Americans are INSANE about how much the want criminals punished, in CA a guy got a life sentence for stealing a pizza when we tried to have a ‘‘three strikes your out’’ law that automatically gave life sentences at any third conviction which is fucking crazy in a state with tack on laws to the point you can get convicted of 10+ crimes on almost every single infraction, if you commit a felony with a pen or pencil in your pocket, that’s possession of a lethal weapon! it’s absurd. it’s still on the books the three strikes law, but it’s unenforceable because apparently having 60% of your population in prison for life is not a great plan for a civilization.
it’s really easy to make 60% of your population commit a felony. you just continue to pass laws with the assumption that draconian punishments deter crime. and you keep making lesser and lesser crimes felonies, and punishments harsher, and you can have judges who just want to funnel people into prison to fund their own personal investments. it also helps to have corrupt cops that want to make those felony collars to get promotions and raises. cops literally train each other to escalate things to felonies or find felony charges where clearly none should exist like calling a box cutter a ‘gravity knife’ and charging a felony and if that person isn’t hiring a quality lawyer the public defender with 600 cases says ‘you have 15 min of my time for this case, I glanced at it, I recommend you take a plea deal, our time is up, what’s your decision?’
Hey, you’re spot on with your example. I got arrested for a pocket knife which the officer managed to forcefully fling open and the charge was possession of a weapon in the 4th degree (“gravity knife”), a class A misdemeanor. I got a public defender, who got me a plea deal of 30 hours community service and not getting arrested for a year to get the case dismissed without a conviction. They also tried to claim I drove drunk, but alas I blew a 0.0000 on their breathalyzer, so that was a fail.
That stuck out to me too. Who knew AK-47 and Sour Zzzkittles carried more prison time than enriched Uranium. To be fair, they’ll include a bunch of other charges for both scenarios.
There are people facing weed sentences with harsher time than developing rogue nuclear weapons
Americans are INSANE about how much the want criminals punished, in CA a guy got a life sentence for stealing a pizza when we tried to have a ‘‘three strikes your out’’ law that automatically gave life sentences at any third conviction which is fucking crazy in a state with tack on laws to the point you can get convicted of 10+ crimes on almost every single infraction, if you commit a felony with a pen or pencil in your pocket, that’s possession of a lethal weapon! it’s absurd. it’s still on the books the three strikes law, but it’s unenforceable because apparently having 60% of your population in prison for life is not a great plan for a civilization.
America has Private Prisons + Slavery is literally legal in the US for those in Prison.
As usual, it’s performative moralism hiding the real reason: $$$.
Performative moralism is a neat term to describe that part of the equation.
got to have stable source of slave labour
Murica!
Automatic life sentence is too much, maybe we can agree on an automatic 15 year sentence?
Also, 60% of the population committing felonies is insanity.
it’s really easy to make 60% of your population commit a felony. you just continue to pass laws with the assumption that draconian punishments deter crime. and you keep making lesser and lesser crimes felonies, and punishments harsher, and you can have judges who just want to funnel people into prison to fund their own personal investments. it also helps to have corrupt cops that want to make those felony collars to get promotions and raises. cops literally train each other to escalate things to felonies or find felony charges where clearly none should exist like calling a box cutter a ‘gravity knife’ and charging a felony and if that person isn’t hiring a quality lawyer the public defender with 600 cases says ‘you have 15 min of my time for this case, I glanced at it, I recommend you take a plea deal, our time is up, what’s your decision?’
Hey, you’re spot on with your example. I got arrested for a pocket knife which the officer managed to forcefully fling open and the charge was possession of a weapon in the 4th degree (“gravity knife”), a class A misdemeanor. I got a public defender, who got me a plea deal of 30 hours community service and not getting arrested for a year to get the case dismissed without a conviction. They also tried to claim I drove drunk, but alas I blew a 0.0000 on their breathalyzer, so that was a fail.
That stuck out to me too. Who knew AK-47 and Sour Zzzkittles carried more prison time than enriched Uranium. To be fair, they’ll include a bunch of other charges for both scenarios.
Imagine getting thrown into the oubliette for growing Girl Scout Cookies next to the roses.
Well, they were probably trying to develop that weed into rogue nuclear weapons.
Wouldn’t work. You’ll get blasted high, but what the missing is the mushroom
Yeah that’s another drug.