Pipeline to prison?

The war on drugs?

Stupid.

Mandatory minimum sentences?

Mostly stupid. Non-stupid mostly just in terms of consistency (shouldn't be about luck if you get a 6-month sentence vs a 2-year sentence).

Three strikes and you're out laws?

Stupid.

Juveniles tried as adults?

Mostly stupid. I see some of the reasoning behind this in some situations. In practice I think it ends up being mostly stupid.

Zero tolerance policies in schools?

Too general to say, really. I think guns -- actual guns -- have absolutely no place in schools. But I think implementation can get silly.

High stakes, standardized testing in schools?

Again too general to say. I've long been a critic of NCLB (as long as it's been around) and the excessive standardized testing is a big part of what I don't like about it. I don't think it's reasonable to do away with standardized testing completely, though. There is valuable information there.

Thanks for the reply!

Do you remember that show that was on called "Connections" where James Burke would explain how we arrived at point M from point A? I loved that show. This article kind of reminded me of that.

I don't think I've seen that, sounds interesting.

There is nothing about hanging children in public for shoplifting... And I am in favor of that too... You see, it is so much cheaper to educate people than to imprison them, but then you might have to accomodate them and treat them as though human being, and give them their human rights... If you imprison enough of minorities for trivial ****, you can keep the rest on the street where the crazy ones will spread fear, and the others can give up on the idea of ever having rights and equality... Jail a few and all feel the bars, and suffer the want of freedom... Isn't that what it is really about... Make prison hell, and reality will not seem so bad...

I think you're preaching to the choir, Fido.

But to be honest I'm still not sure if you purposely try to be esoteric or if you're just bad at written communication because your irony?/sarcasm?/whatever is so often misplaced.

The war on drugs started long b4 Reagan got the job on The General Electric Theater.
I oppose it. (not the Theater) Government was never granted jurisdiction
to wage it, nor even to take cognizance of drugs. (See 9th n 10th Amendments.)





David

The war on drugs? A misappropriation of the word "war", and an expensive disaster
Mandatory minimum sentences? Over reaching of the legislature into the judicial process
Three strikes and you're out laws? See above
Juveniles tried as adults? A gross violation of civilized moral principle
Zero tolerance policies in schools? Idiocy by those who don't trust other people to make decisions.
High stakes, standardized testing in schools? Occasionally required, for instance to get into law school, but generally a poor use of time. I am in favor of some standardized testing, but it should not determine who graduates and who does not.

So when did it start?

Growing up I remember getting the anti-drug message long before Reagan was president but I don't remember things getting crazy until "Just Say No".

Now, off to read more about the 9th and 10th and the interpretation thereof....

I agree with you nearly word for word.

I don't know if you had a chance or were even interested in the article but I thought of you while reading one section of it --

There was a bit about how outside of jails and prisons, public school students are probably the most heavily policed segment of American society.

Scary.

I've been thinking about this a bit. Why should you have to take a test to get in to law school? You have to pass the bar exam to practice law. Shouldn't that be enough? If you can pass the bar should it be required that you have attended law school?

I mostly agree with Hawkeye here, with two exceptions. People who are convicted of murder are usually sentenced with a view to the safety of society--so in the case of a murder trial, i can see the value of trying juveniles as adults. In a case in Ontarior recently, a boy who had been tried as a juvenile (he was convicted of stabbing a girl to death just days before his 18th birthday) was sentenced as an adult, which enabled the judge to give him a life sentence with restrictions on when he could be considered for parole.

The second point is minor. I don't think that standardized testing helps much of anyone, and it is all too frequently abused, and not just simply in educational settings.

Do you know if there are laws that specify who can be tried as an adult and under what circumstances?

Life sentences don't always equal life. I wonder if the age the killer is when they killed is factored in for parole purposes.

I wonder what age was of the youngest person convicted as an adult. I seem to recall 14 but I don't know from where.

I imagine that that changes from one jurisdiction to the next. I mentioned Ontario specifically because i don't know if the judge could have done that elsewhere in Canada. As i understood the news reports i had heard, once a convicted minor reaches the age of majority, he or she is automatically eligible for parole in Ontario, and given that the boy had killed the girl a few days before his eighteenth birthday, sentenced as a juvenile, he would be immediately and automatically eligible for parole--the pundits were surmising that this is what had motivated the judge.

I think his reasoning makes sense.

I'm guessing that juvie records are sealed in Canada. That could have been a problem if tried as a minor.

I guess it's the whole arbitrariness (not in this case, but in general) that bothers me. On the whole I'd rather not see any minor tried as an adult than to keep using the scatter shot, knee jerking system we use now.

My take would be the same as your original statement, boom.

I believe that in some jurisdictions, an allegation of murder results automatically in a juvenile being tried as an adult. If there is a scattershot system, it likely arises from there being more than 50 jurisdictions in the United States.

This is a little off topic, but I keep puzzling though this test to get into law school (or any similar type of program)....

I've been trying to think of one other thing that we deny someone the right to purchase based on their inability to pass a test.

Can anyone think of another?

Really, why even should someone even flunk out of college? If they have the means to pay and they aren't being all weird and dangerous, why should we care if they don't do well?

If my memory is accurate, in the 1920s.

The 9th Amendment indicates that failure to enumerate individual rights in the Constitution
does NOT mean that thay do not exist.

The 10th Amendment provides that the federal government
has no power other that what was granted to it in the Constitution.




David

I think that with the exception of The War on Drugs and the possible exception of Juveniles Tried as Adults, these measures have been taken because of institutional failures that were not properly addressed. The correct choice was never these measures or none.

The war on drugs?

A terrible idea that has not succeeded in its goal of eliminating drug use. It has wasted billions of our tax dollars while making billionaires out of criminals who have become so powerful that they can challenge and destabilize governments. It has assured a horrifying level of violence will ever be associated with drug use and thereby increases rather than decreases the harmful impact of that which it seeks to destroy.

Mandatory minimum sentences?

Mixed reaction

This probably causes as many problems as it solves, but it would not exist if the public did not perceive that judges were giving ridiculously light sentences to criminals. Although the Anti-Drug War Lords utilize this as a deliberate weapon in their arsenal, they would not be able to if the public wasn't concerned about the integrity of sentencing.

Three strikes and you're out laws?

Agree with them for violent criminals.

These exist because rehabilitation is at best an unrealistic goal for prisons, and the public is, rightly, infuriated about recidivist criminals - particularly violent ones.

Juveniles tried as adults?

Support in rare cases

Sometimes the crimes children commit are as heinous as any that can be committed by adults, and there is no reason to believe that the child can be rehabilitated or that they will not commit similar crimes upon their release. If a rapist/murderer who is 17 years, 10 months old "skate" because he is treated as a juvenile, justice has not been served and the public not properly protected.

Zero tolerance policies in schools?

As applied today this is ridiculous, and is nothing more than a means by which teachers and school administrators can avoid using judgment and thereby avoiding the possibility of ever having their judgment questioned.
It's easier to operate in a black and white world and that's what Zero Tolerance provides.

Hiding from personal judgment is a problem in many of our institutions (including business) and not just schools. People want to be recognized as and paid for being professionals but then want to run from the very quality that makes them professionals - judgment. It's not always because they are afraid to make a judgment either. More often it is that they appreciate that judgments very rarely involve binary choices and therefore will always be subject to so-called second guessing. You can't know when you make your judgment that it will be subsequently approved, and no institution can pre-approve all judgments. However zero-tolerance policies arose when it became clear that institutions were less and less willing to ever trust the judgments of professionals.


High stakes, standardized testing in schools?

Mixed reaction.

Life is filled with high stake choices and challenges and we do not help our children if we systematically insulate them from the unpleasant realities of adult life.

Having so much ride on the results of a single test though seems to me to be draconian.

Here again, the failure of teachers and administrators to create a disciplined environment of learning where progress and success can be clearly measured, and is demanded, has led to this cop out.