My Views on Crime & Punishment

[bluesummer]

It's an imperfect system.....these death squads are compromised of people, who by their nature are subject to becoming corrput and making mistakes. People's lives should be in the hands of God, and in some instances the courts where a fair and thorough trial has been completed. They are killing ALLEGED criminals. All it would take is some neighbour who hates you to tell the police you raped their child. No trial, just a bullet....for a lie. Not to mention those that will take money on the side for killing.....justifying it as the person being a criminal when they are not.

This is bullshit. It makes no sense.

[IndiReloaded]

[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodrigo_Duterte]Rodrigo Duterte - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/url]


I finally found an example of what I've been getting at all along. Granted I'm lifting this from a Wiki page, so keep that in mind. We have a mayor who allegedly supports vigilanteism. His city has undergone a drop in violent crime and is enjoying an economic boom. Human rights groups criticize him for this. So in other words, better to have a city overrun with criminals preying upon the innocent than a city overrun with vigilantes preying upon the guilty.

I can't shake this feeling that the people who think themselves the most moral, the most benevolent and good, are in fact among the most horrible of us all.

I just read a story about two men who drowned a 16 year old girl in a bathtub, then they cooked and ate her. Why? "We were hungry." Each got less than 20 years in prison. The victim looked so much like my sister that for one brief moment of insanity I reached for my phone to call home and see that she was safe.

What a terrible, terrible world this is. Correction: what a terrible, terrible species we are.

Most 'human rights' proponents are just useless apologists.

IMO, all this guy needs to be is reasonable enough to say "hey, come up with a better system that is actually viable, and we will try it." Fascism is only a dirty word when misapplied by (usually religious!) zealots.

That's where the air hits the road for these human rights idiots, tho. No good ideas, just complaints for those who actually try some solution.

Keep posting this stuff Grib. Some of it is bound to go in someplace. Better than not discussing it, IMO.

[Mish]

It's an imperfect system.....these death squads are compromised of people, who by their nature are subject to becoming corrput and making mistakes. People's lives should be in the hands of God, and in some instances the courts where a fair and thorough trial has been completed. They are killing ALLEGED criminals. All it would take is some neighbour who hates you to tell the police you raped their child. No trial, just a bullet....for a lie. Not to mention those that will take money on the side for killing.....justifying it as the person being a criminal when they are not.

This is bullshit. It makes no sense.

In reality it's actually worse than that. The police and the vigilantes sponsored by police come and shoot people over mistaken identify or people who oppose the government, no one's punished for this. The police themselves become the criminals and then who will get rid of them?

[IndiReloaded]

I don't believe that. I was there and a good chunk of my family is from there ... and they are NOT scared whatsoever of the DDS. Mainly because they know they aren't dealing drugs or involved in any of that bullshit. Stay away from drugs and you should be fine.

Posted by someone who has actually BEEN there, thanks Shorty. Those who have no experience of this will continue to argue the point, unfortunately.

I've visited a few places where I had to travel with an armed bodyguard just b/c of certain family connections that didn't directly involve me. It was awful. If these countries had a similar police force, it would have made those guards unnecessary.

Once again: what's the *working* solution these apologists want in place instead? They never mention that part.

[Mish]

Posted by someone who has actually BEEN there, thanks Shorty. Those who have no experience of this will continue to argue the point, unfortunately.

I have lived in Russia as well and I haven't witnessed any crime what so ever. However, that doesn't mean that Russia doesn't have an atrocious crime level. I'm in no position to use my immediate experience to make conclusions on a broader level. Just being somewhere and not witnessing a crime doesn't mean that it doesn't happen.

[IndiReloaded]

Mish, what I'm saying is that there are ppl out there who will complain on principle but don't actually have any clue what to replace an offensive system with. To do so and leave a power void typically makes the situation even worse.

Iraq invasion and the mess they made. Just to illustrate a recent shining example of "morality" without a plan.

[Lipp]

Indi, I don't get what you mean with the whole "what system to replace it with" thing, it'd just be what the rest of the world is doing, a proper police force and judicial system with variations that cater for the cities' particular needs.

I could understand the hiring of these mercenaries if Davao City was an a failed city on the brink of collapse (e.g. Cöte d'Ivoire degree of crime), but that does not appear to have been the case, and so the hiring of these death squads is merely an example of how the system has given up or somehow failed. Yes, court rulings and that system is imperfect, and in a perfect world every criminal would have his forehead light up in red so that people would know who's guilty, but that's not the case , and a court still beats the identifying criminals based on hear-say, assumptions and quick judgements, and especially so when the sole punishment is execution, which frankly is plain sad if it's applied to small-time crooks.

At least the death squads get their targets from the cops who at least might have an idea, if they were going full-on vigilante they'd probably shoot up each and every street kid.

[IndiReloaded]

Well, there are many who think that our law enforcement and judicial systems are spiralling out of control, or have been rendered ineffective, or both. Here in Vancouver, we are getting to see this in real-time, with the RCMP being hamstrung by lawyers trying to pay off their education or line their pockets at the tax payers expense.

There's a famous saying addressing this:
A country with many laws is a country of incompetent lawyers.

Meaning our 'leaders' are too stupid (or greedy) to distill the general principles from individual cases, so they treat each case as a unique phenomenon. Effective decision-making goes down the toilet.

You may not like it, but these squads who are working with the police actually seem to be succeeding where others did not. That's the litmus test, IMO.

[doppelgaenger]

My view on crime, justice, and morality is that we decide what is just.. justice is the climactic point of an insatiable lust for vengeance. It is a manipulative loophole for government to generate profit. Morality is nonobjective and relative.
Every single system of government and law is overly idealized and is corruptible. They are all bad... some are 'better' than others, but there is no such thing as an utopian society.

Crime can be divided down the middle - there are crimes of passion and crimes of necessity. I think crimes of necessity are usually just because the convicted are usually victimized in one way or another. Crimes of passion are never justified, though.

This situation reminds me of In the Penal Colony by Kafka. The sadistic officer can execute whomever he wishes, without a fair trial, for even the most trivial, most unreasonable violations. Y'all should check it out. Good read.

For what it's worth, the US judicial system is way out of control and definitely needs reform. First thing that comes to mind - illicit substances. In my state, a person can serve a longer sentence than murder/rape for possession of illicit substance. That's beyond ludicrous. It's outrageous!

[doppelgaenger]

There's a famous saying addressing this:
A country with many laws is a country of incompetent lawyers.

Meaning our 'leaders' are too stupid (or greedy) to distill the general principles from individual cases, so they treat each case as a unique phenomenon. Effective decision-making goes down the toilet.

You may not like it, but these squads who are working with the police actually seem to be succeeding where others did not. That's the litmus test, IMO.

This.

I think judges have too much power to exercise because of all the laws and loopholes. It's bananas.

I don't exactly like the way the squads are handling the issues, though.

[Cbrider]

Speaking in reference to America, we have damned ourselves. We wrote a bill of rights and enacted freedoms without a definitive line of separation. The first amendment can be stretched to some absolutely ridiculous lengths. For instance the group the protests homosexuals and the war at soldiers funerals with signs that say "A dead soldier is a good soldier" and "Fags ruin this country", etc. These things are clearly out of line from a moral standpoint, but since our constitution is a living document with interpreted meaning, these people are untouchable from a legal standpoint.

I'm a huge supporter of capital punishment, some people just don't deserve to live. You can mumble off all your human rights jargon and reasons about why execution is cruel - beating, raping and strangling a twenty-something year old is heinous - just shut up.

Texas deserves an award, its the only state that seems to have some sort of grasp on capital punishment and has no problem executing people. I would be proud to be labeled a Texan.

The Bill of Rights is great, but we sure fvcked ourselves in the process. Justice is not America's number 1 export unfortunately.

We have enough problems in the U.S. without worrying about the rest of the world.

[LailaK]

I would like to think that in a perfect world one could go about their business, obeying the law, being a good person/citizen, and the government wouldn't be able to kill you and get away with it because of "mistaken identity". Anything that strays too far away from that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

[Lipp]

I would like to think that in a perfect world one could go about their business, obeying the law, being a good person/citizen, and the government would be able to kill you and get away with it because of "mistaken identity". Anything that strays too far away from that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

What?............

[LailaK]

What?............

If you read Mishanya's posts the government (under the guise of their unofficial police force) in that town is essentially getting away with killing whoever they want. Even people that they are mistaking to be criminals (who didn't do anything wrong). Not a society I would want to live in.

[Lipp]

If you read Mishanya's posts the government (under the guise of their unofficial police force) in that town is essentially getting away with killing whoever they want. Even people that they are mistaking to be criminals (who didn't do anything wrong). Not a society I would want to live in.

I would like to think that in a perfect world one could go about their business, obeying the law, being a good person/citizen, and the government would be able to kill you and get away with it because of "mistaken identity". Anything that strays too far away from that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Again, what?