MAN, TODAY I WAS GOING TO BLOG ABOUT SOMETHING NICE AND FUNNY AND CUTE-IN-A-GEEKY-WAY. INSTEAD:
“HARSHER SENTENCES FOR SERIOUS CRIME” is some retarded group on fckbk that found its way into my homepage. It is for some protest that is meant to be happening in Christchurch on some road. When people propose things like harsher sentences they don’t do it because “I just want the world to be a better place,” they do it because something shitty has happened to them and they want revenge.
When I was trying to get a visa and it was really hard and really expensive I was outraged that I had to fly ALL THE WAY TO AUCKLAND to go to the US Consulate for some stupid interview. I was outraged at the very concept of a visa. “Why the fuck does anyone care if a bunch of kids want to come to their country? This is just some retarded scam so the fucking government can fuck the people. RAGE.” Was something I probably said. But if visas didn’t exist and I found myself hard-pressed to find a job due to an influx of people either better qualified to do my job or willing to work for less you know I would be raging about how easy it is to get into New Zealand and how we should have some lengthy and irritating system of application and interview and background check in place so I can afford to buy two more $8 beers at some shitty bar in order to grind that much harder on some slutty chick.
So there on my home page on fckbk is some stupid group thing with all of these people being really earnest and heartfelt about making the world a shittier place. People that commit crimes aren’t scared of the sentence. They either don’t think they’ll get caught, don’t care about the consequences or have no idea that what they are doing is really bad at all. All harsher sentences do is scare the fuck out of everybody else because life just seems harder to live: if we fuck up we are going to be punished for longer.
The world can be a pretty shitty place at times. When this happens we shouldn’t try to make it shittier by muck-raking spineless politicians and the Ministry of Justice, we should address the issues. Sending someone to prison for a longer time or having them executed is not addressing the issues. Whatever bad things that have transpired are not going to magically right themselves.
If you read this page (I didn’t until just before I wrote this post, but whatever) you’ll see that a girl was killed by a person who was breaking the law. This is saddening BUT THIS IS NO REASON TO BE PROTESTING FOR HARSHER SENTENCES. Fuck, man I can understand why that chick deleted me as a friend but we all need to remember that when we post something with a comment function that people are going to say whatever they want and some of them aren’t going to bother reading about another little club on some little club site.
I mean, we have a comment function here that is pretty fun to use/abuse. I remember how I was filled with joy when we got our first spam messages. I don’t know why we don’t get more. I write some stupid shit sometimes.
And fuck that cunt saying “vote National.” Don’t vote right-wing because something COMPLETELY UNRELATED TO POLITICS happens to you/someone around you. Parties like National and ACT love this kind of thing. I fucking hope they don’t find out about it because you know those fuckers will strain so hard to hold this high, high in the air that their evil little feet will lift off the ground. I hope they get tangled in the power lines. Parties like these are scared of life and are going to spend all of their time convincing you that life is scary. “Pay your bills, stay inside. Watch TV. Get lots of sleep.”
I respect that chick’s right to protest and her right to put whatever she wants on the internet. I applaud that. You should too. Losing friends sucks but making them figureheads of some fucking political statement sucks even more.
YOUR VOICE,
YOUR COMMENTS,
YOUR INTERNET.
FUCK WEB 2.0
hey zach, how are you?
there seems to be a reasonable amount of empirical evidence suggesting that deterrence measures like longer sentences and more police does actually reduce crime.
http://www3.interscience.wi…
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3…
… & even if it doesn’t stop someone from assaulting somebody in the public in the first instance, it’s kinda hard for them to do it again when they’re in prison.
see you,
darian
Your first link doesn’t work, and your second one is irrelevant.
You’ve convinced me.
but it works if you go through here:
http://www3.interscience.wi…
Thankyou kind sir.
Darian:
Reading the abstract of the first article you linked to I am unsure how this is relevant, as it seems to be about arrest rates (not longer/harsher sentences). Also it was written over ten years ago, by an economist.
I browsed around the site and found an article that seems to be more applicable to the situation; it’s more recent, more relevent and is written by a criminal law expert.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3…
gaah dont VOTE GREENS!! They are luddites who want to fund rail and shipping by putting a moratorium on building roads. How the f@*k are the rest of us supposed to get around, and how on earth is the freight supposed to get from production line to shelves without a proper road network!?
VOTE GREENS
also
VOTE ALCP
Quote, Goss: "Reading the abstract of the first article you linked to I am unsure how this is relevant, as it seems to be about arrest rates (not longer/harsher sentences"
Yes, I was looking a bit broader than the narrow scope of simply longer sentences. However I just don’t think Zach’s conjecture "people that commit crimes aren’t scared of the sentence… don’t think they’ll get caught don’t care about the consequences or have no idea that what they are doing is really bad at all."
I may have misinterpreted it, but this seems to be a fatalistic approach to crime rates. ~criminals don’t care about punishment so why bother punishing~. I’ve read before that criminals are more likely to put a higher weighting on the cost of an increased likelihood of getting caught than an increase in the sentence. Which is what your article hints at, saying that longer sentences are ineffective ‘due to a variety of criminal justice realities such as low punishment rates’.
Many highly respected, (including Nobel-prize-winning) economists are involved in studying criminal law. The pretext being, ‘the willful engagement in even the most reprehensible violations of legal and moral codes does not preclude an ability to make self-serving choices, and this has been the justification for applying economic analysis to all illegal activities, from speeding and tax evasion to murder.’ (Ehrlich, 1996)
So what I’m saying is that, yes, it is not very good to start re-writing laws for emotive and vengeful reasons–BUT, to rule out that criminals respond to incentives doesn’t get you very far towards working out society’s best response to violent criminals.
Nah harsher jail timez for ppl iz total bull shit I rekon. My Uncle he got caught hiting mah cuz but then he fell over and landed on mah cuz and her arms got broken den all da copz were all like ‘nah fuck use are brown and hit da kidz’ but he didnt eh just fell over on him fuckin crazy.
If longer jail timez were wats gonna happen I wud NEVER meet mah dad out sidez da wallz of jail.
Yeahz jus wah I had 2 say.
TuPz 4 EVA
Eastz SiDeZ 4 LIFE
443
I wear headbands.
I didn’t intend to express a fatalistic approach to crime and criminal punishment. I think it is pretty obvious that we need a punishment system for offenders but I also think that making that punishment system really harsh is fucking stupid. We all know that harsh punishment isn’t going to stop crime because there is this country called the United States of America that has the death penalty and motherfuckers are still killing each other everyday over there.
I didn’t touch on this in my post but what we should be spending more time/effort/money on is education. Kids should be educated about crime, the effects of crime and the criminal system from an early age.
To ensure this remains effective we should also be spending money on police training rather than more police. If we had an effective police force criminals would be more afraid of getting caught, as Darian states: "…criminals are more likely to put a higher weighting on the cost of an increased likelihood of getting caught than an increase in the sentence." The key to an effective police force is not merely numbers. A public (including would-be-criminals) will resent its police force to some extent if it deems its police force to be too large.
Putting more cops on the streets/in the offices is a burden on the tax payer. Tax dollars would be better spent training the officers that we have now. These officers will become three things:
1) Better at preventing crime
2) Better at dealing with criminals
3) Better respected by the public due to their performance in 1) and 2).
By building more respect with the proper application of their advanced training, a police force will be looked on more favourably by a community. This means that criminals will be more inclined to deal with the police. If a cop put his sirens on behind me and I knew I was over the limit I would be less inclined to try to speed away if I knew that the police force were good, professional people.
zach. youre a fucking douche
I think if obama got in. Criminals would run wild. Own the country. Set up organizations much like the govt. of wait….. the govt are criminals.
Legalize not criminalize.
Smoke weed.
aite.
Harsher sentences for serous crime wtf???? I thought our prison systems already strained as fuck????? Separate the drug market already!! It will reduce the power of gangs shite loads!