This is the first I've heard of theirs post-John Arch.

The Apparition blew my dick off the first time I heard it. Had to have it surgically reconstucted, months of rehabilitation, PTSD...worth it.

@Jerykk

I'll address by paragraph.

(1)

Wait, so I'm confused. Not enough research on my claim yet the death penalty apparently offers guaranteed results despite evidence to the contrary that I suggested?

Firstly I think you might be trying to make a bit of a straw man. I'm not saying that there should be no penalty. Some penalty obviously discourages some crime. But the argument is more over whether harsher sentences and mandatory minimums as this video discusses are helping, which I would argue they are not for the reasons outlined previously.

As for evidence of rehabilitation reducing recidivism, take for example:

http://ijo.sagepub.com/content/12/1/9.refs (see PDF)

Page 1
Finland, Norway and Sweden all have ~50-70 locked up per 100K, among the lowest. US has 716.

Page 2-3
Norway recidivism - 20%
US recidivism - 52%

I await your evidence to the contrary.

(2)

I'm talking per capita. Per capita the US certainly does have the highest among first world countries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate#By_country

Sort by per capita and find me a developed country higher than the US please.

Russia is not a first-world country (that's actually a Cold War term, more correctly not a a developed country). I'm Russian, I assure you, I would know

Russia's GDP/capita is $14K USD, versus the US's $52K. Not even a close comparison.

(3)

But do criminals proportionalise justice? Like I asked, do you think anything but a small minority (likely white collar criminals) accurately know the likely sentence of a crime before they commit it? If they don't what's the purpose of making them more severe?

Nobody is proposing there be no penalty. Even Scandanavian prisons are a penalty. The question is, does the threat of 30 over 15 years locked up (should they even be able to decipher legal code to know this) actually make a difference? I would argue not, hence the argument for harsher sentences is illogical.

People are generally good at gauging the likelihood of being caught (ie your pirating example) but that's not what I was talking about (the scale of punishment being a deterrent).

(4)

I don't think what you're proposing is practical or logical. No society is going to accept the death penalty as a punishment for speeding. It's an irrelevant argument to make.

Again, why the need for elaborate ideas never before attempted? Why not just adopt a model that has already worked, such as the Scandinavian one? It seems like you're trying to wrap your mind around a solution that fits your preconceived notion of incentives and no government assistance like I suggested in my first post.

(5)

Venezuela is a developing country. Crime is largely a result of economic mismanagement by Chavez leading to joblessness and civil unrest.

There are plenty of countries with which to compare the US with. Obvious choices would be Australia or the UK. Anglo-Saxon countries, similar culture, comparative income/capita. Or really any European country. Your comparison would suggest tp me you're trying to stretch your argument to fit.

How do you define "small" when it comes to narcotics? If I have a pound of cocaine, is that small? What about meth? PCP? LSD? Heroin? Narcotics are banned because they are harmful. Not just to yourself but to others. They are also addictive. Do you really think a junkie will be satiated by the small portions allowed by your proposed law? Nope. They'll always be looking for more and will do anything to get it. That's why drug-dealing is such a profitable business. A better solution is execution. If you're convicted of possession or abuse (no trial necessary if there's irrefutable evidence), you're dead. No further expenses beyond the execution (via cow puncher or some other cost-effective means) and body disposal (incineration seems most efficient). Zero chance of relapse.

As for money, sure, we could cut military funding. That would give us some money, though most of it would go towards rehabilitating criminals and paying off our numerous debts. We could increase taxes on the rich, even though they already pay the majority of taxes in the country. We could increase taxes for everyone, which we would inevitably need to do if we want top-quality education and healthcare for everyone.

As to your other points, we already have free healthcare. Well, relatively free in the form of Obamacare. We already have free education too. Public schools are free and available in almost every city. Said schools already offer sex education as well. The issue isn't really about education. Any dunce knows that having unprotected sex will result in babies. The problem is apathy. Some people just don't care. They don't think in the long-term. They don't plan ahead. They don't consider the long-term repercussions of their actions. All they care about is the here and now. It's not hard to find a condom. It's much harder to convince an apathetic and irresponsible person to actually wear it. You can tell them about the risks but if they don't think the condom is comfortable or convenient, they won't wear it. On the other hand, put a gun to their head and they'll definitely wear it.

Good points, Redsky.

However, there hasn't been nearly enough research on the effects of rehabilitation to claim that it consistently reduces recidivism. You mention Scandinavian countries in particular. How many of those rehabilitated prisoners were guilty of violent crimes? If you want to reduce recidivism, the death penalty will offer guaranteed results.

As for the U.S.'s murder rates, they aren't the highest among first-world countries. Higher than European countries, sure, but Europe is tiny. Russia is more comparable to the size of the U.S. and it has almost double the murder rate. China claims to have a 1.0 but I'd question the reliability of any data provided by that government.

I'm also pretty sure that most criminals recognize the severity of their crimes. If they aren't insane, they'll know that jaywalking will result in a far lesser penalty than murder. What it comes down to is risk versus reward. If breaking the law is the most convenient way of getting what they want and the likelihood of them getting caught is low, they'll break the law. That's rational behavior. It's the reason why people people slow down when they see a cop on the freeway instead of speeding like they would normally do. It's the reason why people won't hesitate to download a pirated movie but would think twice before trying to steal a movie from Best Buy. If someone wants to rob a liquor store and they see a cop inside, they will most likely not rob that particular liquor store. Not all criminals are psychotic murderers. On the contrary, most criminals are perfectly sane and break the law on a regular basis. They just make sure that the risks are low enough so they don't get caught.

Severe penalties mean nothing if they aren't enforced and increasing surveillance increases the likelihood of enforcement. Increasing surveillance wouldn't be cheap but then, rehabilitating criminals isn't cheap either. Getting rid of the prison system entirely and replacing it with efficient executions (nothing overly elaborate like lethal injections) would cut costs dramatically and allow for greatly expanded surveillance and enforcement, in addition to dramatically increasing the risk for any given crime. If the penalty for speeding was death and there were more cops patrolling the roads and freeways, I guarantee 99.9% of drivers would stop speeding. There's no hard data for this, of course, but that's because no country has ever attempted it.

Venezuela currently has over ten times the murder rate of the U.S. It was the first country in the world to abolish the death penalty. Now, the country is riddled with corruption. Laws have no meaning because they are not enforced so criminals do whatever they want without fear of reprisal.

@Jerykk

You seem to subscribe to the idea of government spending being fixed and a zero sum game. It's not. If a prison rehabilitation program prevents a former criminal from re-offending and he finds gainful employment, then not only does the country derive potentially lost tax revenue but they avoid the cost of future incarceration. There's a good chance that's a net positive, even though there's initial money put down.

Your mentality fits a uniquely American approach to social problems that many in the rest of the developed world (Europe, Australia, Japan) would find strange, possibly even pathological. Being that, government spending should be kept to a minimum, and every policy should be based on market incentives (in this case threats), even in cases where taking a different approach would produce a better result. Now I studied economics and would be one of the first to say that this is clearly a better approach in many situations. But not all cases.

Your statement here is a good example:

"History has proven that fear is a very effective deterrent. Convince people that there are significant consequences for their actions and they'll think twice before doing something stupid.'

This is intuition, but your intuition is wrong. Firstly codified law does little 'convincing'. How many offenders do you think know the likely sentence of their crime before they are caught? If you agree then how likely do you think say a doubling of the prison term for shop-lifting going to have any effect?

There's no reason to test this because the data exists already when comparing pre and post juvenile offenders. The potential punishment leaps but the risk of re-offending barely changes.

As for more serious crimes, if the graveness of the death penalty is such a strong deterrent, then why does the US lead the charts among developed countries for murder and incarceration rates despite being one of the few that have it? Not to mention, the ones that do, Singapore and Japan barely ever use it.

Frankly, the whole notion that you can rationally deal with a person who is committing a crime (who is fundamentally acting irrational in committing the crime in the first place) is ludicrous.

Let's be serious. Your idea of punishment being a deterrent sounds nice but is not supported by any actual real world data. Meanwhile Scandinavian countries which do focus on rehabilitation have seen substantial drops in recidivism. There's the 'trust me it will work this time' and there's the 'supported by actual evidence' approach.

You should read my complete post before posting reactionary statements. I never said current prison conditions are ideal. I said prison isn't working as a deterrent to criminals. As I said before, there are three potential ways of fixing that: make the punishment more severe, increase surveillance and enforcement or make prison safer and more comfortable in an attempt to rehabilitate criminals. The first two options are practically guaranteed to produce results. People litter, jaywalk, pirate and break traffic laws all the time because they know they can get away with it and even if they get caught, the punishment will be relatively minor. Conversely, it's much harder to get away with major crimes and the punishments are far more severe, which is why major crimes are committed far less often than minor ones. History has proven that fear is a very effective deterrent. Convince people that there are significant consequences for their actions and they'll think twice before doing something stupid.

Rehabilitation is less proven. If prison were comfortable, safe and enlightening, it could reduce crime rates as criminals are taught the error of their ways and spread their new-found wisdom amongst other potential criminals. Or it could increase crime rates as prisons become a refuge where the desperate get free food, shelter, healthcare and other conveniences.

The ideal solution would be to ensure that only qualified parents are allowed to reproduce. The majority of criminals are the result of poor upbringings, with negligent, ignorant and/or abusive parents unwilling or unable to train their children to become productive members of society. In an ideal world, there would actually be prerequisites to parenthood. Aspiring parents would need to meet certain criteria like minimum income, education and a clean record. If these requirements were somehow enforceable, crime rates would drop drastically.

What's really terrifying is how often people make silly Nazi analogies on the internet.

Our prison system is broken but not because of how it treats prisoners. It's broken because it's not acting as an effective deterrent. The whole point of prison (or any other punishment) is to deter people from committing crimes. Our current prison system isn't accomplishing that.

If we replaced prison with immediate execution (no more sitting on death row for years), crime rates would probably go down. If we increased surveillance and enforcement, crime rates would probably go down. If we made prison nicer and tried to rehabilitate instead of punish criminals, would crime rates go down? Good question. If I knew that prison would be a safe and comfortable experience, I'd definitely be more inclined to break the law. If my current living conditions were bad enough, I might even be inclined to break the law just to gain the benefits of such a prison. Free food, free shelter, free healthcare. Not a bad deal if you don't have to worry about being beaten, raped or killed. I'd love to see what would happen if all the prisons in the U.S. were as posh as the Halden Prison in Norway.

I think Brand is in general, a reasonably funny guy who doesn't have a clue about politics, and should shut the fuck up about hand-wavy, airy-fairy notions of revolution without anything solid to back them up. I disagree with @Sagemind. Revolution is meaningless without a goal. That's why occupy failed (and if you think it didn't fail, please enlighten me as to what they actually achieved).

Destruction can be a wonderful catalyst for change. You can't make an omelette, etc. But if you don't actually make an omelette, all you're left with it is raw eggs and shell.

Now, all that said, Brand is completely in the right here. He actually knows what he's talking about when it comes to drugs and in particular rehabilitation from them. Current drug policy is an abject failure by every metric imaginable.

And Snow should know better. As hard as it is for those of you accustomed to the likes of Fox and MSNBC, he's actually a respected journalist.

I guess I am having difficulty squaring two of the things you've mentioned. If a devout Muslim barber can refuse to serve women and this is not seen as discrimination why can't a devout Christian refuse to participate in a gay wedding and get the same respect from you?

As to the idea that religious rights, or rights of conscience are subservient to rights of physical attributes or genetic predisposition I need more convincing. The Civil Rights Act doesn't favor one over the other. Religion ranks as an equal with race, color, sex and national origin. How are physical rights "more protected?"

An instance comes to mind where someone's religious rights are actually weighed as more important that your physical rights. Members of the Native American Church may legally use peyote. You and I will be arrested.

I see the argument of conscience vs. genetics upside down from where you've landed. So does the State of Oregon. Did you know, that if there is no reconciliation between the bakery and the State then State will move to 'rehabilitate?' Because something must be defective in the bakery owner's mind they need to be 'rehabilitated.' That is chilling. The very idea that your thoughts could be somehow suspect indicates that the State has concluded that thoughts are incredibly important. Because thoughts lead to behavior. Not only do they not want you behaving in a certain manner, they don't even want you thinking it. I reference 1984 and Animal Farm.

I am not sure that people know what they are asking for when they back this kind of intrusion. It might seem right to them at this moment, but when their counterparts are are in charge (because the pendulum swings), it makes one wonder what thoughts will be in the dock then. How will that law be used to root out contrary thinking then? I want to be free to think what I want to think. I want the privilege of being right and the privilege of being wrong. I also want you to have that privilege, as well.

As I have mentioned before, I think these laws are blunt. While I agree that people should not be discriminated against and I practice that in my own life, what is to stop the members of Westboro Baptist Church from showing up at a bakery run by gays and demand they cater an anti-gay event? How can they refuse since they already cater other events? We have opened the proverbial can of worms

Hi. 5 minutes of research and I found out that this guy is actually running an animal rehabilitation center in Africa for all types of wounded animals that he releases back into the wild. Including Honey Badgers.

How bout we don't just jump on the "He's a monster for keeping animals in cages" bandwagon without knowing the full story?

Private security can not fix social problems.

First you fix poverty, then crime.

Other way around, there is only one way: forever sentences, "no rehabilitation only penalty" is the goal. Trying to sweep "undesirables" away, clean and neatly tucked away in private prisons. It's very neat way of "fixing" the leak by pusnihing one part of your own populace on different rules. What do you think will happen once it goes for a generation? Children are taught from ground-up to not trust the government, the police and the rest of the society that's want to basically kill them but are too afraid so it's dealt with another route: destroying any chance of social mobility by promoting inequality, making tougher laws for crimes that are mostly only happening on lowest economic classes, giving out sentences for the same crimes differently depending how those background factors are that the people themselves can't help. That is an effective solution, it's not final but in these quarterly run world, nothings forever but instead "make profit now".

And then after all that claiming "it's the land of the free", "pursuit of happiness" etc. Everything is very logical under those circumstances. If you are poor, it's your own fault. That is the message blasted all over. Even when shown the overwhelming evidence how equality promotes happiness, social mobility, prevents poverty, it seems that every US citizen, poor or rich thinks otherwise.

The inequality in USA means POWER. It means "i'm better than you". The whole country is sick in that attitude (Sorry, US citizens, i wouldn't say all this if i didn't lover you and your country). You are never good if you're as good as the next person.

Countries that do promote equality, the attitude is "this is enough", i don't need to be better than my neighbor to feel good. It doesn't mean they are lazy or unambitious, it means that boasting with wealth is considered vulgar, idiotic, uncivilized. You can have a guy earning triple right next to you and you can't really see the difference.

This does not fit US frame of mind where money is the only way to happiness and you never can have enough. If you have it, you want to shove it in everyones face.

If it had been someone less skilled, it would have been a serious injury. the officer is certainly justified and correct saying the dog should be taken in. Furthermore, the owners should be prosecuted because no dog acts that violently on their own, no matter the breed.

That dog can be rehabilitated. The owners . . . not so sure.

I'd take the suspension on principle, and drive without a license for a year on the same principle.

Here's the real: More fatal accidents occur in the U.S. now due primarily to distracted drivers and speeding. I would appreciate a scale of punishment befitting the crime committed based on the frequency and resulting loss-i.e., a distracted motorist causing an accident gets a harder hand-slap for using a cell phone than he/she would for drinking 3 shots of bourbon. and goin' to the store for a six-pack after.

A sobriety test should be quick and painless:
Smell breath-Been drinking
initiate breathalyzer-legally drunk

License suspended for a year, and if caught driving under suspension, complete loss of driving privileges for 2 years.
Caught under suspension after 2 years suspension, 5 years suspension and 180 days of supervised, community service on a dirty state highway during the middle of the summer, rounding-up garbage and carcass.

If a drunk under suspension kills or injures anyone while driving, 5 years on a chain gang whose job it is to walk the entire length of State highway 8-hours-a-day for the duration of their sentences, picking up trash and planting marijuana and indigenous flowering perennials.

Make a spectacle of a repeated drunk offender if there is no rehabilitating him. More so with text-drivers, that shits worse than crack and invariably more dangerous than drunks, who are primarily on the roadways when most peeps are ASLEEEEEP!

Your patronizing attitude denotes you lack of understanding of the very basic concept of justice, and the need for justice. Judicial punishment may not eradicate crime, but it exists to act, either, as a deterrent, or the vengeance of society. Either way, the sentence must be seen as punishment. If is not - which is increasingly the case - then why have laws at all? I suggest you spend more of your time thinking of the innocent victims of crime, rather than the welfare, comfort, and rehabilitation of those who perpetrate it. I'm done.

I have the same information as you, so there are limits!

Approximately one third (32.4% in 2012) of Norway's prisoners are foreigners, so it is statistically possible to end up with a 20% rate consisting of a 50% rate among foreigners and 5% among locals, I consider it both a little unlikely, and hardly a damning indictment of the system even if that is the case.

The english language section of the Norwegian Correctional Services web site does mention the challenges they face in trying to rehabilitate foreign prisoners:

This presents a number of challenges for the staff as to language, religion and culture. In addition, a part of this category consists of more or less professional criminal offenders with a certain degree of organization who may be responsible for security problems, criminal activity in or from prison and recruitment of young offenders. Visiting facilities and rehabilitation measures are much harder or impossible to create for offenders who will be deported to their home country after serving their sentence.