[ExI] Proposition 47 has passed in California

[William Flynn Wallace]

There is a difference from jailing people for short time for minor
offenses and jailing them for long time

What I would like to see is different prisons for different offenses.
Around here (central Mississippi) gangs run the prisons.  Guards earn
minimum wage and rely on kickbacks from prisoners for extra money.  Cell
phones, drugs, you name it.  Letting a prisoner out of his cell to kill
another prisoner is common. Put a young offender in this mix and he has no
choice to be in a gang and develop a lifestyle of permanent criminal.  More
home confinement, I say.  We have the technology to find him if he escapes,
and most won't because the alternative is big prisons.  Far, far cheaper.
bill w

On Mon, Nov 10, 2014 at 2:27 PM, Mirco Romanato <painlord2k at libero.it>
wrote:

> Il 10/11/2014 21:07, BillK ha scritto:
>
> > That's the 'broken windows' / 'zero tolerance' theory of how minor
> > crimes should be dealt with.
>
> > What California has found is that jailing minor offenders for long
> > periods is costing the state millions of dollars that they would
> > rather not spend. So, as the population object to the increased taxes
> > that would be required, an alternative had to be found.
>
> There is a difference from jailing people for short time for minor
> offenses and jailing them for long time.
>
> The long time sentence is criminogen, because it make little difference
> from a serious offense and a minor one.
> If they put people in jail for ten years the third time they stole a
> pizza, there is little difference from stealing pizza or robbing a bank
> so any rational actor will go for the bank ceteris paribus.
>
> Make it a one week or one month jail time (and make them do the time)
> and this become dissuasive for the criminal and will not persuade him to
> move up the ladder of crime.
>
> If the cost of the penalty is too low, it stop to be dissuasive and
> become persuasive to continue to do so.
>
> We all agree that fining JP-Morgan for 10% of the profits they made
> breaking every laws known to  man is not dissuasive, just persuasive.
> More so if they can put the fine in the balance and claim a tax
> reduction from it.
>
> Mirco
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