Gallup Poll found that a growing number of Americans support a sentence of life without parole rather than the death penalty for those convicted of murder.

Gallup found that 46% of respondents favor life imprisonment over the death penalty, up from 44% in May 2003.

During that same time frame, support for capital punishment as an alternative fell from 53% to 50%.

The poll also revealed a growing skepticism that the death penalty deters crime, with 62% of those polled saying that it is not a deterrent.

These percentages are a dramatic shift from the responses given to this same question in 1991, when 51% of Americans believed the death penalty deterred crime and only 41% believed it did not.

Only 55% of those polled responded that they believed the death penalty is implemented fairly, down from 60% in 2003.

When not offered an alternative sentence, 71% supported the death penalty and 26% opposed. The overall support is about the same as that reported in 2002, but down from the 80% support in 1994. (Gallup Poll News Service, June 2, 2004)

Deadline: Just How Many People Are In Favor of the Death Penalty?