Most of us want to live in a society without rape, murder, theft, vandalism and other forms of victimization and violent crime. Why don’t we do more to stop the violence and victimization? A lack of funding may explain a large part of it.
I suggest the following to increase funding for the prevention of victimization and violent crime:
1. Legalize drugs and other victimless crimes! The United States spends over $50 billion per year on the war on drugs. This accounts for millions of expensive arrests of non-violent druggies. It accounts for hundreds of thousands of inmates, who it takes a lot of money to jail–let alone the limited space in the overcrowded jails that would be better used for victimizers and violent criminals. Legalizing drugs would not only save the money spent chasing down, arresting, trying, and jailing non-violent druggies, but it would also allow us to heavily tax drugs. We could use the hundreds of billions of dollars gained from taxing drugs per year to prevent victimization and violent crime.
2. Make convicts pay the bill! Why do we make tax-payers pay for all of the costs associated with fighting crime? I suggest we make the convicts pay for the costs associated with the crime they have been convicted of committing. A court of law has determined that there is sufficient proof that they are guilty. That makes them liable. After being convicted of a crime, let’s give the convict a bill for all the costs of their crime, including the costs of investigating the crime, arresting the convict, trying the convict, jailing the convict and rehabilitating the convict. Seize all the convicts assets to pay the bill, and garnish his future wages until it has been paid.
3. End the war! The occupation in Iraq is an extremely expensive endeavor. It’s making the U.S. people less safe by over-stretching the military and increasing anti-Americanism. Estimates say the war will end up costing over $1 trillion. That’s a lot of money! That’s a lot of money that could be put towards actually protecting U.S. people. That’s a lot of money that could be put towards preventing murder, rape, theft, and other forms of victimization and violent crime.
What do you think? What ways do you suggest we fund security?
Monday, November 12th 2007 at 3:27 pm
I very much agree with the first and third points (especially the third).
Not so keen on the second. I think we in the US don’t have a clear and uniform idea on what we want incarceration to achieve. Punishment, yes. But sooner or later the VAST majority of convicts have done their time and are freed. Then what? We need better ways of re-absorbing ex-cons as productive members of society.
And I really don’t trust the fairness of the current criminal system to carry out long-term financial sanctions. Who will be affected most? The poor and minorities, not the Enron types who have better legal resources to fight.
Sunday, November 11th 2007 at 9:24 pm
Item 1 has been successfully initiated in Europe and Mexico. US manufacturing was sold out to a service economy, and the war on drugs.
It’s all about the money. Criminality is a cross market sector. It is a bogus money churn, but a massive churn of employment in non-productive “services”.
Item 2 is a bad idea. Most criminals could do much better in life with education and mentoring. The “sentence” was served by incarceration. The punitive sentence suggested is counter-productive.
Also, upon serving a sentence a convict should have all Rights. Otherwise they are ostracized. Fact – No society has survived where more than 20% of the male population were felons, or, where the citizenry saw the justice system as unjust.
Item 3 was addressed by Sen. Gordon Smith, R-OR succinctly – “The War in Iraq is illegal”. It’s not about fixing blame – it’s about fixing the problem. In a word, Constitutionality.
This war would not exist if the majority of members of Congress had not betrayed us by not even reading legislation (“Acts”). All it takes is for them to uphold the Constitution. They each took an Oath of Office to do so, and to not do so by action or inaction, is by definition in the US Code of Law, treason.
Also, the Constitution mandates to each Citizen the responsibility to see to it that the Government is operated Constitutionally. That why, the 2nd Amendment – read the Federalist Papers (notes of the meetings of Congress to draft a Constitution by our Founding Fathers).
Overall, the issue is a common moral standard. The Founding Fathers had a common moral standard – The Ten Commandments, and the Common Law. That was intentionally removed from education and has had a deleterious effect.
Good talking points – Aristocutionor