Why is it that America has such a fetish for insanely irrational indiscriminate laws?

[daedalus_dude]

It seems like the people who invented the system were more concerned about keeping the people in a state where they feel like they may be punished in an arbitrary way for any arbitrarily minor or major offense at any time.

But what disturbs me more is that normal people actually support such a system.

How does any make any damn bit of a sense to have a sex offender list where the public urinaters and people whoose pants accidentally ripped open in a shpping mall are thrown in with the child murderes?

Not that it would be impossible to devise some sort of "ranking". But people would rather live with a single, irremovable, extremely broad brush mark that can be placed on anybody for absolutely anything. Because obviously taking a leak in public is EXACTLY the same thing as killing a child.

Same thing with three strike laws. What the hell does it matter what your "crimes" were? Get busted three times for vandalizing the school building, your punishment might be harsher than if you took an axe and slaughtered your teacher (because that happened only once).

It MIGHT be harsher. But it might not. Depending on the mood on the judges, juries, your lawyer etc. you can get any sentence for anything. You might even walk free. You might be the driver of a guy who robs a gas station and kills the owner and get the death penalty, while the actual shooter gets a ten year sentence. Like playing the lottery.

Zero-tolerance policies: Bring an aspirin to school for actual headaches should be punished the EXACT same way as bringing a bag of heroin to school. Because they are the same.

The American judicial system communicates that any person is in principle a criminal and moreover that punishment should not be fitting of the crime but should have the biggest possible amount of arbitraryness on one hand and the biggest possible amount of indiscriminancy on the other. One size fits all, but what that size is we find out by rolling a dice (and sometimes looking at the skin color).

But people WANT it that way. And then, if you think its stupid, you probably you are "soft on crime" want the "predators to run wild" and have no respect for rule of law.

[PM Martin]

1. k/r

The biggest criminals lobbied to have the laws changed to legalize their activities.

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

2. IMO, there should be sunset on EVERY law.

Laws need to be reconsidered on a regular basis and expire if found to be ineffective. There's tens of thousands of laws on the books, and odds are everyone is a felon some way or another. Congress simply passes more and more laws, piling more and more restrictions on we the people. I think there needs to be a concerted effort by a congressional review commitee to look over all laws over a certain age and ask:

1) Do we need this?
2) Is there another law that covers this already?
3) Has this law been effective for what it was designed to do?

If I were running for an office with sufficient power, I would try to repeal one law for every two that I passed.

[virgogal]

3. Do you mean all of America or just the U.S.?

[Statistical]

4. Three strikes (or more correctly habitual offender) laws do not apply to minor charges.

Maybe the law should be tweaked but some people indicate by their actions over and over and over that they have 0 respect for the law.

If the law is no longer a deterrent they should be placed in prison for life (or very long time). 3-strikes in CA is 25 to life w/ parole so as little as 12 years despite the media focusing on the life part.

Lets look at the record of the offender who got his case all the way to the Supreme Court:

Viewed separately from his criminal history, the crime Gary Ewing committed in this case is relatively benign. In 2000 he stole three golf clubs worth $399 each from the pro shop of the El Segundo Golf Course in El Segundo, California. He slipped them down the leg of his pants, and a shop employee called the police when he noticed Ewing limping out of the pro shop.<1>

Ewing was charged with and convicted of felony grand theft of personal property.<2> Under California law, felony grand theft is a "wobbler," meaning that both the prosecutor and the trial judge have discretion to reduce the seriousness of the crime to a misdemeanor.<3> Although Ewing asked the trial court to exercise its discretion in this way, thus making him ineligible for sentencing under the three strikes law, the trial judge declined to do so. Ewing's extensive criminal history did not persuade the judge to be lenient in this regard.<4>

Ewing committed his first crime in 1984 when he was 22 years old. He pleaded guilty to theft, and received a six-month suspended sentence. In 1988 he was convicted of felony grand theft auto and sentenced to a year in jail and three years' probation. In 1990, he was convicted of petty theft and sentenced to 60 days in jail and three years' probation. In 1992, he was convicted of battery and sentenced to 30 days in jail. In the first nine months of 1993 he was convicted of burglary, possession of drug paraphernaila, appropriating lost property, unlawful possession of a firearm, and trespassing. In October and November 1993, he committed his most serious crimes to date—a string of burglaries and robbery at apartment complexes in Long Beach, California, where he made off with money, electronics, and credit cards. In December 1993 he was arrested on the premises of another Long Beach apartment complex, where police found a knife used in the prior robbery, along with a glass cocaine pipe, on his person. He was convicted this time of one count of first-degree robbery and three counts of residential burglary, and sentenced to nine years in prison. He was paroled in 1999, ten months before he stole the golf clubs from the pro shop in El Segundo.<5> At sentencing on the golf club theft, the judge used the 1993 burglaries and robbery to impose the 25-to-life sentence under California's three strikes law.<6>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ewing_v._California

So getting 25-life for golf clubs seems harsh and arbitrary but in actuality he received 25-life for:
theft - 1984
felony grand auto -1988
theft - 1990
burglary - 1993
drug possession - 1993
apropriating lost property (stolen good) - 1993
unlawful possession of firearm (he was a felon) -1993
felony tresspassing - 1993
1st degree robbery (with weapon) - late 1993
3rd degree burglary 3 counts - late 1993
felony grand theft - 1999

That is 13 convictions in 15 years. If we take out the time he was in Prison it was 13 convictions in 3 years. The judge could have chosen a lesser sentence or lesser charge but made a conscious decision that his pattern of habitual violation was exactly what the 25-life law is for.

The statistics of it:
That is >4 crimes per year on average. People wonder how our violent crime rate is so high this is how. The vast majority of violent crime in this country is committed by habitual repeat offenders. These are only the charges he was caught for. Conviction rate is something like 30% for violent crimes so likely he committed 12-15 crimes per year.

Take 250,000 people (less than 0.1% of the population) if they all commit 15 crimes per year that is 4 million violent crimes.

Should we routinely review the habitual offender law in CA and other states? Of course I think non violent drug offenses shouldn't be included (I believe that was changed some time ago in CA). I also think we need to look at the pattern of violence. If someone was committing very serious crimes at a high rate but recently had a lesser crime at a lower rate (less offenses per year) that should factor into the decision. People trying to go straight do make mistakes.

Sorry but it is PC crap to just say habitual offender laws are wrong. What is wrong is people living in fear of habitual offenders.