Do you think that overly harsh laws and excessive punishments can potentially lead to conflict when law enforcement interacts with potential suspects? Do you think that excessive intrusion and overuse of force by police can potentially lead to conflict that did not need to happen? What happens when a police team breaks into a house with guns blazing? Might be a homeowner who thinks he's being attacked by robbers. Might be some minor criminals who did not really commit a serious crime, but decide to use deadly force against the intruders. Is it possible unfairness in the legal system could create enough resentment that it leads to some suspects not being cooperative? Defendants can spend many months in jail before their trial starts, and even then the cards can be stacked against them. Do you believe that ordinary police routinely carrying guns can sometimes cause a conflict to escalate? Maybe it is better that a few minor criminals not be caught, and a few minor crimes not get punished, than for a situation to develop that gets someone killed. Do you think it would be better for law enforcement and the legal process to be "softer" on most types of crime? Yes, it is true that harshness can be an efficient way to get things done and serve as a stronger deterrent against anyone committing crime, but what about all the negative consequences of such an approach?
Another thing, someone who ends up killing someone else, either in self defense or the heat of the moment, may be more likely to try to cover up the crime if they believe there is a going to be a grossly excessive punishment for it. Many people who committed a murder in a fit of rage (like walking into the bedroom and finding their wife with another man) will come forward afterwards and accept their punishment. If people fear they will not receive fair treatment, or could spend the rest of their life in prison, I think we will be seeing a lot more cover ups, and the killer attempting to dispose of the body, even if it was a complete accident. That is going to cause many additional problems for law enforcement, and in many cases we will never find out what happened.
Nice theory, but it just isn't so. Please show some kind of evidence, rather than your own meandering thoughts that this kind of thing is happening.
Well, of course, it's rather hard to collect statistics on how many people cover up their crimes. It's not like you can send them questionnaires asking "Would you still have covered up your crime if you thought the prison sentence would be lower?". We don't even know exactly how many of the people who try to cover up their crimes get away with it.
I'm just saying, if we decide to make the law much harsher than it needs to be, it should really not be surprising when lawbreakers begin to show complete disrespect for the law, whether that's killing law enforcement officers, or covering up their crimes. And all this is really unnecessary. There is a downside to using excessively high prison sentences as a deterrent. Because at some point, you can't really deter the criminal anymore. And if you've set the bar too low, and the criminal finds himself on the other side of that line, there's really going to be nothing holding him back from choosing to break any and every law. If I can give you an extreme example, just to illustrate my point, imagine if we had the death penalty for anyone who drove through a red traffic light. Yes, it is true most people would be extremely careful and we would probably have fewer people going through a red light. But what about the small number of people who did go through a red light? Just think about what the consequences of this would be for society, all the dangerous fugitives it would create.
Let me clarify this. Not all criminals who find themselves facing a very harsh prison sentence planed out committing the crime. There was one man who got into a bar fight, drunk, and ended up killing someone else. http://www.politicalforum.com/curre...-utah-firing-squad-calls-brutal-barbaric.html There was another kid who burglarized a house, the homeowner shot one of his friends dead, and the law held him fully responsible for the death he did not actually commit. http://www.politicalforum.com/law-j...-unarmed-burglars-burglars-guilty-murder.html In both of these cases, those being sentenced to 30+ year prison sentences simply made poor choices without any idea their actions would lead to anything so serious.
Problem with your questions is they are based on something that is not the norm or even happening. So, sure excessive force can led to more resistance, thankfully that is not the case.
If someone is going to kill you, do you have the moral right to shoot them first? If someone is going to abduct you and hold you in prison for 50 years, do you still have that right? What if you deserve to be in prison for 1 year? When a law enforcement officer is going to arrest someone, do they have the moral responsibility to look into exactly what they are doing? what type of evidence there actually is, and what could actually happen to the suspect they are arresting? And if they don't, if they are "just doing their job", and then they get hurt, could it be possible that they themselves could be the ones morally responsible for their own injuries if what they were doing was not ethically right? From the philosophical perspective of natural rights and morality, these are important questions. You may assume law enforcement (as long as they are doing their job) are always in the right. But what about when the laws themselves are grossly unjust ?
Harsh laws can and do lead to conflict. There are so many historical examples that the question just about answers itself. It seems to me that there are just two aspects of a legal system, it’s either there to protect the privileged or it’s there for the benefit of a whole society. I can’t think of any other permutations, although that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. The whole point of harsh laws is repression so they must lead to conflict. Law enforcement and suspects are always a source of conflict. The very concept of law enforcement holds potential conflict, it might not always erupt but it’s usual that it does, from minor to major events. The ability to keep such conflict to the absolute minimum, all other things being taken into account, is one of the measures of a law enforcement organisation. Excessive intrusion and excessive use of force by police are markers of a bad police organisation and bad police practice. In fairness for me to hold the argument that a police organisation is bad I have to be able to show that such behaviours are routine in a particular organisation. If it’s the “that’s the way we do things around here” approach and it’s accepted at all levels of the organisation then it’s bad and that’s all there is to it. There will always be occasions of excessive use of force by individual police officers and the occasional events don’t make someone a bad cop. Again, it’s the consistency that matters. In a deliberately oppressive legal system police will, routinely, be oppressive, intrusive and the use of excessive force will be normalised. Now this doesn’t mean that those elements of police practice mean that the legal system in which they take place is oppressive, just that police use poor practices. I think you might see it occur in regions where the localised legal/criminal justice system and police agencies work hand in glove and share the same approaches, but I don’t think you can generalise that to a whole nation, at least in the case of the US (and it’s the US that seems to be the area we’re using as a reference). The armed entrance issue. Unfortunately in a society with such a high level of private ownership of firearms police executing an entry must assume that firearms are available to the occupants and that those weapons will be used. So every entry is undertaken according to that SOP. I’m just surprised more people haven’t been killed during entries. Harshness of itself isn’t generally necessary in a democratic society. Where there is a functioning democracy the pressures that build up can be released before they do too much damage. Harshness as an everyday practice is only needed when there is no democracy, when the citizenry have to subjected to close surveillance and to tough enforcement methods so as to keep them scared and compliant.
That is the likely reason many people would like to see the general American populace disarmed. So police can conduct raids wherever they want without any worry of meeting resistance. However, from a Libertarian perspective, maybe the real problem is that there are too many raids in the first place, when there are so many laws about what people can and can't do, that means so many reasons for police to search looking for something illegal. More raids, more possibility of potential confrontations. You know, in some ways, in the old days it wasn't so bad. The police were basically only looking for murderers and bank robbers, and murders and bank robberies didn't happen too often.
A small example from personal experience. 1978 (ancient history) in my former force detectives conducted their own raids. It could range from two of us knocking on a door and giving it the boot if not opened or perhaps four of us getting the front and back doors at the same time and again using boot leather if it wasn't opened. Not very dangerous to anyone. And usually not connected with drugs, just your common or garden felon. Now it's call up the tactical team, get all the gear going and only then do you go in. I'm not calling for a return to the dinosaur days, I'm saying that the reason it's the way it is now is because of the drug trade that was facilitated into a massive money-making scheme by stupid politicians.
I remember reading a story many years ago about a man who, after coming home drunk from a bar, found his wife stabbed to death in his home. When the detectives asked why it took him 24 hours to report it, he explained that he was afraid he might be accused of the murder, because of the particular circumstances, and he sought advice from a trusted lawyer about the best thing to do. Basically whether to dispose of the body (though he did not explicitly say it). I wonder, with all the harsh laws being passed now, and all sorts of innocent people ending up in prison, what might that lawyers advice have been today? Or in slightly different circumstances? How many innocent people have gone to a lawyer and been told they were better off moving the body to reduce the chance of them being accused? We like to think only the guilty get tried for murder, but the reality is, when there's a dead body, they start looking for anyone who could have done it and pin the blame on them. Some unfortunate people may find themselves in the situation where all the evidence seems to point to them. What is that person going to do if he does not believe he will receive a fair trial?
Sorry, I suppose I am just not articulating myself very well in this thread. The whole point is that, in many cases, the laws can be excessively harsh. A criminal who steals something cannot be entirely sure whether he is going to be sentenced to 2 years or 30 years. The potential sentences for many crimes are not much less than if the criminal had killed someone. Not only is this grossly unfair, but there are bound to be unintended consequences to these sorts of excessive sentences. An argument supporters of these high sentences often make is that "if you can't do the time, don't do the crime". This line of reasoning is problematic for several reasons. First, in some cases people can be convicted who did not actually commit the crime. Second is the issue of whether someone who has committed a crime should then be deprived of all freedoms, and all rights, that it doesn't really matter how long they are in prison. I see a huge problem with this. That is depriving freedom from a group of people unnecessarily. We have checks and balances whether the accused is found guilty. There should also be checks and balances to how a lawbreaker is sentenced to. The fact that they did break a law does not mean we no longer need to worry about checks and balances protecting their rights and freedom. When there is a lack of adequate checks and balances, there is more potential for abuse on the part of those holding the power. Some good specific examples would have probably helped my argument, but I do not have the time to go looking for one and write about the details. I think this is a big issue though, plenty of potential for abuse, but no one seems to care.
IMHO, an innocent man would have called the police and his lawyer at the same time. Do you really think that our punishment is too harsh on murderers?
That is my whole point. Because of the unfairness in the justice system, there could hypothetically be situations where it would be in the best interest of a man to conceal evidence, even though he was innocent. I am not talking about the "ordinary" kind of murder here. If a wife intentionally kills her husband to collect his life insurance money, for example, I would not have a big problem with her being executed (not that I am advocating the death penalty, but I can see how that would be fair). That is what I mean by "ordinary" murder. There are, however, many other possible situations where one person can kill another person, when they do not have the legal right to do so, but it is still not simple murder. There are all sorts of possible semi-justifiable reasons someone may have had, where maybe they deserve to be punished, but not anywhere near the actual punishment an ordinary murderer deserves. Ever see the 1993 movie The Fugitive ? The main character in the film was basically going to spend the rest of his life in prison, for a crime he did not commit. Suppose he wounded a law enforcement officer while trying to get away, and that officer later died from his injuries, but the fugitive was later found innocent of the original murder he was convicted of. Should he then be held fully responsible for the death of the law enforcement officer who was chasing him? A law enforcement officer who had a gun and likely would not have hesitated to shoot him dead if necessary to stop him getting away. This is the type of situation I mean. Now there are other criminals who are essentially being sentenced to prison for almost the rest of their lives, but who never actually hurt anyone, or stole very much money. One lawbreaker, Edward Young, was sentenced to a "mandatory fifteen-year prison sentence for the crime of possessing seven shotgun shells in a drawer." An Indiana Judge sentenced another lawbreaker to 20 years in prison for selling 10 prescription pain pills. Jeff Mizanskey was sentenced to life in prison for purchasing seven pounds of marijuana. With two nonviolent marijuana convictions already on his record, the man received life without parole under Missouri's three strikes law.
Can you name a situation where one might be better off to conceal evidence rather than tell it with a lawyer present? Most all judges, even the "hanging" sort are dead set against mandatory sentencing of any kind.
