@Jerykk
i cant make heads nor tails what you are trying to convey.
are you making an argument for harsher prisons?
or an assertion that if they were less harsh people would WANT to go to prison?
that recidivism is irrelevant so we should just execute prisoners?

i agree that poverty leads to desperation which can lead to criminal activity.there is plenty of statistics to back that up,though interestingly those numbers are dropping in regards to poverty=crime.

as for your deterrence argument.
yeah..no.the numbers obviously dont add up.
right now there are more american citizens incarcerated than the soviet gulags of the 80's.in fact,america incarcerates more citizens per capita than any other nation in the world.

americas prison population=2.4 million..and rising.

which leads me to my next point.
what is the purpose of prison?
well,it should be to remove those violent elements from society and for the offenders who are non-violent a way to pay a debt to the society they betrayed (fill in the offense here ____).

when their time has been served (paid) then they are free to rejoin society and reintegrate themselves back into society.

but what if that system of punishment strips you of all dignity and humanity?treats you like an abandoned dog at the local animal shelter?physically beaten and spiritually shattered,just HOW to you rejoin normal society?

what then?
do you blame the inmate who was thrown into a inhumane system?or maybe..juuuuust maybe..it may be the SYSTEM which is the blame.

let us look at some stats shall we?
the private prison industry is the 9th largest lobbiest in the country.who lobby for stricter sentencing,zero tolerance and mandatory jail time.a new trend in this area is now regarding teens AND pre-teens.they also make contracts with the local government to have a certain % occupancy.(meaning that even if those beds are not filled,the company STILL gets paid).

and lets not forget those kick backs to the local judges.already 25 judges this year got caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

the idea that prison is a deterrence has been debunked.
there are over 5000 federal laws NOT including state and local.so at any given time,in any given day,YOU have perpetrated a federal crime.

the idea the prison is for rehabilitation is utter bullshit,another liberal feel-good "look at the good we are doing" trope.

prison is a business.
based on the mafia principle.
it is about making the poor a commodity and exploiting their lack of resources to fight back.
recidivism?
thats just repeat customers.american prisons care zippo about recidivism.

again i reference the milgram experiment.
treat people like animals and they will soon behave like animals.
treat them with humanity and dignity and the outcome is far more positive for a society as a whole..we ALL benefit.

but the private prisons dont want that..it means less profit for them.

the norden is doing it right and the results are impressive.

In the past tense, I'd agree but not today. For starters, First Nation people have 100% full Canadian citizenship and the only distinctions made based on a persons treaty status compared to a non-treaty neighbour in any Canadian city is additional rights and benefits that are potentially available to the treaty person. That is to say, First Nations people have all the full rights of everyone else in Canada, and in some situations bonuses as well.

That said, living conditions on Native Reserves in Canada are abysmal. The municipality I live in is just vastly better off than the nearby native reserves. Better access to education, policing, fire protection and health care. If that weren't bad enough, average family incomes in my municipality more than double those of neighbouring native reserve communities.

That abysmal divide in conditions though is NOT an example of we as Canadians treating First Nations terribly. If you take per capita taxes collected from community and take away per capita government dollars put back in, my community still gives more to the government than it gets back. The neighbouring reserves with far worse conditions receive far more money from the government than they pay it back. Systemically, the Canadian government is economically favouring the neighbouring reserves.

That begs the question why are conditions there so abysmal, and I can't claim to fully understand it myself. The components I DO know are at work though are many:
1.Reserves are NOT fit into government the same way as municipalities are. While my municipality is under Provincial jurisdiction, reserves are parallel with the provinces and fall directly under the federal government. The idea is reserves deserve greater autonomy to respect First Nations unique status and treaty obligations. In practice though, IMO they lose out. My community has education and health care handled by the province, which great benefits those kind of items. Reserves are responsible for those things on their own.
2. Reserves create segregation. The idea is again respecting treaty agreements and protecting First Nations culture from being overwhelmed and assimilated. In practice, that isolation is crippling the communities rather than helping them.
3. Historic abuses against previous generations of First Nations people at the hands of government get passed down to the next generation. This is amplified by the segregation on reserves.
4. Absence of accountability. The same transparency rules that apply to my municipality and all other municipalities nation wide do not apply on reserves. If my mayor spends millions of city dollars paying him or his family to do almost nothing it is more traceable than if a chief on a reserve did the same thing. Again, the idea is provide greater autonomy and not 'force' white beuracracy on First Nations, but the effect is to make it harder for them to hold their own leaders to account.

That's hardly a comprehensive list, but I think it highlights a lot of ways in which the current generation of Canadians running the country are very conscience of treating First Nations well and just failing at it through mutual mistakes. Any efforts to convert the failed reserve systems to municipality status will by fought the most by the very people living in the failed reserves. I wish knew how to move things forward to a better place, but the root is nothing as simple as 'treat First Nations better'.

*quality video.

If anyone would like to read more on this subject, I recommend Steven Pinkers The Better Angels of Our Nature, which also covers deaths by crime, disease, malnutrition, etc. It's one of the most information dense books I've ever read, filled with all kinds of historical anecdotes* and grisly statistics about violent deaths per capita throughout history, but it basically boils down to this:

we live in the healthiest, happiest, most peaceful time in history.

The reason it seems so bad is that we simply have more access to information about conflicts, murders, etc than we did in the past.

It's important to note that while Vulture Capitalism isn't as bad as colonialism, it's still Pretty Fucking Bad.

* fascinating fact: the reason dinner knives are generally blunt (apart from steak knives) is because it's stopped people getting into an argument over dinner and stabbing each other. It was previously commonplace for everyone to carry their own knife to dinner and eat with it.

I live in Finland, one of the top countries on guns per capita. Also one the lowest gun crimes per capita. Very strict gun control, in fact, i can't own a single casing, let alone live bullet. All have to be licensed, all counted, no guns licenses without a hunting or shooting club membership, no guns without proper training. No backyard sales, not even ammo. We have long hunting tradition. Also a long militia background, guns and the need for them are acknowledged in every part of our culture and history, armed uprisings (albeit all of them failed) against oppressive conquerors are our heroes.. And of course that one little squirmish against Soviet Union, we got thru with it with guns. But the tools they used are not worshiped, just appreciated as good tools.

Hand guns are not for hunting and as such, they are even more controlled. No ONE has ever raised an opinion that our freedoms are being oppressed by our gun laws. Overwhelming majority likes them the way they are, only wanting more control on mentally disturbed individuals. Some of course want no guns at all and very small portion wants guns for all. But majority and i mean majority as in +80% are very happy the way things are now. If i want to start hunting or shooting as a sport; i can. I can't, however, get a gun just because i want one.

Also, front doors in Finland are sturdy enough that you can't just kick it in... Something to think about, we got the best locks in the business (google abloy, 99,99% of our locks are ABLOY). In fact, and this is coming from experience, our burglars don't pick locks. They remove the whole doorframe with hydraulic jacks (or remove the whole lockbase and part of the door with tons of force.. or drill the lock)..Locksmiths here don't have lockpicks as the locks are protected very well against lockpicking, in fact abloy is one of the benchmarks on lockpickers and it still takes hours. Instead locksmiths carry a big ass cordless drill with the hardest drillbits you can find; they drill out and replace the whole cylinder and it's noisy as hell. That's what our doors are like, maybe there is some answer there; you don't feel afraid when your front door can take a bear.

In the US, we also kind of have this. Because each state gets only 2 senators, no matter their population, some places (like California) are 'under represented' in the Senate, but in the House, we are represented according to population. In that way, we 'balanced' regional power and per-capita power...and also gave smaller regional representation at a federal level (my representative votes differently from representatives in Southern California, for instance). Not perfect (obviously from current events) but it WAS one good solution when reasonable people used it.

Yes, that's kinda the point.
Per capita, BC doesn't have enough seats. We are far out weighed by Quebec and Ontario. And unfortunately, they don't care about what our opinions are. We vote differently than them in every way,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_alienation_in_Canada

Also, Ontario gets more seats than BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba Combined.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_federal_electoral_districts

That sounds dumb. Aren't there more people in the west too? Why would everyone not get the same level of power per capita? Odd.

Woops, GDP per capita.

I also found it interesting they highlighted the Ryugyong Hotel (the huge pyramid building). It's been under construction for 25 years, largely halted since the Soviet Union collapsed and the slush fund train ended. While the exterior is done according to wikipedia, the interior is not and it's always be unoccupied.

China's metropolises feed a similar misconception. They are similarly impressive that it's easy to forget that the country as a whole is still very poor. China's GDP per capita is half of Brazil, a quarter of South Korea and a tenth that of the US.

While China is obviously not as repressive as NK, the hukou dual citizenship system has a similar effect of segregation rural and urban dwellers. While rural workers may be able to move to work in the cities, they will enjoy none of the social benefits and protections that local citizens do. This has a lot to do with China's disparity of income and accretion of wealth to the large cities.

Another reason is because women are victimized by ex boyfriends and husbands and murdered at an alarmingly high rate. I read elsewhere this commercial is being aired right now because there is some voting going on with something to do about people that have restraining orders can't obtain guns. Seems fair to me.

Anyone scoffing at this commercial isn't getting the point that this is happening all the time in the U.S. We are the 14th most in gun deaths per capita in the company of mostly 2nd / 3rd world nations. That sure is something to be proud of.

You seem to think that eliminating guns will somehow eliminate mass shootings. However, there is zero correlation to the number of legal gun ownerships with the number of homicides. In fact, here are some statistics for you:

At present, a little more than half of all Americans own the sum total of about 320 million guns, 36% of which are handguns, but fewer than 100,000 of these guns are used in violent crimes. And, as it happens, where gun ownership per capita increases, violent crime is known to decrease. In other words, Caucasians tend to own more guns than African Americans, middle aged folks own more guns than young people, wealthy people own more guns than poor people, rural families own more guns than urbanites --> But the exact opposite is true for violent behavior (i.e., African Americans tend to be more violent than Caucasians, young people more violent than middle aged people, poor people more violent than wealthy people, and urbanites more violent than rural people). So gun ownership tends increase where violence is the least. This is, in large part, due to the cultural divide in the U.S. around gun ownership whereby most gun owners own guns for recreational sports (including the Southern Caucasian rural hunting culture, the likes of which aren't found in Australia or the UK or Europe, etc.); and about half of gun owners own guns for self-defense (usually as the result of living in a dangerous environment). Most of the widespread gun ownership in the U.S. predates any gun control legislation and gun ownership tends to generally rise as a response to an increase in violent crime (not the other way around).

There were about 350,000 crimes in 2009 in which a gun was present (but may not have been used), 24% of robberies, 5% of assaults, and about 66% of homicides. By contrast, guns are used as self-defense as many as 2 and a half million times every year (according to criminologist Gary Kleck at Florida State University), thereby decreasing the potential loss of life or property (i.e., those with guns are less likely to be injured in a violent crime than those who use another defensive strategy or simply comply).

Interestingly, violent crimes tend to decrease in those areas where there have been highly publicized instances of victims arming themselves or defending themselves against violent criminals. (In the UK, where guns are virtually banned, 43% of home burglaries occur when people are in the home, whereas only 9% of home burglaries in the U.S. occur when people are in the home, presumably as a result of criminals' fear of being shot by the homeowner.) In short, gun ownership reduces the likelihood of harm.

So, for example, Boston has the strictest gun control and the most school shootings. The federal ban on assault weapons from '94-'04 did not impact amount and severity of school shootings. The worst mass homicide in a school in the U.S. took place in Michigan in 1927, killing 38 children. The perpetrator used (illegal) bombs, not guns in this case.

1/3 of legal gun owners obtain their guns (a total of about 200,000 guns) privately, outside the reach of government regulation. So, it's likely that gun-related crimes will increase if the general population is unarmed.

Out of a sample of 943 felon handgun owners, 44% had obtained the gun privately, 32% stole it, 9% rented/borrowed it, and 16% bought it from a retailer. (Note retail gun sales is the only area that gun control legislation can affect, since existing laws have failed to control for illegal activity. Stricter legislation would likely therefore change the statistics of how felon handgun owners obtain the gun towards less legal, more violent ways.) Less than 3% obtain guns on the 'black market' (probably due, in part, to how many legal guns are already easily obtained).

600,000 guns are stolen every year and millions of guns circulate among criminals (outside the reach of the regulators), so the elimination of all new handgun purchases/sales, the guns would still be in the hands of the criminals (and few others).

The common gun controls have been shown to have no effect on the reduction of violent crime, however, according to the Dept. of Justice, states with right-to-carry laws have a 30% lower homicide rate and a 46% lower robbery rate. A 2003 CDC report found no conclusive evidence that gun control laws reduced gun violence. This conclusion was echoed in an exhaustive National Academy of Sciences study a year later.

General gun ownership has no net positive effect on total violence rates.

Of almost 200,000 CCP holders in Florida, only 8 were revoked as a result of a crime.

The high-water mark of mass killings in the U.S. was back in 1929, and has not increased since then. In fact, it's declined from 42 incidents in 1990 to 26 from 2000-2012. Until recently, the worst school shootings took place in the UK or Germany. The murder rate and violent crime in the U.S. is less than half of what it was in the late 1980s (the reason for which is most certainly multimodal and multifaceted).

Regarding Gun-Free Zones, many mass shooters select their venues because there are signs there explicitly banning concealed handguns (i.e., where the likelihood is higher that interference will be minimal). "With just one single exception, the attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tuscon in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns," says John Lott.

In any case, do we have any evidence to believe that the regulators (presumably the police in this instance) will be competent, honest, righteous, just, and moral enough to take away the guns from private citizens, when a study has shown that private owners are convicted of firearms violations at the same rate as police officers? How will you enforce the regulation and/or remove the guns from those who resist turning over their guns? Do the police not need guns to get those with the guns to turn over their guns? Does this then not presume that "gun control" is essentially an aim for only the government (i.e., the centralized political elite and their minions) to have guns at the exclusion of everyone else? Is the government so reliable, honest, moral, virtuous, and forward thinking as to ensure that the intentions of gun control legislation go exactly as planned?

From a sociological perspective, it's interesting to note that those in favor of gun control tend to live in relatively safe and wealthy neighborhoods where the danger posed by violent crime is far less than in those neighborhoods where gun ownership is believed to be more acceptable if not necessary. Do they really want to deprive those who are culturally acclimatized to gun-ownership, who may be less fortunate than they are, to have the means to protect themselves (e.g., women who carry guns to protect themselves from assault or rape)? Sounds more like a lack of empathy and understanding of those realities to me.

There are many generational issues worth mentioning here. For example, the rise in gun ownership coincided with the war on drugs and the war on poverty. There are also nearly 24 million combat veterans living in the U.S. and they constitute a significant proportion of the U.S.' prison population as a result of sex offenses or violent crime. Male combat veterans are four times as likely to engage violent crime as non-veteran men; and are 4.4 times more likely to have abused a spouse/partner, and 6.4 times more likely to suffer from PTSD, and 2-3 times more likely to suffer from depression, substance abuse, unemployment, divorce/separation. Vietnam veterans with PTSD tend to have higher rates of childhood abuse (26%) than Vietnam veterans without PTSD (7%). Iraq/Afghanistan vets are 75% more likely to die in car crashes. Sex crimes by active duty soldiers have tripled since 2003. In 2007, 700,000 U.S. children had at least one parent in a warzone. In a July 2010 report, child abuse in Army families was 3 times higher if a parent was deployed in combat. From 2001 - 2011, alcohol use associated with domestic violence in Army families increased by 54%, and child abuse increased by 40%. What effect do you think that's going to have, regardless of "gun controls?"
("The War Comes Home" or as William Golding, the author of Lord of the Flies said, "A spear is a stick sharpened at both ends.")

In addition, families in the U.S. continue to break down. Single parent households have a high correlation to violence among children. In 1965, 93% of all American births were to married women. Today, 41% of all births are to unmarried women (a rate that rises to 53% for women under the age of 30). By age 30, 1/3 of American women have spent time as a single mother (a rate that is halved in European countries like France, Sweden, & Germany). Less than 9% of married couples are in poverty, but more than 40% of single-parent families are in poverty. Much of child poverty would be ameliorated if parents were marrying at 1970s rates. 85% of incarcerated youth grew up without fathers.

Since the implementation of the war on drugs, there's a drug arrest in the U.S. every 19 seconds, 82% of which were for possession alone (destroying homes and families in the process). The Dept. of Justice says that illegal drug market in the U.S. is dominated by 900,000 criminally active gang members affiliated with 20,000 street gangs in more than 2,500 cities, many of which have direct ties to Mexican drug cartels in at least 230 American cities. The drug control spending, however, has grown by 69.7% over the past 9 years. The criminal justice system is so overburdened as a result that nearly four out of every ten murders, and six out of every ten rapes, and nine out of ten burglaries go unsolved (and 90% of the "solved" cases are the result of plea-bargains, resulting in non-definitive guilt). Only 8.5% of federal prisoners have committed violent offenses. 75% of Detroit's state budget can be traced back to the war on drugs.

Point being, a government program is unlikely to solve any issues with regards to guns and the whole notion of gun control legislation is severely misguided in light of all that I've pointed out above. In fact, a lot of the violence is the direct or indirect result of government programs (war on drugs and the war on poverty).

(And, you'll note, I made no mention of the recent spike in the polypharmacy medicating of a significant proportion of American children -- including most of the "school shooters" -- the combinations of which have not been studied, but have -- at least in part -- been correlated to homicidal and/or suicidal behaviors.)

Wow, you certainly don't write like it.
Because you seem to have trouble understanding him, I'll explain.
The anecdote is the singular story of an illegally armed man that actually didn't stop another man with a gun being used as 'proof' that more guns make us more safe.
The data of gun violence per capita vs percentage of gun ownership says the opposite.

And to your point about the 'gun free zones', they were created because mass murders had repeatedly already happened in these places, not before. EDIT: You seem to imply that they CAUSE mass murders...that's simply not true, they are BECAUSE of mass murders. If they enforced them, they would likely work, but you need a lot of metal detectors. I don't have the data of attacks in these places in a 'before the law vs after the law' form to verify 'gun free zones' work, but I would note any statistics about it MUST include the overall rate of increase in gun violence to have any meaning, as in 'a percentage of all shootings that happened in 'gun free zones' vs all those that happened everywhere', otherwise it's statistically completely meaningless.

1) Northern Europe is the closest comparison income wise to the US besides Japan which is culturally very different. I don't think it's unreasonable to aggregate these countries in comparing. There isn't going to be a perfect example, but Russia is very far from it.

Your argument about the death penalty is a null point because what you're proposing is impractical and thus not worth debating.

2) & 3) Greenland has a GDP per capita of 22K and is a highly idiosyncratic example given its population density. I think that's pretty much self evident. If Greenland is your best example I think I've proven my point.

I have no doubt that greater surveillance and enforcement will reduce crime rates. I'm not disputing that. Technology will naturally improve this through the likes of ever improving facial recognition. But I don't think a UK style CCTV policing system would be affordable given that the US is less densely populated in cities. As for enforcement, I don't think there's been a lack of money thrown in that direction. The issue, as this video points out, is more that if it was targeted at violent rather than drug offenders the overall benefit to society would be greater. There I would not disagree.

4)

Germany and the Netherlands are other examples where it has worked:

http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/11/14/some-european-prisons-are-shrinking-and-closing-what-can-america-learn

What you're proposing (visa vi death penalty) is something no democratic country has accepted (or will, I think). What I propose is at least accepted by to a large extent by many European developed countries. The US may shift eventually if it is recognised the current policies have been consistently failing.

5)

Yes there are many reasons why Venezuela is not a fair example. I think you make my point. Surveillance and enforcement are both necessary to reduce crime. Of course if you pick countries distinctly lacking in them then it supports your case.

But I'm arguing about which would be better given the baseline of current US policy. I think you would agree that both surveillance and enforcement are of a much higher standard in the US, with largely meritocratic and corruption free police forces. If that's the case then other developed countries, with roughly similar incomes and therefore tax revenues to afford comparable police force standards are a good reference. Venezuela is not.

@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.

@bobknight33, you have completely missed the point.

Your $1000 is irrelevant.

We're talking about people who have billions and no, they didn't get it through hard work and bettering themselves, they were born to it.

What's even worse is that at least the rich in years past got there through industry. They may have treated their workers appallingly, but at least they actually employed people. These days, you have people generating absurd amounts of wealth in the finance industry and almost no-one but those involved benefits.

There's no industry, they are no factories or design houses or supplementary economies, and what they most certainly are not is "job creators".

And the USA is the best country? By what metric?
Highest incarceration rate?
Most privately owned firearms per capita
or maybe it's worst current account balance?

Because it certainly doesn't rate highly by education, healthcare, citizen happiness, democracy, crime, corruption....


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