Judges - Tasting One's Own Medicine

Who cares?

The judge's job is to get criminals off the streets.

It's not supposed to be "nice." It's called punishment.
Big Boy "time out.'

It is not their mission to check prisons,
but sometimes thay hold court in odd places,
like in hospitals, for the patients,
or at a veterans' homeless convention, etc.





David

There certainly has been a major lapse in adjudicating wrt all the war criminals/terrorists who walk the streets of America, hasn't there been, Punkey?

I guess that's how the rule of law is supposed to operate. People who torture, rape and murderer get free passes, pensions even, while drug addicts are put away for life.

Actually, I believe that judges do have some sort of ethical responsibility to be aware of the conditions in the institutions where they remand or sentence people to be held. Some might actually visit these institutions, some might rely on reports.

Judges who have any background, at all, in practicing criminal law, would have seen the inside of a jail or prison when they visited clients.

Prisons are not intended to be pleasant accommodations--that's part of their value in deterring crime.

Flawed thinking, I suggest, FF. The record, I believe, clearly shows that a prison sentence does little to deter crime. In fact, a excellent case could be made that prison sentences encourage crime; encourage in the sense of causing those who go to prison to reoffend.

A judges job is to be an asshole; and the proof of this is meeting a judge out of robes... They are decent enough, but the position they are in, of enforcing the law without consideration to justice, without judging the laws just, or the act in question, reasonable or unreasonable considering the people and the circumstances, but only being, as it were, a square peg in a square hole, without the wiggle room that justice might demand...

Punishment should be reasonable, and by that, I mean, should fit the crime, and not every crime the condemned may be considered guilty of, or every crime for which no perpertrator was found, or every crime the jury fears...

People are punished for long periods when often their crimes rate no punishment at all, and it is because society does not like what they do rather than actually having a reason to feel injured by what they do...People are punished as an example, when, if criminals could learn by example, they could learn in some other fashion less dramatic...If it is not the criminals who are being taught by example, but the non criminals, then the law is coercive, threatening even those who do not deserve a threat... The fact is that people are good and moral without threat, and no example good or bad could deter them from what is right, and no punishment or reward could deter them from what is wrong...

The object of punishment should be correction and the object of correction should be rehabilitation, and everyone knows what habitation means, because no one would choose to live beside a criminal or any other person without honor because the price paid in vigilence is too high... So rehabilitation means restored to honor, and no person comming out of prison with a justified grudge against society can be considered as having honor, but all should learn honor and mercy from their societies so if opportunity finds them, or a victim finds themselves at their mercy that there will be mercy shown to them...

Let the punishment fit the crime, and not the unfounded fears of society... Punishment should fulfill a need in the person for a place in society, so that what the prisoner is lacking, protection, counceling, medication, education is provided to them... Some people cannot live in society but can still support themselves... No one should have to commit crimes to enter the protection of the state, and that protection should not be so extreme as to make a person incapable of rhectification...

All law has been a failure, and we have only had about a thousand years of it and it has brought us to the edge of anhilation without bringing us one step closer to justice or social peace...

Oh, I don't think they encourage people to re-offend, JTT, since it's hard to find people who actually like being in prison. Some people just never learn, or they are too impulsive to stop themselves, or they believe the next time they won't get caught. There are many reasons for recidivism.

The idea of having one's freedom taken away, and being locked in a prison, does deter most people from breaking the laws.

Tell that to the IRS. I'm not sure that, without the tax laws, that we could depend on "the fact that people are good and moral without threat". To most get people to declare their total incomes, be honest about their deductions, and to file their tax returns, I do think the government has to use the threat of punishment.

They most certainly do. Prisons do more than encourage, they pretty much train people to reoffend. After they get out society does a lot to cause people to reoffend. People are punished long after they have done their time/paid their debt.

I'm not saying it's all bad, but there is a lot, an awful lot of stuff done that is bad, in the long run, it's bad for the whole of society.

Well income taxes are coercive, and people do not agree with them and are right to resist them... They are paid to an unfair extent by the poor, and must support a lot that people do not agree with on both sides of the issue, and if people where allowed to vote with their tax payment for those government activities they support there would be many fewer government activities...

I don't think democracy has any business in offensive activity unless it can be shown that the offense is truly defensive in nature... Yet, it is the people who must support a megalithic military that supports invasive and immoral capitalism around the globe which benefits most of us not in the least... We do not get a direct vote on it, nor any control of it in progress, and must suffer police state scrutiny to have it, and cannot deny them the funds with which they prosecute their wars and threats... It is one thing to say we would be moral if we had a choice... Where people have a choice they are moral... Where they are not moral is in not demanding control over every aspect of their lives, and in believing there can be such a thing as half freedom...The half free are all slave..