^Or the (repeat) victims and their community could sleep easy at night and live without fear knowing that the perpetrator is locked away for another 20 some years. And how on earth do you get someone more violent? He had reoffend multiple times with little to no jail time and went on to commit one of the worse mass murders ever in Canada. You are primarily locking them up to keep their community and then public at large safe, regardless of how they got in their situation.
I’m not sure where you’d draw the line at protecting the victims, is it after the 8th attack? 10th attack? 20th attack? Because you certainly seem ok with slaps on the wrist after a 7th attack. I’d say if someone is attacked a third time, there is no way they should have to ever worry about being attacked again.
Jail is about the absolute best way to make someone more violent, they lose any reason or practise at being calm, they lose all connections to the outside world and so lose any reason to be less violent, they become used to living in a violent world without hope, if I put you in there for 20 years you would very likely become a violent institutionalised reoffender, that is just how you survive in jail, if you weren't violent before you went in you learn to be or you die.
As to what I'm okay with? well that depends, this guy might be the worst most violent guy in the world who needed to be locked up forever, his actions tend to suggest that but I have known just as many guys with records like his who weren't particularly terrible, they were drunks living in a violent world were fights break out all the time and the cops just charge everyone, where relationships, marriage's were also endless drunken fights were both the guy and his partner had 6 or 7 domestics on each other, and I have known a crap ton of guys who got arrested for a domestic when they didnt start the fight at all, guys tend to get charged no matter what
It is easy to decide he should have been locked up after he committed the worst knifing spree in Canadian history but you are suggesting locking up 10 or 20 of my foster kids for life, along with thousands of other guys like them on the off chance they might go on a stabbing spree based on a record that looks really bad at first glance but often when you dig down in to it is a lot different than it might seem, one of my kids got an assaulting a peace officer charge which made no sense to me as he wasnt a violent kid, he told me and I believe him that the cop picked him up for being drunk, spat on him and called him a dirty drunk wagon burner, hell I would have taken a swing at the copper for that.
Last edited by afc wimbledon; 09-14-2022 at 11:55 PM.
There seems to be two dynamics here. The first per Seb et al is the people that live in a violent life/world and for lack of a better term “stuff happens” versus going specifically looking for trouble.
The second are the career criminals that attack/rob/kill outside of the violent life/world. These are the ones that I believe everyone else is looking at. It may be helpful to recognize and acknowledge these differences and discuss them as separate issues.
My opinion
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There seems to be two dynamics here. The first per Seb et al is the people that live in a violent life/world and for lack of a better term “stuff happens” versus going specifically looking for trouble.
The second are the career criminals that attack/rob/kill outside of the violent life/world. These are the ones that I believe everyone else is looking at. It may be helpful to recognize and acknowledge these differences and discuss them as separate issues.
My opinion
the trouble is it is never really that cut and dry, you are usually going to get a little from column a and a little from column b and in some ways the violent robber is less of a threat to society than the delusional alcoholic who violently lashes out, the robber just wants your money, the real question is whether Canada is doing a reasonable job of dealing with violent crime in general, not just looking at one horrific likely never to be repeated event and making policy based on our revulsion for that and our general 'feelings' that crime needs to be dealt with and there is some magic solution we have never tried before, locking people up for long stretches, that will fix things
Last edited by afc wimbledon; 09-15-2022 at 12:33 AM.
There seems to be two dynamics here. The first per Seb et al is the people that live in a violent life/world and for lack of a better term “stuff happens” versus going specifically looking for trouble.
The second are the career criminals that attack/rob/kill outside of the violent life/world. These are the ones that I believe everyone else is looking at. It may be helpful to recognize and acknowledge these differences and discuss them as separate issues.
My opinion
Those worlds absolutely blend together. And even when they don't, how do you discern between the two after a few charges?
Yeah, most posts in this thread that start with "I don't want the American system, but..." end up suggesting exactly the American system.
For me personally, the only element of the American system I think that could be looked at and the only one I referred to is increasing levels of punishment for the same offense. To be fair, that's just... a basic thing that should exist and isn't exclusively American.
For me personally, the only element of the American system I think that could be looked at and the only one I referred to is increasing levels of punishment for the same offense. To be fair, that's just... a basic thing that should exist and isn't exclusively American.
I am a strong opponent of the death penalty.
we do already have some element of that, you will get a steadily increasing sentence if you carry on offending, the guy in question got 4 years for his last assault which was likely little different than his first in violence, the US loves inflexible rules, 3 strikes and you're out etc which leads to situations where a guy who did some dumb stuff as a teenager gets locked up for life for stealing a pizza or something stupid like that in his late 20's when he's maybe turned his life around.
None of this prevents crime I should add, you can lock everyone up for long sentances and there will still be as much crime
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we do already have some element of that, you will get a steadily increasing sentence if you carry on offending, the guy in question got 4 years for his last assault which was likely little different than his first in violence, the US loves inflexible rules, 3 strikes and you're out etc which leads to situations where a guy who did some dumb stuff as a teenager gets locked up for life for stealing a pizza or something stupid like that in his late 20's when he's maybe turned his life around.
None of this prevents crime I should add, you can lock everyone up for long sentances and there will still be as much crime
The application of the 3 strikes rules varies from state to state and most require the crimes to be violent, so unless you're committing aggravated robbery in the process of stealing a pizza it wouldn't qualify. That said, there's plenty of evidence to show 3 strike laws are not particularly ineffective and are not universally applied.
Your last sentence is objectively wrong as there's also evidence to show it provides some varying level of deterrence, most notably for people on the second strike.
There is also significant deterrence provided by Florida's 10-20-Life law.
we do already have some element of that, you will get a steadily increasing sentence if you carry on offending, the guy in question got 4 years for his last assault which was likely little different than his first in violence, the US loves inflexible rules, 3 strikes and you're out etc which leads to situations where a guy who did some dumb stuff as a teenager gets locked up for life for stealing a pizza or something stupid like that in his late 20's when he's maybe turned his life around.
None of this prevents crime I should add, you can lock everyone up for long sentances and there will still be as much crime
Your last statement can’t be true. If a person is in jail they can’t commit a crime against someone outside it. So jailing does reduce crime. It does not reduce rate of recidivism or likelihood to commit a first offense. It isn’t a deterrent but it does prevent crime.
The application of the 3 strikes rules varies from state to state and most require the crimes to be violent, so unless you're committing aggravated robbery in the process of stealing a pizza it wouldn't qualify. That said, there's plenty of evidence to show 3 strike laws are not particularly ineffective and are not universally applied.
Your last sentence is objectively wrong as there's also evidence to show it provides some varying level of deterrence, most notably for people on the second strike.
There is also significant deterrence provided by Florida's 10-20-Life law.
I’d there reasonable publicly available evidence that Floridas law works?
Yeah, most posts in this thread that start with "I don't want the American system, but..." end up suggesting exactly the American system.
There was a clear history of threatening to kill the exact people he actually did go and kill once he was free.
So no, most of the posts in this thread are actually looking at the facts of this case and are saying our justice system has to do more to protect people at risk. In this case there was clearly a person / family at risk. Beyond that there was an obvious risk to public safety.
Has nothing to do with American style justice system at all. We lock up people all the time for this exact behaviour, and certainly don't grant them parole.
Not hard to understand that, even for you.
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the trouble is it is never really that cut and dry, you are usually going to get a little from column a and a little from column b and in some ways the violent robber is less of a threat to society than the delusional alcoholic who violently lashes out, the robber just wants your money, the real question is whether Canada is doing a reasonable job of dealing with violent crime in general, not just looking at one horrific likely never to be repeated event and making policy based on our revulsion for that and our general 'feelings' that crime needs to be dealt with and there is some magic solution we have never tried before, locking people up for long stretches, that will fix things
Agree it isn't cut and dry, but there are differences in these cases. My comment was more on the perspectives posters have had and that there is a gap in what people are saying.
I am not positing a solution in any way. Just my take on the comments.
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I’d there reasonable publicly available evidence that Floridas law works?
The general consensus seems to be that there was a sharp decline in violent gun crime in the years following it's implementation, but there is apprehension to solely attribute it to 10-20-Life as opposed to a multitude of other anti-crime initiatives.
Your last statement can’t be true. If a person is in jail they can’t commit a crime against someone outside it. So jailing does reduce crime. It does not reduce rate of recidivism or likelihood to commit a first offense. It isn’t a deterrent but it does prevent crime.
well two points, first you can still commit crime in jail, your choice of victim is somewhat limited though, secondly if you are judging the overall number of crimes a criminal does in their lifetime you tend to find more crime overall in the places that hand out longer sentences essentially that the criminal does more crime over a longer period of time despite the longer time in jail, that places like Florida have 40 and 50 year olds still offending like 30 year olds due to the lack of rehabilitation
The general consensus seems to be that there was a sharp decline in violent gun crime in the years following it's implementation, but there is apprehension to solely attribute it to 10-20-Life as opposed to a multitude of other anti-crime initiatives.
How was the study done? The best way to do those types of studies is state by state data when multiple states make similar changes but at different times.
Browsing through this thread it appears that there are 2 sides, one wants violent criminals locked up for longer sentences (which I agree with), and the other points out that in doing so we make the offender more violent due to our current prison system (which I also agree with). So it seems the main thing we should focus on in a criminal justice reform is to completely overhaul our prisons. Norway did this and now their recidivism rate is less than half of Canada's, their prisons look more like dormitories than any of our prisons
My favorite point in that video is the woman pointing out that taking people away from their families and communities is the punishment, not the prison. Their living quarters should be as normal as possible so that they can learn to function as a normal human being, not simply learning to survive inside. Put that system in place and then start looking at longer sentencing guidelines for repeat violent offenders
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The problem is this is incredibly expensive, frankly locking people up is crap holes is very expensive, any improvement on that comes at increasingly higher costs, well worth it in my opinion but an easy target for generally right wing politics, you will get a raft of headlines asking why our pensioners live in poverty while murderers and rapists live in the lap of luxury and the like
It's such an apples to oranges comparison. America is in such shambles, how could they ever be in a position to build resorts for criminals to have extended vacations when there's already such a housing crisis?
