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sholling
Premium Member
join:2002-02-13
Hemet, CA

1 edit

sholling

Premium Member

San Fransisco To Make Felons A Protected Class

Pretty typical San Fransisco but you'll be shocked to hear that I sympathize with what they're trying to accomplish even if I disagree with the means. An ex-convict has little chance of making it legally in society because they have little chance of finding a job much better than dishwasher or ditch digger. That includes many that committed victimless and non-violent crimes. That said the correct approach is to allow complete expungement at the state level (CA has partial expungement) including sealing all records for a first offender once the sentence is complete, and 5 or 10 years after the sentence is complete for two time losers - the only exception should be for child molesters and forceable rape - those should be life without parole anyway. We've made it impossible to find good jobs, build a lawful career and reintegrate into society and then we scratch our heads and wonder why they return to crime. In my opinion it would drop long-term recidivism by at least half.

Read more: »www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/a ··· S1JYbJfG
quote:
Ex-convicts may soon become a "protected class" in San Francisco - joining African Americans, Latinos, gays, transgender people, pregnant women and the disabled.

A proposal being circulated at City Hall would make it illegal for landlords and employers to discriminate against applicants solely because they were "previously incarcerated."

dogma
XYZ
Premium Member
join:2002-08-15
Boulder City, NV

dogma

Premium Member

You're a closet lib after all!

Seriously, I have hired 13 ex-convicts in the past. The primary issue from my POV/experience isn't the negative cachet of prison time...it's that they were simply warehoused without much of any positive education/re-education.

The majority are drug offenses (use/sale/both). Most of these men & women wanted to work and get off their chemical addictions (which many were still on as it was easier to access drugs in prison than the outside), but there was no real mechanism in place. (The Betty Ford center ain't cheap).

Moreover, when the State lets a prisoner out without any skills/support environment, it only transfers the taxpayer burden from the prison budget to the welfare budget.

Stupid is as stupid does.

I agree with the spirit of the effort, but like the poor marksman politicos are, they never seem to hit the heart of the problem:

Decriminalize drugs. That alone would save the State $5 - $7 BILLION/Year

It costs $44,563 to incarcerate a prisoner for a year
in California — nearly the same price as a year at
Harvard University with room and board.

How many just-convicted drug-related criminals would sign up for a program that would pay them $25,000/year...train them (on-the-job training) in a vocation or trade for 3 years, get them off of drugs, AND condition them to be useful citizens?

This is exactly what the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) did (sans the drug thing) shortly after the depression with great success. If anyone has ever visited a National Park, the CCC's work is evident even today. What the CCC accomplished was absolutely amazing: »en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ci ··· on_Corps
It built real men out of broken men.

Unfortunately, today we have prisons as our version of the CCC.

sholling
Premium Member
join:2002-02-13
Hemet, CA

1 edit

sholling

Premium Member

I'm a classical liberal (AKA small-L libertarian). Not to be confused with a Progressive.

Almost all states offer complete expungement as long as the full sentence has been completed, no additional crimes have been committed, and there are no aggravating circumstances. Four(?) states including California offer partial expungement - the record remains as a dismissal instead of a conviction but can be used as a strike in a three strikes case. The federal government has no way of expunging federal crimes and does not recognize partial expungement (currently undergoing litigation). Barny Frank and I are on the same page with his efforts to right this wrong by setting up a federal expungement program. Yup Barny and I agree about something, few things really - like marijuana legalization. Getting back on topic the state already has a method of accomplishing most what SF is trying to accomplish. The state just needs to make a switch to complete expungement including sealing records. FWIW this has been a fairly hot topic on 2nd Amendment boards.

They also need to eliminate all laws against victimless "crimes". That alone would save the state a fortune and keep the prison system from taking tens of thousands of stupid kids and making them into hardened and dangerous animals.

On the other hand I am a fan of the 3-strikes law (1-strike for child molesters, murderers and forcible rapists). If you've screwed up after two do-overs you'll screw up 4-5-10-20 more times and are completely beyond any hope of straightening out your life.

BTW as mush as I rail against basket weaving classes I very much approve of serious career training and apprenticeship courses at community colleges.

toby
Troy Mcclure
join:2001-11-13
Seattle, WA

toby to dogma

Member

to dogma
said by dogma:

It costs $44,563 to incarcerate a prisoner for a year
in California — nearly the same price as a year at
Harvard University with room and board.

That is why I don't think prisons should exist, they serve no good purpose.

Violent criminals should be executed, especially repeat offenders.
The rest of the criminals should have to attend programs where they learn a skill. It'll be cheaper all around, and people will be safer and happier.
If the non-violent criminals keep re-offending or mess up repeatedly, they too are executed.

There is no reason to waste that much money on keeping people in prison. There are people that can't afford health care and have never committed a crime, yet the prisoners today have everything for free.

dogma
XYZ
Premium Member
join:2002-08-15
Boulder City, NV

1 edit

dogma

Premium Member

Then you may like;
The penalty for theft
-In accordance with the Holy Qur'an and several hadith, theft is punished by imprisonment or amputation of hands or feet, depending on the number of times it was committed.

A convicted rapist, murderer, kidnapper, or drug smuggler gets their head chopped off in public. Adulterers are stoned to death. Women and men who commit fornication are whipped 100 times in public since virginity is important for both men and women until marriage in Islam.

In Islamic countries that practice strict Shariah Law, there is virtually zero crime of any sort...and almost zero out of wedlock mothers.

The US incarcerates 743 people per 100,000...the U.S. is home to 5% of the global population but 25% of its prisoners. Contrast that to Pakistan where it's 58 per 100,000.

So in an info-vacuum, it would seem we should adopt strict Islamic punishment methods like you effectively suggest right?

Not so fast.

Back to our insane drug laws that make a $ Trillion for-profit industry (not to mention destroy more lives) out of the prison system, the law enforcement system, the court system, and of course their marketing arm, the broadcast media.

What country has the most liberal drug laws in the world?
NO! It's not the Netherlands (Holland).
It's Portugal...which in 2001 became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.

That was 10 years ago.

So, did Portugal become some Sodom & Gomorrah of drugs? Have all the children gone bat-shit crazy in a hallucinogenic induced orgy?
said by The CATO Institute :
The Cato Institute finds that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized (just 5 years), illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.

Between 2001 and 2006 in Portugal, rates of lifetime use of any illegal drug among seventh through ninth graders fell from 14.1% to 10.6%; drug use in older teens also declined. Lifetime heroin use among 16-to-18-year-olds fell from 2.5% to 1.8% (although there was a slight increase in marijuana use in that age group). New HIV infections in drug users fell by 17% between 1999 and 2003, and deaths related to heroin and similar drugs were cut by more than half.
Ten years ago, Portugal's incarceration rate was about 150 per 100,000, today it's 109 per 100,000. A 33% reduction in just 10 years.

You will hear our douche-bag media talk about Shariah Law, but under no circumstances will you hear them talk about the successes of Portugal's drug legalization.