Quote:
Originally Posted by Daradon
While I'm not against stiffer penalties for impaired driving causing injury or death, your comparisons seem out of whack and mostly hand wringing hyperbole. Do you have stats to back it up? If I'm wrong I'll own it. But penalties for impaired driving causing death (and impaired driving penalties in general) have gone up dramatically in the last twenty years. A friend of my stepdads spend several years in prison for just that.
As for weed and the prostitution question, I too think they are wrongky focused on compared to real ills of society, but let's not get carried away here. I don't know anyone who has spent multiple years in jail for either. Remember, you said 'having weed', not selling. I think weed should be legal as it is, but regardless, you didn't talk about selling which we both know is punished more harshly than possesion.
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Oh it's totally hyperbole, but it's hyperbole based on very reasonable assumptions. Yes, no punishment may deter a crime, but most people are aware you can rack up many DUIs before going to jail even once. It's mostly fines and suspended licenses we see for those, even for people with multiple DUI arrests. If people knew they could (not necessarily will) 5 years for getting a DUI, I gotta think that would at least make people think a little more seriously about doing it. $500 fine and suspended license or 5 years? I'd be willing to risk a $500 fine and a suspended license...hell no to risking 5 years in jail.
Any less than 5 years in jail for DUI causing death is a bad sentence, made even worse by the time served credit that gives them credit for double or triple the time served in pre-trial custody. Drawing out the start of a trial can turn a 5 year sentence into a 2 year one very quickly. The punishment is not severe enough, its effective involuntary manslaughter at best (and really it's negligent homicide)
Yeah, the weed/hooker comparisons were maybe a bit much, but now the sentences for possessing over 1oz or getting caught with a hooker can be very harsh now that the feds have stiffened the laws. Drunk driving for whatever reason seems to get far too much of a pass in terms of being a serious crime. It's basically viewed too much as a "mistake" rather than "negligence" or "lack of concern for others lives" which is what it really is.
Edit: lol at Polak going with the "mistakes" card right before I posted this.