they're not necessarily worse than jail ofc, but they don't serve any useful therapeutic purpose either
The government may tend to lack efficiency, but at least its lack of profit motive wouldn't completely taint the whole system.
similarly most exploitative prison labor doesn't take the form of producing goods for private companies (like the Whole Foods cheese thing) but consists of using inmates to reducing staffing & other costs inside the prison, like making them work in the kitchens or laundry
edit: immigration detention is the notable exception - about 70% of immigration detainees are held in private prisons, compared to about 10% of prison inmates
I am 100% in favor of unscheduling all drugs and providing addicts under Dr. care actual pharmaceuticals. Including opiates. Even if they still inject it's still a LOT safer.
When are we going to see some of this settlement money expanding treatment?!
If anyone hasn't watched it, I highly recommend the new HBO doc from Gibney "Crime of the Century" shows some new evidence just confirms how evil Purdue is and specifically Richard Sackler.
They present evidence that the FDA employee who wrote the label wrote it in a hotel with Purdue employee.
This is HUGE. That label is what they used to market the original "Big Lie" that OxyContin “Delayed absorption as provided by OxyContin tablets, is believed to reduce the abuse liability of a drug” which is on the same level as cigarette companies being horrible and deliberately killing hundreds of thousands of us.
Second half focuses on the Kapoor's fentanyl corporate crime syndicate. at least he is serving a small amount of jail time. Sadly now corporations are moving on to Asia and Africa. It's disgusting and makes me so angry.
one thing I don't think that's talked about enough re: the opioid crisis is labor injuries - imo people taking opioids in order to be able to work through injuries they've incurred on the job played a big part in it. doesn't diminish the guilt of the Sacklers et al, ofc, but it wasn't purely an overprescription problem
AND it seems worse incentive! dole out more, kill more people, and you're pharmacy will make higher profit.
Yes I agree just the general idea of 'needing' to treat all pain, and companies skirting workers comp time off is gross. Might as well dope up Amazon warehouse workers. Given them vyvanse and longer shifts... That's what purdue marketed and completely changed how Drs treat. That 1-10 face chart that is still in my Drs office was made and distributed by Purdue.
The hbo doc actually goes into the distributors. How one gov. prosecutor used the existing DEA law to order a stop on one factory warehouse for filling orders that were magnitudes larger than like last months, and are are clearly abuse or diversion.
But then this same prosecutor who had a great reputation for being tough got hired by these Pharma corps, and lobbied to change that law so they can't shut it down anymore. It passed congress unanimous consent. he used his position to say 'this isn't effective' and lie about what it actually did, and most LAs and members didn't bother to read it...
Simple possession shouldn’t be a crime but crimes themselves shouldn’t be consequence-free otherwise it turns a city into a shithole. Look at SF over the last few years.
Would you rather have less crime & better society, or punish people for some vague notion of consequences, even knowing it's a worse outcome for society? Because the consequences of a crime, whatever they are, should also be chosen to have the least negative drain on society.
* Prevention * Deterrence * Veangance
The least-useful of these is veangance. Legislators think it is needed to forestall private acts of veangance. But in itself it serves no purpose.
To deter crime, people have to believe that the likelihood of their being caught and punished is high; without that belief, it doesn't matter how severe the penalties are set.
Prevention by detention is an extreme sanction, and extremely costly. It's only appropriate for incorrigible psychopaths. "Prevention" by court-ordered medical treatment (e.g. rehab, chemical castration) is a human-rights violation. Prevention by supervision, harm-reduction, or education are evidence-based responses that actually have a chance of improving things.
Jail should be reserved for people who a direct physical threat to other peoples bodies or properties. Continued incarceration should be viewed from that lens as well.
Victim Compensation should be a higher priority instead of punishment, instead we put almost no priority to Victim Compensation instead viewing the crime as a "crime against society" and the person "pays a debt to society" that is the wrong position.
I don't think that would work simply because after that person spends the $5M, the government can't claw it back even if that person commits another crime, and if they are in the state where they are considering another crime, the extra $5M debt would probably not deter them too much. This proposal would need to be reworked to align long term incentives of the person with not committing another crime. It would also need to disincentivize people from committing crimes just so they can get this benefit.
In a somewhat related vein, I recall there being a proposal to provide basic housing to the chronically homeless, as certain homeless people cost the taxpayers millions due to arrests and illnesses from being homeless. Although there is no angle of punishment here, there is still the angle of those homeless not deserving free housing. I believe however that there is a strong case for providing such housing, when viewed from a dispassionate point of view, as it is both fiscally prudent as well as humane in reducing suffering.
In your scenario you are adding an incentive to a single commit murder. You are trying to make the point justice is not about utilitarianism but about morality on some level - but your example is so unmoored from reality that it is useless.
The only real reason to object to it would be problems unlisted in this analogy - like the obvious incentive to murder. But we're axiomatically handwaving those intuitive signs of a bad choice away due to a "those turn out to not be an issue".
The problem here is your conclusion ("yes this may look good on paper but your gut instinct clearly tells you this is a bad idea regardless") is based on using your gut instinct, in a hypothetical that axiomatically requires you to ignore your gut instinct. In other words, you're breaking your own rules.
This idea of restorative justice is an abject failure. It might work for first time offenders, which I’m okay with trying on, but once criminals commit crimes multiple times, we need to protect society from them. Locking them up is the best way to do this.
The tides are turning against the idea that criminals shouldn’t see jails, because of how much of a failure it has been. I used to think maybe we shouldn’t be so hard on crime, but after not only being the victim but seeing what it had done to SF, I’m firmly in the camp of throwing criminals in jail. Mainly moderates like myself feel the exact same way in the last 2-3 years and it will show more and more in voting, especially in SF.
https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(15)01030-X/pdf
Yet you're proposing doubling down on a clearly broken approach?
no it is not, Chesa Boudin did not in anyway advocate for Victim Compensation, he was advocating diversion programs completely different
>Criminals end up continuing to commit crimes because they know there are no consequences.
Absolutely nothing in my statement is about no consequences. It is saying that we can have difference consequences than mass incarceration, one that actually makes the victims of crime, specifically property crime, whole again. Which are current system does not
You seem to believe I am advocating for SF style policy of just not prosecuting theft crimes at all, there is NOTHING in my statement that aligns with that position. Simply opposing Jail time for those offense, which further burdens society and does nothing for the victims is not a solution to shoplifting and theft, nor is the other extreme of just let shoplifters go
The fact that you have a tribal binary response of "if you do not want harsh prison must mean you want no consequences" show your lack of understanding of this topic, there are lots of other models out there
Drug addiction and the crimes that spring from it are a different matter. There is a clear cause for the crime: the addiction. Fix that, no more repeat offenses. However most rehab programs for addicts that end up in the criminal justice system aren't that great, so that's another area that needs fixing.
Regardless, my point is just that consequences for criminal acts should never be simple punishment if there are options with a better net benefit for society. That will of course mean there has to be a detergent aspect to things as well, which may take the form of a punishment, but not a punishment for its own sake.
Especially for drugs, we need to move away from a punishment/vengeance system of justice and towards a rehabilitation/lowest TCO form of treatment.