Is Trump For Real On Prison/Sentencing Reform?

Since many libs, Dems and lefties have been driven away by perpetual, repetitive, partisan rage, let me weigh in on this from a more balanced perspective.

As you may know, Trump has recently endorsed prison reform, this proximate to a recent meeting with fish out of water/professional oddball Kanye West.

While Trump is a Noo Yawl liberal at heart, it's hard to know whether this is:

- Presidential virtue signalling without weight (Obama specialized in this)

- The "last guy who talked to me" Trump Effect

- Just another opportunity for Trump to take a swipe at dug-in-like-a-bloated-tick Sessions

- An actual shift to common sense decency

While I am VERY much hoping for the last, if Kanye West becomes the MLK of the new millennium, many minds will be blown.

Including mine.

But as other thoughtful observers have noted, it all comes down to workable electoral strategy.

While this commitment - if it lasts more than a news cycle - might draw in moderate conservatives, libertarians and independents, it will likewise freak out the hard line, punitive law 'n' order types who'd like to see executions for parking violations, and view every jaywalker as a dangerous filthy commie rodent collectivist drug addict mob.

It may also fly in the face of Victim's Rights Movement efforts - another popular move to trash the Constitution - as all you need is one non-violent offender to be released and commit a violent act (like jaywalking!) to set off the "Soft on crime!!/Hang 'em high!!" crowd.

So Trump - if this isn't just another empty, distracted or cynical outburst - has his work cut out for him, and this issue alone could make him the lamest of ducks come his 2020 reelection.

But GBH if he can do what Obama only flirted with, and props due to Obama as well for getting this ball & chain rolling in a good direction.

 

I'm not knowledgeable about what's being proposed but isn't this the province of the states? That aside, prison reform anywhere is a good thing. We could even start with the very basic question, should prisons exist? If the answer is yes, then we should ask why. Then we should ask what they should look like, what are their purposes, they should operate. Strip the reasoning back to the first principles and work from there.

 

Obama had 8 years... he did nothing ... as usual.. he did free some terrorists and that american traitor, but he used a plane stuffed with cash ... wish he would have stayed in Kenya.

 

Thread win.

 

I'm guessing that he's talking about the usual non-violent drug crimes which are federal crimes, and it sounds like he is serious. He probably asked Kanye how he could help blacks, and Kanye told him.

Let democrats run whoever they want, if Trump starts going easy on drug offenders via pardon, telling sessions to back off of non-violent drug offenses, and chastising congress to do something about legalizing marijuana, democrats couldn't win if Obama ran for dogcatcher.

 

I doubt it, there's too much money to be made with domestic cheap prison labor in terms of manufacturing that few people nation wide ever talk about.

We can't have no stinking criminal sentencing, prison, and justice reform! Where would the profit be in all that? There's a good reason the United States has the highest incarceration rate of the entire world.

Not only that but many companies and businesses recently are making a trend of employing ex felons and convicts as a way of keeping wages low because often enough such individuals are desperate in can't finding a job anywhere else. America, the land of freedom and opportunity!

 

I've always said that Trump is the best friend the liberals could ever have in the WH if they stopped their hate rampage for 2 minutes.

The amount of stuff he would give them for simply allowing his wall is mind staggering to me.

Liberals are passing up a golden opportunity here just to fight a fight that doesn't even need to happen.

 

Personally I am an advocate for corporal punishment on some cases

 

I know, This is a guy who has the same trade ideas as Bernie sanders, once believed in one payer (pre politics) and he knows that Immigrants are fighting for the same bottom rung jobs as urban blacks. add 100,000 illegal immigrants with jobs in LA that is 100,000 less jobs for poor blacks and with the resulting wage lowering effects from a surplus of labor. or give $200 a moth in Food stamps to those same illegals rather than divy that up so that the poor citizens can get more assistance. If Trump could sell the republicans on a one payer system they would win control a majority of both houses.

 

Which cases Bower? I'm not suggesting you're wrong, I'm thinking about the efficacy of such punishment and what sort of deterrent effect it might have.

 

Kayne and his wife went to Trump to ask for a pardon. This pardon was for Kayne's Grandmother who was in prison for life from drug dealing....

 

Both sides excel in that category.

 

Not sure but I do have to wonder which is the greater punishment. Taking part of someone time on earth or deliver some pain for a short time

 

This is where it gets difficult. The whole point of the penal process and its aims and methods should be examined thoroughly, sadly it is always a political football and until it's divorced from politics it will be a very messy debate.

 

So you think that spankings are better than time-outs?

 

Back in the day, punishment for crimes was not for the criminal, but used as a way of showing everybody else what happens if they break the law. So we had open air torture and executions that doubled as a form of entertainment. There were no huge prisons with thousands of convicts spending years and decades soaking up taxpayer dollars doing nothing but laying around in their bunks. You were brought before some tribunal and if found guilty, you'd receive either a fine (misdemeanor) or you'd be tortured and/or killed in a few days or maybe even a few minutes.

The correctional model we use now comes from the idea that with a certain amount of time for reflection, you'd see the error of your ways and repent. It's from the idea that people are innately good, but sometimes evil becomes stronger than virtue. It's actually from Christianity, which is why we call the place where prisoners do time a cell, which is the word for a monk's room.

So it depends on how you view people and why they do bad things. If you think we're all innately good, then you want to keep the current system. If you think people do bad things because some people are just plain bad, then you execute them. If you think the hoi polloi need an occasional example of what happens if you break the law, then... public torture and execution.

 

Trump will do what his base tells him to do.

 

Excellent post, if I may say so. It's good to look at penal history from time to time to remind ourselves of what it used to be like. Heck things were so bad in prisons in England that J.S.Mill argued that the death penalty was a good alternative to prison and that was in the 19th Century.

Yes the movement for prison reform was based in Christian beliefs. Good thing too. Bentham had some ideas about it was well, but far more secular. He invented the Panopticon model for prisons when they were finally used to imprison and not just places of torture. We moved from torture and execution to confinement as punishment. That's a huge advance. Now we need another paradigm shift in penal theory and practice.

When humans were operating on a subsistence level and were nomadic, exile was the punishment and probably a delayed death penalty as well. Now we have prisons for internal exile. And perhaps we need to take it further and look at society's creation of criminals. A very wise ex-con gave a lecture I saw some years ago where his main point was that prisoners he knew didn't need "rehabilitation", instead they needed "habilitation". His point was that they'd never been properly brought up.

Cue the allegations of "bleeding heart" against me. No, just thinking pragmatically.

 

Many years ago I overheard two prison guards talking about legalizing marijuana. One of them was for making it legal. But, his co-worker was against it. He said, "No. If they make it legal that will mess up our job security".
The prison industrial complex is a big money maker for lots of people.

 

About as real as his deal on age of gun ownership reforms.

 

1 put all lifers in a game show like "the running man" and charge tons of money to watch....those who die at least got a fighting chance and we dont have to waste tax dollars on them

2 do away with prison rape..make cells smaller single person cells. ..i dont know how they expect people to be reformed when thwy are taped and beaten all day

3 give inmates reduced sentences for submitting to clinical trials and medical testing

 

Are you saying that it didn't help African Americans get out of prison?

 

That would be awesome. The movie 'The Condemned' also comes to mind.

Do prisons deliberately allow this currently? Seems like it is one of those things which is impossible to deal with 100%. Are you thinking that it's possible?

 

It may be the province of the states, but the feds control funding that goes to the states for law enforcement purposes.

 

Do you understand that they are thousands of lifers that are in jail for three strike policy for crimes like drug possession. Your attitude is why there is such a problem. we are jailing people for 40 years for doing coke or meth or pills. Once White America who are now strung out on opiates get the 3rd strike and they go to jail for life, maybe then attitudes will change.