I defer to Lord of the Flies. Let's hope it stands up in court.

It could be that some people are simply more opportunistic than others. In the same vein as being an entrepreneur, only on the illegal side. Being able to see the outcomes of a crime, both the positive and negative, is simply the reflection of seeing the benefits of doing trying to do something successful, both positive and negative. Everyone feels it to some extent, but not everyone has the drive to go after what they want (for better or worse).

I will agree with you that in terms of economics and taxes, I would not want to see excessive gains being made for inmates' benefits while there are people who don't have such rights as the poor outside the prison walls. As I said, however, if he can prove that it is having a negative effect on his health, this is the equivalent to poisoning. Note, I'm not sure what proteins are in peanut butter and beans, or any other of the alternate protein sources, but they need to provide all of the essential amino acids in lieu of the poultry, which does provide all essential amino acids. Otherwise he has to decide between not getting the proper proteins his body needs, or endure the effects of the soy.

We've spent centuries killing/torturing criminals and, yet, it hasn't done any good to repel crime. What makes you think it'll be any different now?

I was sentenced with one count of attempted manslaughter -murder in the second degree, and two counts of inflicted grievous bodily harm.

Two year suspended sentence. I walked, because I was the designated victim.




:(
:hugs:



Solutions to problems in the penal system, like most things apparently these days, lays in the solution to the problems within society itself. Address those problems, and you'll address a lot of the issues within the penal system. You won't do away with crime, but change the face of society and you'll change the face of crime and punishment, just like the advent of modern times heralded the rise of modern -white collar- crimes.

I'm not sure how that relates to my question, but you seem to be overestimating both the quality of food they get and what's being requested. The prison food they receive is, put simply, cheap garbage. Meat that's 50% filler? Taco Bell has gotten lawsuits over the quality of its meat and that is premium gourmet by comparison. The soy issue is asking that it at least not cross the line from "cheap garbage" into "outright toxic", which doesn't seem unreasonable to me. Food quality certainly isn't the biggest concern in prison, but "there are bigger problems" is not a suitable excuse for smaller problems to be casually ignored.


Irrelevant. "Be happy with what you have because children are starving in Africa" is a completely separate issue with factors, causes, and solutions that have nothing to do with prison food. Paying taxes for things you don't support is largely the point of taxes, since the whole system would collapse if people only funded what was personally relevant to them.

Exactly. Though the current system is not that succesful either :shrug:

Off-topic: so your avatar is what i thougth it is :hehe:

What a great way to get rid of someone you don't like. Just frame them for a crime and let the "judicial system" do the rest. There are checks and balances for a reason. This attitude, no offense personally, speaks to lack of experience in the real world. :shrug:

I didn't say skip the checks or full investigations and just simply shoot them or give them hard labour. Yes, do all those checks and investigations and if the criminal is guilty take that action, noting I said to end the life of the serious criminals (rapist and murderers) not the petty ones like theft.
The guy in the OP Link in my books should be grateful he's still alive and should keep his mouth shut about any treatment he recieves while in prison.
"Harris is serving life in prison for sixual battery on a child."
I'm not sure if life where he is means life, but where I'm from when someone gets life they are released in 13 -20 years of their sentence in some cases and a lot go on to reoffend, usually the paedophiles, and even if they don't reoffend they are still a potential hazard for children and other people as they are never made aware they have a paedophile running around near their children, crinimals like that also cost the taxpayers millions each each like I said not to keep the public safe from the crinaml but to keep the criminal safe from the public. Does that look like a working system to you guys?

Well, it would definitely save time and money if they were to serve their sentence in general population :whistling:

It's been stated before,

we as a species just aren't evolved enough to attain the lofty goals we set for ourselves personally and society in general. We would want to be able to say that we as a people are civilized enough that the only punishment required or tolerated in today's society is the limitation of freedom through incarceration. But obviously there's a flaw there somewhere.. dunno where exactly, and besides that's a political discussion at best.

But it does make us question ourselves as people, and whether we still are as "savage" as it would appear.

[re-reads some of the earlier posts] errr... yeah. :unsure:

Personally I think that one on one counseling from the get go, with dedicated -and worthy- trade educations (inmates then work off the cost of the education) and upon parole a support from the parole system equal to that of the buddy-sponsorship strategies for AA.

I'm not saying pamper the inmates during their sentencing, but make the time spent at least productive.



As for the true sicko's, who are born into it or whatever.. take one of the more useless fly-over states that's almost bankrupt, evacuate everyone, put a fence around it and dump 'em all in there. :hehe:

Well, it costs money to do what we're doing now. That's one thing.

And seeing as every nation on earth is pretty much bankrupt if not for their loan and debt cycles...

Apparently I can send $0.50 a day to UNICEF and they can use that money to not only feed a child, but also provide medical care.

I am of the opinion that whatever very inexpensive food and medicine UNICEF uses should also be what we feed and medicate convicted criminals with.

It does make a difference, there is one less criminal walking the streets and the money that is saved by killing them would be in the millions for sure.
You say it hasn't repelled crime, yes maybe not 100% since those that have had second thoughts aren't going to spring up in the news yelling "I was going to rob a bank and kill anyone in my way if it wasn't for death penalties!!". Those who are desperate enough or think they're lucky will no doubt ignore the consquences and commit no matter what, the rational would-be criminals would hold back.

Actually it costs more money to execute prisoners than lock them up for life http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29552692/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/t/execute-or-not-question-cost/

You're also confusing your justification. If you want to kill them for societal retribution that's fine, but don't kid yourself by thinking that it's actually a deterrent - b/c it has proven not to be one.



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



Your .50cents is worth more in the third world than it is in the US and UNICEF is given millions in charitable donations and volunteer work (the doctors are volunteering their time) to help offset these costs. It actually only costs $1.50 to feed a prisoner, most of the prison overhead goes to security expenses.

So, what if a person is convicted, let's say in 1971, of [censored], and we had them shot, or worked them to death. It seemed an open and shut case at the time, but during the 2000's, DNA testing of the evidence revealed that the executed criminal was, in fact, completely innocent of the crime. The victim had misidentified their attacker, and the real attacker as someone else. Under what you think is proper, we would have killed an innocent man, because the victim made a mistake and misidentified their attacker. (such misidentifications and later exonerations have happened several times in the states) Under the current system, the man we falsely put in prison would be released. Hell, let's bring things into the modern day.

What if the investigation was mishandled? NOthing is perfect, and the system always has failings and corrupted elements. If we convict a woman or a man of [censored] or murder, and then immediately work them to death or execute them, they might be dead by the time anyone discovers exonerating evidence or is able to point out the inherent corruption in hte system. Hell, people are still executed over what many observers think was a wrongful conviction. Do we really want to end a human life when there is still risk of doubt? Still risk that the innocent have been falsely named guilty? I don't want to take the risk of the ending a human life for something they might not have done.



You could just look up the florida criminal code instead of speaking in hyperbole.

Yes because using 1971 in a duscussion that is taking place in 2011 is very valid since we have advanced well beyond those days.
How many people from when DNA tests and other accurate investigation tools/techniques have been wrongfully convicted?
I know people from the not too distant past have been wrongfully commited when those laws were in place but this is not back then and those people would have remained forever guilty if not for the tech we use now to convict people which I believe must be highly accurate if it can solve crimes from decades ago.
Depending on where you are in the world corruption from within the legal system may be a big problem, granted but that borders on political arguements so I won't go there, so for the sake of this discussion we have no corruption.
Using the tech of today to identify a rapist or murderer the chances of a miscarriage of justice seems unlikely, please correct me if you have figures proving miscarriages are still pretty high, I would be willing to convict such a person if the evidence was paramount.

O.J. Simpson and Amanda Knox were both tried using DNA evidence with different results. I'll step aside from this thread for now, but you should research these things a bit more, your opinion may change.

2 meters of rope, no more than a couple of pound, varying on strength/thickness.
Several beams of wood to support the body and noose, maybe bordering ￡50.
Sturdy nails to hold the beams together, Lucky if it even comes to ￡5.
Shovel, ￡10
Executioner,
This noose can be used over and over and over with the technique costing close to nothing in the grand scheme of things. :shrug:
Or are you talking about the complete waste of money and resources that is the Needle or the waste of electricity that is the Chair ?

O.J. Simpson and Amanda Knox were both tried using DNA evidence with different results. I'll step aside from this thread for now, but you should research these things a bit more, your opinion may change.

Yes Amanda was jailed using that and then was later freed using more upto date tech.
O.J Simpson's case isn't something I'm familar with though it is somewhat of a ridicule IIRC
I see your point though.

1st reasonable post in many pages.


Use their bodies for medical purposes. Use their blood, give their organs away, et cetera. Feed their excess meat to rich cannibals at a high cost, and put that money to a good goal. But while they're being kept alive, don't be cruel, and when they die, again, don't be needlessly cruel. Even if the mind is rotten, the flesh can contribute to society.

Are you kidding me? The state of Florida alone has it's own farm set up to give prisoners vegetable crop, I doubt that's cheap garbage, otherwise I bet you eat the same "cheap garbage". What it doesn't do itself to offset the costs of crop it purchases with taxpayer money. The notion that they are fed garbage is ridiculous and unfounded. Soy is the only thing that's been shown to even be remotely undesired, and honestly I could not possibly care less what an inmate likes or doesn't like when treated humanely while committing crimes, especially crimes like that committed in the article (sixual battery on a child) -- if he doesn't like the food, don't eat, or better yet, don't commit the crimes. That seems like a fair assessment, withholding a substantial amount of personal opinion.


Straw man. Of course starving children in Africa is "a completely separate issue". That's Africa. We're talking about Florida, or the United States, whichever you prefer, not Africa. Prison food has everything to do with other food when the same poor people pay taxes that get sent to prisons to feed those like the one in this article who want to [censored] and moan about the soy content in one option of food, of which they can easily pick another if it isn't their preference. And to address the second straw man in this paragraph of the system collapsing if people solely funded what they personally found relevant, that's nice, but if this were the case no prisons would ever be funded, but this straw man has nothing to do whatsoever with what's being debated. Prisons are paid for by taxpayers, prisoners are also likely citizens (comparing citizens of the same country is far from irrelevant), who are legally given humane treatment. Each city/county/state/federal jail/prison has humane standards to uphold, one of those being food. If you have a state growing crops for you and subsidizing crops so you can eat healthy food, and you choose to complain about one option after committing a form of [censored], boy, don't ask me what my personal opinion is about how much this person should be eating. I've been giving you a rather objective one to this point. I have, however, been shown no reason at all as to how this person is being treated so badly when so many poor people in the U.S. can only afford dollar menu fast food and dollar TV dinners which are largely unhealthy themselves, while you believe it's this prisoner who eats garbage -- goodness, that's humorous.

It makes me glad that people such as you aren't in control of our legal ways. People need to think with their head, not with their heart.

If you start killing criminals left and right, how long before they start to work together against the society which now has taken more drastic measures against them? I doubt they will change their ways, they will simply be more ruthless when they can get away with it, and more cautious when they can't, because contrary to what you might like to staunchly defend, there are no moral absolutes in this world. Just because something is wrong to you, someone else might find it perfectly acceptable and pursue that goal, regardless of the consequences.

I think you have it backwards. Thinking with your head is assessing the cost effectiveness and realizing current methods are wastefully expensive for the soul reason of treating people "humanely", which itself is the issue of the heart. Pure logic doesn't worry about how humane a method is.

On the other paragraph I also think you have a slightly skewed view of things. This isn't a batman comic. You aren't going to incite some kind of criminal army to rise up against you. Those already exist. They're called gangs. The severity of punishment has no bearing on gang formation.

I don't care if he isn't particularly happy or sad about his plight, I am concerned with whether or not the food is actually having a negative effect, which makes cost irrelevant. I would have no problem with feeding all prisoners nutraloaf, since it's nutritious and contains everything a prisoner might need. Too much soy could be having an unwarranted negative effect, which is what I don't agree with. You can't "poison" inmates simply due to cost-effectiveness, because their crime isn't related to the food they receive.

If the standards for crime were suddenly changed to become more severe, don't you think criminals' methods would change to reflect that? Gangs are around, yes, but they would certainly take on different characteristics. Lower-class/quality gangs would be removed due to stupidity, but the gangs that are smart enough to avoid the new punishments would likely become more pervasive as a result. (When they could get away with it, of course)

Too much soy in the food hardly constitutes as "poison".

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/poison

POISON
1
a : a substance that through its chemical action usually kills, injures, or impairs an organism


Putting too much soy into food and causing internal problems would constitute it as a poison.

Vegetables come from farms, yes. Even the most cheap and processed food started out there. Anything that doesn't come from their own is going to be shipped across the country at greater cost. What reduces the quality is what comes after, such as as stretching out the meat by making it 50% soy. If you care to reread, I never complained that they should get better foods, or suggested I cared whether they like it. The only point being made, which you never addressed, is that if you have any goals of "humane" treatment, regardless of the severity of the crime on a per-prisoner basis, giving them food that is toxic should be avoided.