Because it’s not like the bullies would have found other ways to bully her.
True, but then again I guess I was lucky in school in that I was pretty much immune to bullies. Don’t get me wrong, I was a typical geek and was picked on about it, but after they realized that they wouldn’t get a rise out of me, they left me alone. I guess other people just don’t know how to react to bullying to make it stop. Quite frankly I just didn’t care what other people thought or said about me but others just can’t leave it alone.
So, I have a story, which I think relates. I’m sure we all remember the time I blocked a punch with my face and went on to win the fight, to my later bemusement. It was a great, if laughable, manouever which I look upon with all the fondness anyone looks upon those follies of youth which, hardly being painful at the time, also went on to end well despite their foolishness; most young people have such fond memories from athletic activity, or perhaps even unwisely standing up to a despised teacher, or even something as simple as playing the first Final Fantasy game with only white mages on one’s team. That said, while nostalgia remembers the photograph of my bloodied face and the laughter as I told my friends, hindsight remembers that, of course, these largely harmless events are not entirely without their injuries or unpleasantness. One such incident seems particularly pertinent in this light.
I was out with my friends playing a game of pick-up football in the park on a summer night. Seeing as I’m quite thin of frame, and not particularly tall, I figured my best course, being a fast runner with powerful legs, was to rely on speed and momentum to do what size could not for me, and to run headlong, half-blind in the darkness, in the event that I had the ball or wanted to tackle someone. This strategy was working marvellously until I found that, as I shook the hair out of my face and forms became clearer as my distance from the decreased, the tall figure I was running towards was not that of a friend, but rather that of a tree. Slowing from a full sprint in a very small distance is not something one can do immediately, and, accordingly, the skin on my head split in a relatively painless way that was, one tightly-pulled band-aid later, a hilarious escapade. A few of my more squeamish friends suggested stitches at the sight of the split’s depth and length, while I insisted that it was hardly serious and a single band-aid would suffice until I went home and put some butterfly closures on. The game continued and, late in the night, concluded. I went home, where these squeamish friends held no sway, and didn’t even bother with the butterfly closures; the band-aid had held, why should I? The cut healed, leaving behind a pale scar on my forehead, which is usually buried beneath dark, curly bangs. A slight bump beneath the scar never went away, but there has never been any pain and, again, my hair almost always covers the scar.
Now, here is where the story relates back to the story of blocking a punch with my face and why, aside from the fond memories it brings, that I brought it up. Despite not being hit on the forehead, or even the same side of my face, the skin on my head popped open. I put butterfly closures on after the fight, let it close again, and things continued in the same manner.
So, as I said, a humorous event from which I escaped with no serious harm, save a deep cut which I solved, rather expediently, with a band-aid and probably something antibacterial. A few months ago, my memory of the incident as faded as the scar it left on my head, almost invisible and almost forgotten after a time when the story has been told enough to no longer be of use, I was dring my hands, innocently and passively, in a bathroom in one of the dorm buildings. The drier was positioned close to the door, as they often are, so I was standing near it, or, more importantly, near enough to turn my head at its opening without removing my hands from the high-tech drier Brown most likely spent quite a pretty penny putting in a bathroom where I rarely see people wash their hands at all. The door swung directly at my head, which I was able to move mostly out of the way, avoiding being hit at all hard. Apologies were mumbled by the awkward hipster, and I went back to my friends’ room only thinking of the funny look on the poor sap’s face, restraining a laugh at his misfortune until I was safely in their room, where he wouldn’t hear. My thoughts changed as I saw my reflection on their television screen, realizing that the soft blow had managed to split my skin, by what I then doubted was coincidence, in the exact same place as the cut from splitting my head on a tree in the summer after my eighth-grade. I went in to health services the next day and had it sewn. While, of course, there is still a scar, the bump (which was evidently a roll in my subcutaneous fat caused by my insufficient closures in the past) is no long noticeable by touch, and heading soccer balls hasn’t caused it to split.
The lesson to be a taken from my escapades, and pertinence of this lengthy post, is to issue by (anecdotal) evidence that putting band-aids on more serious problems is, at best, a temporary solution, and even then, is hardly a solution, at all. It may seem the easiest, saving time for things you’d rather do than concern yourself with something so unpleasant as a problem, but if it isn’t truly fixed, band-aids aren’t going to make the cut go away.
Yet your insurance company shouldn’t be shut down?
It’s a pretty horrible series of events – throwing Red Bull cans at the girl, posting “Accomplished” on her Facebook wall after her suicide, etc. The stalking and assault with a dangerous weapon charges strike me as proper. AWDW is a felony, making it nearly impossible to get a good job later, and carrying up to several years in prison. The statutory rape charge is a little more questionable – up to a life sentence, registered sex offender status, and very easy to prove with virtually no defenses, but hardly intended for 17 year olds having consensual sex with 15 year olds. But the prosecutor claims there was much more abuse than has been made public so far.
Xwing, I think we need to make a prison system debate thread soon. Yeah…I can feel it. Are you down to debate that shit?
Absolutely. I assume I’ll be arguing for mass incarceration, while the rest of the board argues the system’s hopelessly unjust and racist and needs reform. Give me a month or so.
As racist as the justice system is, a more effective way to frame it would be to point out how much money the current system costs instead of providing for other services. As with all services, people who want it have to accept paying for it.
Without going into debate-level detail, Jimmy Carter-types enacted that sort of reform in the 1960-70s, encouraging light sentences and post-conviction rehabilitation, leading to the highest crime rate in modern history. Reagan arrived, bringing mandatory sentencing guidelines and mass incarceration, Three Strikes laws arrived in the early 1990s, and the crime rate plunged rapidly. It has remained low ever since, because criminals now go to jail and stay there. Whatever the cost of prisons, it must be balanced against the benefits of less people being murdered, assaulted and robbed, and the economic development and psychological welfare that comes from safer cities. Compare New York 30 years ago to New York today. It’s like waking up from a nightmare.
This is a good start on where I’d be arguing from:
I’m not arguing for against prisons. I’m arguing there is no free lunch.
I think there is little doubt that the massive increase in the number of people behind bars in the US is directly related to decreasing crime rates. Unfortunately, it’s kind of like putting a band-aid over a deep and festering sore. It might stop your clothes from getting bloody but it won’t stop a massive infection from forming beneath the bandage. The fact is over half our current inmates in the prison system are there for non-violent offenses. Recidivism rates are absurdly high, and when you have rates that high it really gets difficult to argue that there is a massive wave of “individual failures”, but it seems to speak pretty glaringly of a systemic failure to try and stop crime before it starts. Ironically, whereas I’m opposed to the moral hazard argument in the health care thread, I do think there is a huge moral hazard in the current corrections system. As the prison system becomes increasingly privatized and run by for-profit companies, there seems to me a huge conflict of interest. When companies make more profits from more prisoners, it doesn’t seem that difficult to make the connection between increased incarceration rates and the proliferation of privatized prisons. I’m sure we all know of the case in Pennsylvania where a judge was being paid off to send children to jail for minor offenses by prison companies. This is just an isolated case and obviously not the main reason (not even a significant one) behind increased incarceration rates, but there is clearly a large lobbying effort going on in Washington to be “tougher on crime.”
Perhaps despite all of this, it’s still a trade-off worth making for the safety of the public in general. But as Sin said, it’s not a free lunch, and the expense of bloated prison programs is already causing cutbacks in education and healthcare in many states during this budget crunch, because it’s simply politically impossible to trim the budgets of corrections systems (much like the military budget? ok that’s for another thread). At the very least, there needs to be a better way to re-integrate prisoners who have done their time back into society. Prison sentences are time limited for a reason. Making it impossible for a drug offender to find a job after 2 years in jail isn’t doing anything to help him re-integrate into society, and it’s not doing anything to help society at large (society would obviously be better off with more productive citizens, right?).
The only problem with this logic is that a significant number of those people going to prison, the ones with three strikes and high mandatory minimums who don’t come out for a long time, are not murdering, assaulting, and robbing. Many were merely in possession of a drug. The method of decreasing our crime rates by lionizing a drug war which eats up more money every year with, regardless of its alteration to crime rates, no measurable alteration to addiction rates. Mandatory minimum sentences for some drugs outstrip the average sentences for muder in other countries whose crime rate is far lower. All sings indicate that this is not a problem which may be addressed effectively at the legal level. Harsher penalties may immediately deter one’s actions, but it is evident that the United States correctional system has some serious flaws. We possess approximately five percent of the world’s population, and somewhere around a quarter of its imprisoned population. We have the highest percentage of our citizens incarcerated in any nation in the world, and we still have incredibly high crime rates. So, I really don’t buy that our strict sentencing is helping.
her case even made it into german news! poor, poor girl. she looked so sympathetic. :o
Well, is prison meant for correction and rehab or punishment? Do you care how the prisoners fare while inside and after they get released? Is it a public service or a possibly lucrative market? Only scum end up inside or does the system have failings? And what about drug users, do you treat all drugs the same way? Are addicts criminals or in need of help? Does smoking a joint endanger your immortal soul?
Each system is supported by beliefs and the answers to such questions end up impacting the kind of prison system you have.
X-Wing, a rather more bleak yet interesting correlation with the reduction in crime rates in NY (which is all you’re statements were, do not confuse correlation and cause like that) is abortion. I don’t know if you’ve read the book Freakonomics but it’s interesting in many areas and this is one of the blacker.
Basically, in 1970 abortion was legalised in the state. The primary uptake of this service was in lower class areas - particularly in areas in which those children which would have been at great risk of growing up to be criminals. So, in the mid 90s, unlike the previous decades, rather than there being an increase in the age-group of mid-twenties people in the population at risk of becoming hardened criminals there was actually a large decrease which is correlated strongly with the decrease (and previous to that, increase if you look at the other decades) in crimes.
However, again, that is just one of many factors though the author of Freakonomics argues (quite well) that is the strongest factor of all and I am inclined to agree.
I’d argue we could do more to speed up executions, and stop being pussies about the whole issue. I mean, if you’re on Death Row, and it takes you 20 years to actually be executed, what’s the point? Or we could bring back Public Executions. Nothing better than making a prime example of “this is where you end up if you fuck with us”. Granted, people would argue it’s inhumane. (Then again, I could spit in their direction and they’d think that.) The whole prison system as it is currently is a joke, what with all that goes on within its walls and such.
But that doesn’t solve the prison system’s issues at large (overpopulation). We could do more make prison actually feel like “prison”. Or we could just do what the Arabs do, and go “Eye for an Eye” on their asses. Child molesters and rapists? Say goodbye to your balls/dick. (If you’re a woman… leave that to your imagination.) Still have no idea what do with the drug issue. But basically, enforce harsher punishments.
How is that an eye for an eye?
In this post, Ultratech doesn’t know about Due Process or Cruel and Unusual punishment.
I like the part about what The Arabs do.