Having oral sex with your spouse is a felony in one state. furthermore, you lose your gun rights WHILE you are charged, and getting to the trial takes a year. This is also true if you are ACCUSED of domestic abuse (misdemeanor).. <<< MODERATOR EDIT: FLAMEBAIT REMOVED FROM TITLE AND TEXT >>>
Yes, but we have about 200,000 federal prisoners vs. 1.3 million state prisoners. Using 2013 stats. In state prisons, about 54% are violent offenders. Or about 707,000 prisoners are in for violent crimes in state prisons, and another 13,000 in federal prisons, or about 720,000 total, out of 1.5 million or about 48%. That's not counting property crimes which aren't victimless. Also, public order, property and violent crimes are not victimless crimes. IMHO, your article lies. I would only count the drug crimes as victimless, meaning only about 51% of crimes are victimless. (I know this is the case , because the PDF above on table 16 has the 2013 drug crimes listed as 50.7%, while in 2011 it has 51%. http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p13.pdf Love the way your source misleads, since it doesn't even use 2011 stats, it uses 2013 stats and claims they are 2011 stats. Please start using real data, instead of data that is warped by people with an agenda. http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5109
For those who want to mollycoddle the hundreds of thousands in prison on drug charges, how would you feel about a drug company that: Marketed and sold known dangerous and addictive substances to children? That caused serious health complications in unborn children? That had addiction rates of up to 30%? That cause enevitable death from strong addictions that have no permanent cure? Of course the liberals would call for the heads of any pharmaceutical company that made such products and sue them for everything. However, for their local drug dealers that provide all the bad narcotics, a short sentance and a pardon is usual and customary.
This is getting off-topic, but... in many cases it is not actually drugs ruining young people's lives. These young people are struggling to fit into the world, and parents and older adults in positions of authority just seem incapable of understanding, and are quick to blame any problems on drugs. Well what about all the youth that have problems who don't use drugs? These same people just tend to ignore that. No, it just so happens that many people in terrible circumstances, or struggling to make ends meet, turn to drugs or alcohol as an escape. It's not necessarily the underlying cause of their problems. Yes, there are some real cases of addiction where drugs have ruined peoples lives, but in most cases it's not the drugs ruining their life. I would wager to guess that if you just took away all the drugs, it wouldn't magically just make all these people better. Trying to keep all the drug peddlers in prison is just playing the blame game for the effects of our social ills and limited housing/employment opportunities of our youth.
Some people are just naturally more prone to addictive behaviors, not just the young. It's likely in their genes. However, the culture of using more hardcore narcotics, such as coke, heroin, LSD, and speed (Meth) has been overly glorified in Hollywood, and not enough is done in the mainstream media to discourge it. The goal should be to show the terrible risks of addiction to most of these killer narcotics---certianly cocaine, heroin and meth. Each school district, parent and local government should do much more to discourge children and youth not to even try these dangerous chemicals---even once. Since addicts will always be addicts to such narcotics.
What state would that be? Seems strange since the Supreme Court invalidated sodomy laws in 2003. In other words, just because a law has not been formally taken off the books, does not mean that it is enforceable or that anybody is being arrested, much less convicted of it.
A crack whore who's turning tricks in the hood for a rock and is infected with a STD it's not a victimless crime if the John comes down with a STD. The majority of junkies who have the monkey on their backs commit property crimes to feed that monkey. FYI: The heroin monkey not to be confused with the government monkey but both are just as addicting.
Maybe not the best example? Some might say the John wouldn't be a victim. Having unprotected sex with a crack whore is risky behavior at best. If he catches an STD.....oh well.
Here's the thing: drugs aggravate existing difficulties in addition to causing problems all by themselves. Were the drugs unavailable, the addicts/users would be free of some of their troubles and their others would be more manageable. The fact that some people do it does not make it a good idea. some people commit suicide as their particular solution. Do you endorse killing oneself as a viable solution as well? This is not in fact the case. It may be that there are other factors that are also ruining a person's life, but over time an addiction will do it all by itself. No it wouldn't be a magic bullet to cure all these people, any more than any one treatment will cure all diseases. It would be a step in the right direction. A solution to a single problem, making solutions to other problems a person has more likely and easier. Punishing, rehabilitating, and segregating wrongdoers is a worthy thing to do. It is not playing the blame game to imprison people who disregard the society they live in. Criminality should never be a viable career path. Criminals are not Robin Hood. They are not protesting social evils. They are living outside the rules of the society they live in, not because they think those rules are wrong, but for personal advantage at the expense of that society.
going a little off-topic again... From a civil liberties perspective, this creates a dangerous situation. Imagine all sorts of things being technically against the law, but most people commonly ignore these laws because they are outdated and never enforced. If a prosecutor had a bent against someone, they could just find one of these laws they were breaking and go after them for it. Selective enforcement of the law can be a dangerous thing, and I would go so far as to say the same about laws on the books that are never enforced—until a rare case where they actually are. To see an example of this, read this story: http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/rightsandfreedoms/a/alobsterstail.htm A woman was convicted of a felony and sentenced to 2 years on a technicality, for buying lobsters that were imported from Honduras in plastic bags instead of cardboard boxes. That's right: her crime was that the lobsters were not in cardboard boxes. The government of Honduras said that, while this law is still technically on their books, it is never enforced. But the woman was convicted in an American court, because in this case it was a violation of American law to violate the laws of another country. You see the problem here? These things do happen. Prosecutors can use these rarely enforced laws to go after people, even if the laws are widely considered obsolete.
You would be hard pressed to post a most irrelevant pile of blather if you tried. You mewl about non-violent crimes, and then use a non-crime as an example, and now back it up with an analogy to a completely unrelated case. Not only are the sodomy laws not enforced, but more importantly, they are unenforceable, having been clearly determined by the highest court in the land to be unconstitutional, so using it as an example of people going to prison for non-violent crimes is moronic, and trying to compare it to the smuggling case is even more so.
Just because it has been ruled unconstitutional by another court does not mean someone cannot be arrested for it. Someone could still potentially be arrested, and it could take quite some time before another court gets around to issuing an injunction overriding the first court order. I am aware of one particular case where a defendant was arrested, denied bail, and held for a fairly long period of time before the defendant's lawyer finally had a chance to bring attention to the fact that there was a prior court precedent that the law the defendant was being charged was unconstitutional the way it was being applied in that type of situation.
Some people believe he is a victim. Just like some people believe the buyer of illegal drugs is a victim.
Aren't you the guy who thinks armed robbers have the right to shoot their victims if they resist? Funny how you think a robber can be victimized by noncompliance with his orders and you say an addict isn't victimized by his pusher. The easiest way to determine who is being victimized is really quite simple: watch where the money goes. The person making money in an illegal manner is most likely the victimizer; the person who loses money is the victim. Let me put this yet another way for you. Drug addiction is an illness. Taking advantage of the mentally ill makes the mentally ill person a victim. Can you follow that line of reasoning?
Source? Seriously, arresting a person for committing no crime is actionable at law. In addition to being a crime in its own right. performing illegal acts under color of office is a pretty serious charge; if your defendant could make it stick that prosecutor would have faced disbarment at least.
"Actionable" ? What exactly are those "actions" ? This may surprise you, but acting in violation of the Constitution is not necessarily a crime, at least not in the sense of ordinary law. In reality prosecutors are very reluctant to bring charges against other prosecutors, it is just the internal politics of the system. You would be surprised what they can get away with, they would have to do something very terrible to be disbarred. Your overall post makes it sound as if there must be some sort of checks and balances in place because you believe things could not possibly be that way.
I admittedly didn't read every post, so if I am mimicking someones sentiments then I apologize... However, I think the first step is to purely define "violence" or what constitutes something as being violent. Considerations need to be made in the physical and mental levels. Personally, I think defining "mental/emotional" violence should be it's own discussion as I am sick of hearing about these anti-bully campaigns. I do not condone bullying, but parents as well as teachers need to show or teach... or simply ALLOW kids to stick up for themselves. Bullying is a natural part of the human condition, it can be traced everywhere. Trying to eradicate it is futile and quite honestly irresponsibly distracting. However, I do not want to change topics. The first step is to always define the term in question and the meanings of words/phrases/terms can change over time, so repeat discussions like these are necessary.
No, of course not. Just that when this "resistance" involves a threat of deadly force to the robber, it's not really the same thing as "murder". The robber may still be responsible for that injury/death, but I was just debating the extent to which the robber should be held responsible. There's no point bringing up arguments from other threads, however.
Who enforces that law anymore? Name one contemporary example. Some things are technically illegal but no one cares.
