Washington state's marijuana laws keep getting more sane

[angus]

DUI

prison for drunk driving?  seriously?  ouch.

[angus]

I agree with the OP that for murder, rape, robbery, and assault the perpetrator has shown that he is a menace to society.  But for some of those others mentioned by memphis--burglary, fraud, money laundering, conspiracy, DUI--I'm not so sure that this is the case.

Let's take burglary.  Let's imagine a nineteen-year-old down on his luck, driving a hooptie with a broken fuel gauge, because that's all he can afford.  He runs out of fuel and his car is stuck on the street in a suburban neighborhood far from the nearest services.  He doesn't have a mobile phone.  He walks around and notice a car parked on the street and he siphons enough gas from the tank to make it to the gas station.  He gets into the car and suddenly a police car comes in behind him, arrests him for Burglary of a Motor Vehicle, so now he has to pay a 2500 dollar fine and spend six months in a penetentiary.  Does the sentence seem to fit the crime?

Or what about conspiracy?  There's a holiday song that says, "Later on we'll conspire, as we dream by the fire, to face unafraid the plans that we made, walking in a winter wonderland..."  Prison for this?  Seems again that the sentence doesn't really fit the crime, if indeed there was a crime.

As for drunk driving, it's currently a misdemeanor.  At least for the first few offenses.  You get a heavy fine as it is, and your insurance premium increases, but does it merit imprisonment?

I'm not excusing any of these crimes.  The lad in the first example should have probably walked, however far, to the nearest fuel station and purchased a gas can and a gallon of gas, or if he didn't have any money, he should have found a telephone and phoned someone who does.  Still, our prisons are already overcrowded and we're imprisoning a far greater fraction of our population than most other societies.  At great expense to the taxpayers, I might add.

The Navajo had a cure ceremony for those afflicted with maladies.  If you got drunk and shot up a store and stole something, it meant that something inside you wasn't right, and a wise man would be called to have a sing for you.  I'm not sure that stuff works, but I'm quite sure that putting young men in prison only makes them jaded, tough, and wiser in the ways of crime.  You don't turn criminals into citizens by treating them the way we do. 

[angus]

If someone burglarized your residence, clean wiped you out of your possessions...really no prison for that? Or are you arguing that burglary should not automatically mean  prison?

Yes, I'm arguing that burglary should not automatically mean prison.  I tried to come up with a plausible example to illustrate that.  If someone burglarized my residence and cleaned it out, that's different.  That would not have been the example I chose to make my point.

It seems that this thread has taken a dreadful turn, but maybe it's fair since all these crimes were delineated specifically in the original post.  I think you have to ask what the point is.  Do we incarcerate to rehabilitate?  To protect ourselves?  For revenge?  I suspect that different people would answer differently. 

If it's for revenge, then we hang murderers.  We put rapists in prisons, where they will undoubtedly be raped.  We put assaulters in prisons, where they will undoubtedly be assaulted.  Do we put a man in a prison, to be raped and assaulted, just because he took a gallon of gas, or just because he had one too many martinis, or, for that matter, because he has a few lids of weed in his car?  And that gets us back to the original thread:  I presume the point is that this bill is a bit weak because it only protects those who possess marijuana by prescription.  I'd agree with the tacit proposition made in the OP that no one should be arrested solely for its possession, with or without a medical provider's prescription. 

If it's for rehab, then we're doing a demonstrably lousy job of that.  Yes, the Navajo example was far fetched, but I bet they have a much, much better record in this regard.

If it's for our protection, that some are genuinely dangerous to society, then I'd agree that jokers and tokers really aren't menacing.  Nor are some burglars.  Nor are some conspirers.  You could argue that the money launderers, frauds, and drunk drivers are menaces to society, but the latter category will only become more menacing once they graduate from the horrible sorts of prisons most states operate.

[angus]

You really have no distinction between 'maximum penalty allowed by law' and 'actual penaly usually imposed by the courts, do you?

None whatsoever.  I often speak metaphorically, and I've been accused of being somewhat Joycean in my posts.  Sometimes I even post pure bullshit.  I'll just run something up the flagpole to see if it flies.  In this area, however, I'm totally serious and totally pedestrian.  See my previous posts on prisons, punishment, and crime in general.  I've been very consistent in my analysis that we are a very vindictive society, and if there is a cause-and-effect relationship, that vendetta has not paid off very well in terms of making us any safer, and crime statistics bear that out.

[angus]

They're not contributing anything to society being locked up like that. 

To be fair, in some places they do.  In west Texas the state pens put them out in the hot sun with sledgehammers to break up rocks to build highways.  When they're not fighting off rattlesnakes and heat stroke they actually do accomplish some road construction.

I guess my own preference would be restitution and reconciliation/rehabilitation, and I agree that we're not really set up very well for that.

I certainly don't think restitution or punishment is required if all you have done is purchased some chemical substances for your own recreation, but rehabilitation may be in order, especially if someone is addicted to a drug.  I don't know if there's a good study on the costs and benefits of rehab for meth, coke, and heroin addicts in comparison to imprisonment of these addicts.  My gut feeling is that rehab is more cost effective and generally produces better results than prison.  Same goes for drunk drivers.  As for small-time burglars, that's probably a function of poverty more than anything else.  I don't have an easy solution to that problem.  It could be that Ron Paul is right.  We have created a nation of dependents and the only cure is to make people more self-sufficient.  Or it could be that Mother Theresa is right.  We just need to learn to love each other, care for the afflicted, and pool our resources. 

[angus]

this is mostly just prejudice. 

??!

every post by every poster is mostly just prejudice.  let's at least be honest in this forum.