Quote:
Originally Posted by Russic
Rehab should probably be the top priority if our goal is to decrease things like this. There's plenty of examples of how a system that encourages harsh incarceration doesn't do much good. Releasing people more broken than they came in just creates a sinking ship.
Drunk driving is more complicated than just upping the penalty because by and large the people who are causing the deaths are so loser drunk they're operating on auto-pilot, chronic alcoholics, or often both.
The people who are going to have their eyes widened by a tougher jail sentence are probably the people who wouldn't cause such carnage in the first place. They're the have-3-or-4-and-should-really-call-a-cab people. Definitely worth getting off the roads, but they're not usually killing people. For this reason I don't see strengthening punishments as a bad thing at all (I just don't think it solves the overall problem).
If the goal is vengeance (and you're not crazy if that's where you land), then ya, tougher sentences will help that.
If the goal is to have fewer drunk driving deaths though, I think we need to focus more efforts on preventing trauma and strengthening addiction recovery.
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Rehabilitation is a nice concept, but the criminal should demonstrate it first before the courts just assume it’s going to happen. People in a jam get coached to say the right buzzwords to the courts by their lawyers all the time. Prove it first then maybe some leniency can be shown.