Shaun: People who should be in jail are out on the streets commiting more crimes! I read the paper every day, and do you know what I see everyday? Things like "A man who has been arrested 15 times before was arrested again on assault (or drug, or robbery) yesterday". What is wrong with that picture? DADDIO: Lot’s of things:
1) People are tired of spending $40,000 per year per prisoner. He’s a product of OUR society so this costly incarceration is our way of punishing ourselves for our role in his behavior. But many of us would rather just stop the mass production of criminals in the first place. Wouldn’t that be a more intelligent approach?
2) Prisons breed criminals – this is well established. And yet prisons are still our #1 most popular solution to crime! How stupid is THAT?
Shaun: There is no reason why anybody should be arrested 10 or 15 times. You would think and hope that after their 3rd or 4th arrest the judge would realize that that particular individual can't be rehabilitated into a safe member of society……
DADDIO: Rehabilitated? Who’s trying to rehabilitate them? I thought most of them spent their time locked up in and 8X8-foot cage with other criminals. How is that going to make someone a happy-go-lucky do-gooder?
Shaun: …….I'm not saying that all thieves, drug dealers, gangsters should be locked up for life after thier first conviction, because some of them can be rehabilitated, but after thier 3rd or 4th offense, it becomes obvious that they will never change and then they should be locked up for life…..
DADDIO: The only thing that becomes obvious to me at that point is that the prison system doesn’t work very well.
Shaun: ….The United States has the highest crime rate in the industrialized world. Why? Because we are too soft on criminals. Look at the other countries that are much safer than the U.S. They have strict laws to punish criminals and to deter crime. You can't blame violence on T.V. because American T.V. shows are shown in almost every country around the world. And the richer countries like Europe and Australia have thier own TV shows as well, and from what I understand, most countries foreign TV shows are much more risque than American shows! Yet in these countries, crime is practically non-existant compared to the US
DADDIO: There are a lot of factors that account for our crime rate: Your solution of amping up punishment takes only about 10% of these factors into account. Just being born a U.S. citizen is punishment enough for anybody. A country whose motto should read "Shut up, consume, and die" has to expect that there’s going to be trouble, and lots of it.
As for television, yes, some countries are more risqué in terms of nudity and sex, but no one can hold a candle to the violence on U.S. television. So, yes I can very easily blame our crime rate on TV, just as easily as I can blame YOU for not taking more responsibility for thinking past these medieval, ineffective, black and white solutions that are essentially weapons of mass mind control from an Elite power monopoly that wants only to keep all the little sheep in line.
Bottom line is: If you don’t like it, why don’t you just move to another country? Sound familiar Shaun?
