Saturday, September 16, 2006

criminal system does not equal a game

The US, at least in some states, has a "three strikes and you're out" policy. Not only is it demeaning to everyone to have your legal system apply ridiculous baseball related punishments, it also is completely inflexible which leads to retardedly disproportionate punishments.

For example, Santos Reid, is likely going to jail for 26 year to life because he did the written part of the driver's licence test for someone else, stole a radio from his sister's friend (in 1981) and robbed a guy at knifepoint (in 1987 - which he says is untrue). 26 years!?

I understand the underlying philosophy. Clean up the little stuff and you clean up the big stuff. Similar things were done in New York (like consistenly cleaning up graffiti and coming down hard on fare avoidance) to good effect, but putting people in jail for 26 years for taking the written part of a driver's licence test for somebody else. It is grossly inefficient and completely unhelpful.

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