"I'm mostly referring to prisoners that do things like kill, rape, extort,..."

That a small minority of prisoners

"...and pounce on another's freedom to pursue happiness and such."

Although that may or may not catch many more in your definition.

Then we should be using money on people that violate the more severe laws, and not waste it on people that smoke pot, etc.

I suppose in my mind we need to do it in an order like this, first change who is getting arrested, then decide if those people deserve minimum wage, etc.

The problem with your standard is that even in the case of murder and other violent crimes, sex, race and socioeconomic status (also influenced by race and gender) play a big role in who actually does time.

As a woman, here is one example I am painfully aware of: A woman who defends herself with lethal force against a husband who has beaten her for years does more time on average than an abusive husband who finally goes too far and beats his wife to death. I can explain some of the reasons why that happens if you care to hear it. But the reasons do not change the fact that injustices happen daily in our legal system and many of our laws foster those injustices, to say nothing of the biases of judges and juries.

Peace.

In a better system (basically the system we as citizens of our respective countries should be pushing our lawmakers into.) socioeconomic trends, race and sex shouldn't have anything to do with how bad someone gets punished.

Also, I would appreciate it a lot of you did go into details about the wife versus husband abuse. Seems to me that the only answer to that is sexism though. For many years it's been held in certain groups that women being the child bearing gender and men being the "bread winners" meant that men were somehow above women. In many area's of the world it's much worse then others but regardless you see that everywhere. It would seem to go without saying that that's wrong, but I'm speaking as a man who respects people equally, and leaves it to each individual to prove to me their merit. A whole ton of people think that their race is best, and that their gender is best, for reasons they all think are good. It makes me wonder how we might be able to change this, I feel it starts with leading by example.

"Justice is blind". Fair != equal. Men and women are different. Applying the same standard gets unequal outcomes.

The details:

You do more time if it is premeditated vs. a crime of passion. You do more time if you used a weapon vs. your bare hands. Most of the time, an abusive husband who kills his wife beats her to death with his bare hands. Most of the time, a woman who finally kills her husband to protect herself had to plan it and used a weapon to accomolish it. Men frequently have a size advantage and are also more likely to have served in the military, taken martial arts or otherwise be better prepared to do physical harm than a woman. The law currently does a poor job of accounting for such differences.

That is without getting into what happens if the judge or one of the lawyers is a wife beater. Edit: That is also without getting into other relevant factors, which don't get properly considered under the current system.

Peace.

I don't think that's really fair to say that. Things really need to stop being about man versus woman, and more about the actual facts. Like who's actually bigger (I know of men that were beaten by their wives.)

That said...

If you premeditate kill someone then you did NOT do it to protect yourself from harm. At that moment you can and should leave and get help from whoever can help you. Restraining orders to start off with, and carry a weapon around for self defense, entirely different then premeditated murder.

That all said the current system is without a doubt messed up, our high crime rate is proof of that. What's scarier is how much crime goes un-caught.

Unfortunately, the facts don't fit your idea of how things should work. One study found that women who killed their abusive husband were the most severely abused, the most isolated, and basically were all out of options. They often killed after being told something like "In the morning, I am going to kill you.", which they had every reason to believe was absolutely true. They had typically already tried counseling, leaving, restraining orders, you name it. They typically were also told things like "If you leave and I can't find you, I will instead kill...(some other loved one such as your mother or sister or our children)"

I am not some man hating bitch. I'm quite fond of men. And I don't know how to fix this particular problem with the justice system. All I am saying is that doing time is not the ultimate proof that someone is depraved. It is more complicated than that.

Peace and carry on. I am not interested in being nailed to the wall with ugly insinuations and it looks to me like that is where this is going/has already gone to some degree.

I'd like to say that I'm sorry for saying anything that came across as me insinuating anything about you, that wasn't my point. My point is that the system is obviously flawed and that we need to work to get that fixed, this includes and is not limited to bringing anyone abusing their spouse to justice, so that no-one, man or woman, should ever suffer through it. (just one of the things that need fixed.)

I think we think we aren't agreeing, when in reality we agree much more then we realize, but I digress. Someone having been to prison doesn't mean they are depraved, BUT and this is a part I agree is complicated, we as a society need to be sending only the truly depraved to prison. Otherwise it's not about keeping the rest of us safe, it's about something like money, or some such.

Please accept my dearest apology, I don't mean to say that I'm sorry you were offended though, but to say that I'm sorry I said something offensive.

No big. Print is a tough way to communicate.

Fwiw: I think a better answer lies in providing more support for children and families. I typically focus more on providing parenting advice to people with really challenging children in hope of preventing the types of problems that lead to criminal charges rather than addressing what to do after everything has gone wrong. However I am currently homeless, which has me spending more time around very poor people, many of whom have done time. And this crowd references prison differently than the middle and upper middle class people I typically have been surrounded by.

Anyway, time to go eat. Have a great day.